Don’t feel too bad, either–last night, my spouse (who works out regularly and is pretty darn strong) was very nearly thwarted by a jar of mushrooms. I’m sure he would have loved having one of those gadgets!
Even if the jar looks the same, something could have changed in the production process. After the company where my dad worked upgraded some of their lines, they were flooded with complaints about how hard it was to open the jars. Turns out it was a combination of the lid torque and the vacuum seal causing the problem. Even my dad admitted to having trouble with the jars. The company now sells openers like these that just pop the vacuum seal…after that, the lid comes off effortlessly.
I got one of those for my disabled spouse, who was no longer able to open jars himself and had to ask the woman of the house for help (and when she couldn’t manage things got wiggy). The first 24 hours he opened every single jar in the house whether it needed to be opened or not. Things have since settled down, and he has resumed being Chief Jar Opener (but only when needed).
I’ve bought a few as presents for arthritic, those with carpel tunnel, and some people who just have trouble with jars.
Seems to me that until Bruce makes a formal announcement we should just keep doing what we have been. We don’t really know what’s going on with the person in question, after all, so we should control our tendency to make assumptions.
Agreed.
I’d be very wary to accept anything coming out of that Kardashian circle. None of the news reports so far have quoted him, just “unnamed family sources”. Now I see he’s “reported” to do a sit down with Diane Sawyer about it. I’ll believe that when I see it.
His mother has been named. If the course is correct, she says she’s cool with him transitioning but hates his hair.
Wow. I thought all the comedians were making shit up because he was not aging gracefully. He really is going to go trans. Whadaya know!
Sometimes I have caught myself calling Transgender women “he”. Not often… but sometimes I have brain farts. I feel awful after it. I’ve worked on it since the last time I did it.
But it seems after I apologized to her, that she wasn’t fazed by ot at all.
Is it painful when people mistakenly call you a he… or do you ‘get’ the mix up?
To be completely honest and not trying to brag…No one who didn’t know I was transgender already has ever known from meeting me in about 2 years. Sometimes people have heard my radio show, or seen me on TV, or been to my website - but then, those are the folks who likely aren’t going to “he” me.
Being misgendered hurts, and it hurts most when it comes from friends and people you know support you. The reason for this is simple - when a hater or catcaller yells it at you, you can brush it off somewhat with the justification of “bigoted asshole, WTF.”
But when someone who supports you misgenders you, it can trigger an immediate internal psychodrama, where you get into a loop of “OMG, this someone who cares about me who said that! I must be looking really bad today. I must look like a man, fuck, they see me instinctively like I’m dude in a dress. What did I do wrong? Is it my voice? It is my clothes? Fuck, has some facial hair come back? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?”
The best thing to do if you make the mistake is just say “I’m sorry, it was an accident.” And not in front of others, where you may out the person in question.
It used to hurt when people who knew the Male Me but support me wholeheartedly misgender me on accident. I would go through the same cycle as above. But being an activist means I’m always in the line of fire, so I’ve built up some of a skin.
Somebody I know just went public (via Facebook) that she is a transgendered woman. I haven’t seen her since the announcement but I’ll admit I’m worried that I will accidentally call her by her old name or use a masculine pronoun out of habit.
Thank you so much for your response. 
If you do, apologize simply, and move on. If it’s in person, apologize simply and away from other ears, mainly because some of the time no one else hears the misgendering.
And we all have to expect it from folks who have known us. I posted earlier that it hurts, a lot in fact, but looking at it clinically it is expected.
I guess I can sort of understand someone who knew someone pre-transition calling them by their pre-name by mistake/forgetfulness. And I can understand the hurt that can be felt when someone gets your name wrong.
Let’s go on a bit of a tangent. Should Caitlyn’s children still refer to her as their father or should they switch to mother? Frankly, I’m leaning towards going with the role she played raising them, that of a father. But I’m willing to read opposing views.
Not sure if this has been answered but do you change your family category? For example, do you go from being an uncle to an aunt? A brother to a daughter? A niece to a nephew?
I worried about that happening with my friend but it never has. Once I saw the new her it just never occurred to me to call her by the name I used to know her as. It’s a bit weird hearing her talk about “Bob” in the third person on one hand and then turning around and saying “we” when talking about something we did together. But as she told me the first time we met over lunch after her transition, “It’s okay if you think this is weird.”
My preference - which is largely meaningless because it’s not about me, it’s about what’s best for people who are transgender - would be to refer to the person-in-the-past by the gender terms used in the past. For example, referring to Caitlyn Jenner’s past athletic feats in the Olympics as the time he won the decathlon, or being the father of certain people, which I find less confusing on a certain level because I remember Jenner as a man doing those things.
On the other hand, I do understand that for someone having heavy-duty gender identity issues, and who has had to go through considerable effort to make the transition, being misgendered, even accidentally, causes a lot of distress. And I do try to avoid distressing people, even unintentionally. If my discomfort/inconvenience at changing pronouns when referring to past events is trivial compared to what someone transgender would experience if I didn’t make such a change then I can make the change.
Some transgender women “ping” my radar as their post-transition gender without any problem, even if they are a woman with an unusually low voice (just an example) or some other trait that is a result of undergoing a male puberty. Those are the fortunate ones. Others, it’s a struggle not to see them as a man in drag, which makes mistakes much more likely but I keep trying because as difficult as it is for me to get it right, it’s a lot more of a hassle for them to cope with such a problem.
I think where it still gets very sticky for me are people are very ambiguous. I recently had a customer at work who really hit my radar as a man… except for the definite breasts. Not moobs, we’re talking at least a B cup and a bra. Made further intriguing about some of the items the customer was looking for which made me think someone was getting ready for a surgical recovery. Of course, none of my business why someone is purchasing said items.
I must be getting blase about the whole topic. 30 years ago I would have being trying to figure out pre- or post-transition, getting worked up because I couldn’t tell a man from a woman, and so one. Now it’s just oh, that’s a interesting juxtaposition of traits, now where did planning put items X, Y, and Z? Right, there are your items, have a great day and thanks for shopping at our store.
I have this problem both ways. There’s a transman I sometimes hang out with who really looks like a butch woman to me. It’s hard to think of him as a guy. (The name is indeterminate, and is the only name I’ve known him as, so that’s not a problem.) There’s a young transwoman i sometimes see around who looks and smells like a man.
I realize it matters more to them than to me, and i try to get the genders right, but I slip up more than i would like to.
That’s something everyone has to decide on their own. I will say that anecdotally, the vast majority of my transwomen friends, even those who are post-SRS, still are happy to have their kids call them “dad.” I personally do not understand it 100%, but I respect it.
Everyone has to come to grips with their own situation. I went to female designations everywhere, and when one of my family refers to me with the male designation I politely correct them. As I said in a post a few minutes earlier, some folks are very happy letting their kids call them what they always called them. Some go with a hybrid designation - one lady I know has her kids call her “Maddy” (mom-daddy), which was inspired by Jennifer Finney Boylan in her iconic transgender book “She’s Not There.”