People often used to think I was a woman when they called on the phone. I found it amusing.
It hasn’t happened in years, so maybe my voice has changed.
Yes, I was going to post the exact same thing. The number one thing on that list being “buy AAPL”, but number two is “don’t be afraid to ask somebody out because you might get rejected, really, it’s not a big deal” (for non-work, and non-sexual harassment situations, obviously).
I feel like “different ways humans communicate their inner feelings” should be like 50% of all the sex-ed courses in high school (in my day I don’t recall this being a thing at all, except for some very stereotyped marsvenussy crap which I immediately discounted for its innacurate portrayal of what I was supposed to be like). ‘Oblique hints and how to recognise them’ would be a great start!
There’ve been times I was misgendered on the phone but it was because my parents gave me a rather feminine Chinese name. Once they heard my voice there was no issue.
I too, am often called ma’am on the phone in error. When they hear my name (one of the 12 disciples, so clearly male), there’s a variety of reactions. Most will act like nothing has happened and call me sir from then on. Some will apologize. A few will try to act like they were calling me “Man” and will deliberately do so again to show it: “Thanks man!” This has gone on for decades but it wasn’t until about three weeks ago that someone just came right out and said, “Oh, you sound just like a woman.” If they don’t ask my name, I will normally leave them in the dark, just for the fun of them later trying to contact me and telling the receptionist that they were speaking to a woman.
Ross Mathews mentions his problem with that in his book
I get mis-gendered as a man all the time and I hate it. Yes I have short hair and don’t wear makeup but it drives home the point that I don’t have “womanly” curves (my hips and waist are the same size) and even tho I put in the effort to wear a damn underwire bra my boobs apparently aren’t prominent enough to be noticed.
It’s just effing awkward, especially if I’m with someone who knows me (oh god oh god please don’t say “did they just call you sir?”) or if I then have to reveal my name and the person doing the mis-gendering realizes their mistake and we have to share in the awkwardness of them realizing what they did.
It used to ruin my whole day, when I cared more about my weird body. I never really went home and cried about it. But it still is awkward and stressful every time it happens and I still hate it. I go through my life not wanting to be noticed and not wanting to make a scene, and when the mis-genderer has been enlightened to the fact that I am a lady, a scene has been made (not a big one obviously but they will feel bad and I will feel bad and they will remember it).
Anyway, to the OP and others who run into this problem, I feel you. I know that for the most part people aren’t trying to be malicious but damn, it does still hurt.
Most (heterosexual) women find feminine-looking men much less attractive than they do masculine-looking men. The implication of a man appearing female is that he would be much less attractive to most women. This is something that would disturb many heterosexual men. (The same also holds true in reverse for heterosexual women.)
In sum, even if “there’s nothing wrong with being feminine, or being a woman”, there could still be something wrong with being a man but looking like a woman (or vice versa).
If true, I’m weird again. I’ve been strongly physically attracted to both very masculine looking men (think, ‘there’s a face somewhere behind that beard’) and very feminine-looking men.
I am cis female although I’m not girly or feminine looking. A few years Facebook had a silly game where it would turn your pic into a pic of the opposite sex. FB couldn’t tell if I was male or female.
I don’t get misgendered, except when somebody who doesn’t know me is trying to find me by my name. For example, I’ll be in a doctor’s waiting room, and they’ll come out and call out a feminine first name plus my last name. The problem is that my first name, though traditionally male, is fairly uncommon, and its spelling is only slightly different from a much more common feminine name. It is a little lesson in social gender justice to watch people horrified and squirming after they misgender me or, perhaps more accurately, misgender my name.
I think there’s a root problem here. Why do we need to have gender in the conversation at all? Perhaps if you are at that moment trying to hook up with a stranger, and one or both of you cares about gender, then it needs to get said at some point. But there’s literally no other reason for gender to come up, except that historically and traditionally we expect it – with yucky results.
Granted, there are some reasons for physical sex to come up with strangers, generally in a medical setting. But physical sex isn’t even conveyed with great accuracy by gendering.
So, for my money, nongendered pronouns and even names would be a much better custom.
In the last couple of years I went from a short male haircut to long hair. A person who mainly saw me from the back called me a lady, But, I thought it was funny,
Maybe we need to have pronouns for race, height, weight, and/or age. To me that makes as a much sense of pronouns based on gender. (by the way, I’m suggesting non-gender pronouns, not advocating other types of pronouns)
Ron Funches, actor and comedian, has an extremely feminine-sounding voice. Prior to his career in entertainment he used to work at a bank and people talking to him used to assume he was a woman, and even misheard his name and called him “Rhonda”. He’d often just roll with that.
