so i had a sub in one of my classes the other day this class has a variety of grades in it as it is not a core subject class so a good number of people only ever knew me as a guy. so whenever i have a sub before class starts i just tell them my name is "insert chosen name here . sometimes they get it wrong on the attendance sheet." or something to that effect because on the attendance they have me as birth name (chosen name), lastname or lastname, birth name (chosen name). however this day the sub was already calling the attendance as i walked in and the sub shouted out my birth name so i raised my hand and said my chosen name. then the senior sitting next to me who ive said at most two words to all year asks me "wait? whats your real name?" i pretended to not hear him and went about my business with a beet red face an increased level of anxiety. so just felt like getting that off my chest as its been bothering me recently.

Having been a teacher for many years, I know schools have rules.   But isn't there something you can do through guidance.   If you are sure you are going to transition its best to change your name legally before your birth name is placed on all of your legal records.   I am a 65 year old transgender grandma.    Waiting until my later 50s to be a female full time means that all of my job records, college diplomas, high school diplomas and teacher's contracts all have my male name.   I just changed it from Michael to Michelle and could insist that Michael is pronounced like Michelle because I saw some place that Michael was listed under a female name so I could go with that in a pinch.    I know its hard with substitutes because I subbed the last four years that I taught.   I like the name Michelle so it works for me.    You are going to have problems with strangers and at work in the future so I think its best to deal with the name change when you are young.    If you are worried about how you will feel in the future pick a you like such as Jessie which can either be male or female.  Just make up your own spelling.   For me i kinda like Mike spelled Myche or Michelle spelled Mychelle or Myshelle.

I teach middle school and know how lazy some subs and that they sometimes don't pay any attention to my instructions (or even understand them). They also aren't paid much.
I also saw a drunk sub once.

But can you go to your teachers and complain about this? I would certainly pay attention to a kid who came to me with any *specific* complaint like this. (I usually get stuff like "I hate the sub". Nothing at all I can do about that one.) As for changing it-- well as i said they don't tend to pay attention to well but you can try this.

I'm assuming here you  have rapport with your teachers. There might be a way of changing the report forms for next year. Have you or your parents looked into this? That would solve the problem.


--Jay Jay

I'm sorry that happen to you. That totally sucks. If your teacher knows there's gonna be a sub the next day he/she should make a note for the sub so they know when calling out attendance or if the teacher lets the class know ahead of time that there will be a sub, I would remind the teacher to make a note for the sub to call you by your chosen name.

You'd be surprised at what you can play off. I had short hair in middle school and while I wasn't trying to pass as a guy, I was taken for one by pretty much every stranger. I had a substitute in one of my classes and when he called out my name (which was unmistakably female--no iteration of it could even be perceived as a guy's name) I guess he thought I was just another dude. He was really sympathetic and asked me if I hated my name and why my parents would do that to me. Kind of a "Boy Named Sue" thing. If you ever get questions from your classmates maybe you could go that route.

You had a teacher who was a 'sub'? does that mean you got to weild the cane? 

if your chosen name was similar  to your real name ( Jesse,Jessica) you could have just said it was a typo thats what i do

justmeinoz you have very interesting schools where you are

This is a quote from Wikipedia concerning my given male name Michael.  "Female forms of Michael include Michèle, Michelle, Michaela, Mechelle, Micheline, and Michaelle, although Michael is occasionally seen as a female name, with women named Michael including actresses Michael Learned and Michael Michele. Another form is Mychal, which can either be a male or female name."   

My female name is Michelle which I also like to spell Mychelle or Myshelle, and I like to spell Mike as Myche.   But given that Michael is also used as a female name,  I could just put up with Michael but pronounce it Michelle.    But I am female and refuse to hide it any more it really doesn't matter to me and most of my paper work form my past says Michael Hackler now all I have to do is get accepted as a female and mentally when people see Michael they will think female.

I have just been thinking that maybe I am also being too polite, maybe instead of referring to myself as a female, I should start saying I am a bitch in every sense of the word.    Maybe if people saw me as a really bitchy bitch, they would not even dare call me sir.

Yeah man, I hate when that happens. Fortunately, like everyone who is aware of my transition is supportive at school. So, when the sub messes up they either go "*insert birthname* doesn't go here" or "doesn't exist."  I usually try to get the sub to mark me present personally just for the sake of my attendance though, and so there's no opportunity for them to shout out my birthname.

But before you graduate, if you are sure that your gender is male, you should work on a name change so that goes on your transcripts and high school diploma or your female name will follow you every time your transcripts are requested for employment or registration at college.   If you are going on further schooling and plan to live in a dorm like setting you need to make plans as to how you will settle that.   There are coed dorms, but then their is a matter of a room mate and having a private room or sharing your room with a room mate.   This problem is sometimes settled if you have a good friend who doesn't care to room with.    Going forward with a female name and you being a male will not be as simple as getting to the substitute before he calls out your birth name to the public.   

Fortunately for me there are famous women who spell their first names Michael  so I just have to be female enough to get any future employers to view it as a female name and perhaps pronounce it Michelle.    I was a teacher, like I said before,   and I know that legal school names begin with the birth certificate.    But you can change your name legally and to live life as a man, you should.     This is so all of your legal records in the future including your Social Security Card and driver's licence have your male name.   Your gender identification may not necessarily be listed upon your documents except maybe your driver's licence  and at the Social Security Office,  but you don't have to mark your gender on your job applications in many cases.

Lots of luck.   If I live another thirty years, I may face these issues myself, unless gender identification is taken off of driver's licences in the future.    But I probable will always be a transgender female and not just a female because 58 years of male gender history is just too much to hide.   What I can say is that because of my age, most of my life's history as a male through high school has vanished except for my pictures in my school year books because I live a long ways from where this all happen and I can only find one of my high school friends on Facebook who probably knows and his son is married to my oldest daughter.   

Your high school and elementary school years will pass and if you leave the community where you live it will change a lot time and many people will not remember any life you had there as a girl.  Unless you want them to remember.   Your friends who go on to school with you will only know you as a guy.   If you leave the state to go to school there will be even fewer people who knew you were born a girl.   It will disappear for the most part, like I say if you want it too.

But changing your name on your official school records is necessary.   Some names such as Shirley and Joe can be either male or female.  As I have learned Michael can be female and male.  But probably 95% of the time its a male name.

Thanks for putting up with my rambling.   But Grandmas do that.   And older people can look back and see all of things they could have done, but didn't out of ignorance or fear.

im in the process of changing my name legally and changing my gender on my license/permit and possibly school records. so it will all be good before i graduate.

Quote from: anibioman on June 24, 2012, 11:59:05 PM
im in the process of changing my name legally and changing my gender on my license/permit and possibly school records. so it will all be good before i graduate.

That's fantastic. I love it.

I transitioned in the middle of high school, so jr and senior year I went through this constantly.
People who knew me before were confused when the teacher corrected my name on the attendance sheets, and people who didn't know me were confused when they didn't correct my name on the sheets. There was no winning.
Jr year in my english class, this girl who just happened to have the same birth name as me, decided one day towards the end of the year, to start correcting everyone by telling them that my name was so-and-so.  The problem making students sat on one side of the room, which is where she sat, and the good students sat on the other, which is where I was sitting. Luckly this guy called me by my birth name, so I corrected him, and he was cool. Although he made numerous sex change joke through out the coarse of two years, I had the same teacher for two years.
The most significant time was when I didn't raise my hand when my birth name was called, so I went up afterwards to tell him that I go by Braden, but my birth name is so-and-so. We had a sub the entire week, so bless his heart, wrote a note to the rest of the subs who were covering the teacher to let them know about the change so it would not be a burden to me.
But there were times when the subs got really pissy towards me when I refused to raise my hand and went up to them later. This one lady pretty much blew up in my face. I still to this day don't understand why.  Other times, other students who knew me would point me out, this happened in that same freshman class, being that they were very immature, it did not go over so well. Guys who would talk to me before, suddenly would ignore me. But it didn't really matter, I ignored them to begin with since they thought I was a freshman who skipped a couple of grades, when in reality I was a senior.

Try to be a little kinder to subs. It's not a nice job. The kids try to take advantage, and the substitute knows it.

My birth name was very unusual and looked like a shortened version of a longer girls' name that was pretty popular. I had a sub who was sure that my name was actually Longversion when it wasn't. But I couldn't seem to convince her otherwise. I was enormously frustrated, and she thought I was trying to put one over on her, even though Shortversion was listed in the roster. That was, after all, my legal name.

A few years later, I was in a class where two boys were trying to convince the sub that they were each other. You know, John says he's Mike and Mike declares that he is John. After that debacle, I had a lot more sympathy for the sub from before--even if it was pretty clear that she had my name wrong.

Then again, I have a hard time forgiving the sub who wouldn't let me go to the nurse after I sustained a head injury in class. Yes, that was a real gash with real blood. I didn't bring fake blood to class that day just on the off chance that my math teacher might call in sick and I could mess with the substitute.