Dee's story reminds me (in a roundabout way) of a couple incidents I have experienced:
I went out about a month ago, and met a friend (C) of a friend (M) -- a cute girl with short hair and a fairly butch fashion sensibility. I got to talking to someone I'd met a few times before, and she noticed this other girl talking to our mutual friend. She asked me, "who's he?" I asked what she meant, and she said, "That guy talking to M?" I just said, "She's C. She's an old friend of M, but I only met her tonight." That solved that nasty little conundrum. (And, yes, I thought it was
just a bit ironic that she got the right pronoun for me, and the wrong one for C.)
More awkward was the time I saw a picture of a friend of mine and his fiancee on his computer screen, and I asked "who's that guy?" -- meaning the fiancee. He said, "that's me." Well, I had gathered that, but I sensed something was wrong, so I just said, "oh." Then he said, "and that's my fiancee." (Whom I hadn't met -- they had been in a long-distance relationship and I never had a chance to see her when she was in town.) That could have been reeeeeeaaaallly awkward. She's actually pretty cute -- it was just something about the expression on her face that, well, made her look like a guy.
The point is, it's EXTREMELY insulting, regardless the circumstance, to mistake a woman for a man. But it happens from time to time, even to some attractive women. I don't ever expect to pass 100% -- but I would like to think that I could reach a point where someone reading me as a man would mean about the same as it would to C or my friends fiancee (now his wife).
I think that's what reminded me about these stories -- Dee's response was pretty much exactly what C's response might have been (if I hadn't been super-suave
and defused the situation). Except it almost certainly wouldn't have been nearly as hurtful to C.
Dee -- I know what you mean about bluriness -- I hate every picture of me that is detailed and in focus. So do most women, which is why Photoshop exists. Take this eggregious example:
http://www.uberpix.net/wp-content/main/2009_08/thanks-to-photoshop.jpg 🔗 (and, yes, I'd be thrilled to look like the "before" picture). But you do look pretty darn good in that iphone picture. I like what you did to your hair -- I think that makes a big difference. 🙂 In your (messed up) avatar, it doesn't have the volume and life. Please don't shave it off! It seems like you're getting better and better with your presentation. Don't give up -- just GTFO of TX!!!!
How I respond: well, for now, I think I look fairly lousy (whatever my friends telling me I'm "beautiful" say), and I don't expect to successfully be read as a woman 100% of the time; I just expect to be respected as a human being. So it doesn't really bother me that much if I'm read. I'm well accustomed to failure, and to me it only means I need to work at it more. I get infinitely more "ma'am's" now than I did presenting as a guy, so I take that to be progress. I don't know a thing in life that's worth doing that you can expect not to fail at many times before you succeed. But, yes, it sure hurts like hell when I fail.
