Dear all,
I am now having a good time with my real life test - it is already the eleventh month! I am becoming so used to my life that I think I have almost ignored what I am doing now!
However there is a recent issue that makes me a little upset. I have just signed up for a new course in my university, and neither the lecturer nor any classmates have any knowledge about my past. Everything went on smoothly until last week the lecturer somehow obtained a name list from the university with everyone's photo on it. My name is unisex so I have not changed it on my university record. My gender in the record was reduced to "X". My photo, however, remains unchanged, which shows an earlier version of me wearing a business suit. I could have my photo changed easily but I insisted to wait until my hair grows out into a prettier shape.
After the lecturer obtained the name list, he began to stop using female pronouns to me. He normally address me as 'this person', which is fine to me. However when he talks fast and gets excited, he simply use 'he', sometimes repeatedly. I do like this lecturer's class and I like to participate a lot. But fearing that he would call me 'he' again I just do not dare to ask questions any more. Sometimes the lecturer will just say something like 'wow he's asked a good question! Now who can answer him? I guess what he meant was ....'
Luckily I think my classmates haven noticed this issue. They treat me nicely as unusual. My school counsellor says that of course I can come up to the lecturer and ask to be addressed in the proper way, but that may cause further issues - for example, the next time when he tries to refer to me, he may stop for several seconds and think which pronoun he should use. And that will catch attention and cause problems! So my counsellor simply advised me to ignore everything. However, I still get upset when asking questions at the class. Any advice? Thanks!
Best,
Tiffany
