I’m working in the computer lab. Obviously not very hard, but that’s not the point. I start my quarter-hour walk to push in chairs, tidy up, and see if anyone needs help. Walking by an aisle that doesn’t need my attention, I hear a girl say, “Excuse me, sir.”
I’m not the only lab monitor here. There is a guy working here, but he’s way over by the printers so she couldn’t possibly mean him. I sigh and go to help the girl.
“What do you need?” I ask her.
Her mouth literally drops open when she hears my unmistakably feminine voice.
Heh.
Granted, I have very short hair and not the most womanly of figures, and am dressed in loose t-shirt and baggy shorts. I should be lucky, I suppose, that this is only the second time this has happened to me.
Just the opposite: years ago, people used to refer to me as “Miss” on the phone. I didn’t think my voice sounded particularly female, but it happened often enough that it must have seemed that way to someone.
Ooo, yeah. Once, when I was 11. Short hair as well. I wasn’t even dressed ambiguously; I think I had on a pink shirt and turquoise shorts or something. Anyway, I was at a park and some kid came right up to me and asked, “Are you a girl or a boy?” :mad:
In my defense, his brother came up behind him and said, “She’s a girl, stupid,” and dragged him away.
I might still be androgynous when bundled up on my bike in the fall with my hair tucked under my helmet, but I have some serious boobage that guarantees that nobody will wonder about my gender if they see me from the front.
Hasn’t happened to me, which surprises me a little, I have kind of a dorky voice… a la Willow Rosenberg. (When I am at my thinnest, I get mistaken for her all the damn time (until one gets closer), which is an irritation of another sort for another day!) My husband says it’s feminine, but I don’t know. Sometimes it sounds like a teenage boy, to me.
My husband, however, regularly calls women “sir”, and at the weirdest times! At one of the doctors’ offices, we were speaking to the secretary - a bright, pretty, blond lady, about my age, with beautiful eyes, long hair, the prettiest smile, big, un-missable bosooms (ah-ooga!), who handed us a sheet with pretty, well manicured, light pink painted nails. She had a very feminine voice. When we finished up, my husband glances at her and says, “Thank you very much, sir.” He turns to me, and I’m of course, a mess: frumpy clothes, limp, lifeless hair, colour just barely coming back, dark circles under my eyes, British grin - and frankly, I think I smelled a little (this was the morning I had to be rushed to the hospital when I had the gallbladder attack, and I hadn’t gotten more than an hour’s sleep and no time to take a shower, and it was a hot day and my clothes were too heavy - why do emergencies always happen on these type of days??) So he takes one look at me and puts his arm around me and says “Let’s go, babe.”
I don’t think I’ve told him how much I love him lately. I think I’ll give him a call at work now.
Once, back in the mid '70s. Our roommate’s parents took us out to a very fancy restaurant, I was wearing a dark sweater, no makeup, my long hair was tied back (and it was a period when a lot of men still had long, long hair).
You’d think the server would have noticed the boobage…
And then there was the male reporter with the high voice who once asked Tallulah Bankhead, “Tell me Miss Bankhead, have you ever been mistaken for a man on the telephone?” Tallulah replied, “No dahling, have you?”
One time in high school, one of the school nurses had to ask me … it was a bit disconcerting, especailly since I had hair down to my ass and what I consider a pretty femine face… <shrug>
my father has a very soft voice because of his Parkinson’s disease, so he gets mistaken for a woman on the phone a lot …
my SO has long hair and wide womanly hips, so it wasn’t much of a suprise when a little boy came up to him one day and asked him if he were a boy or a girl…
and my favorite mistaken gender story … I have a male friend with long blonde hair and a very slim figure. He gets a lot of whistles from guys when his back is turned, but the moment they see his face (and his very looooong beard)…
In person, never, not even when I had super short hair. Wearing baggy clothes just makes me look like a woman who doesn’t know her correct clothing size. On the phone, when I was younger, I was called ‘sir’ a couple of times though. My voice must have changed since it hasn’t happened in ages.
I get mistaken for a girl quite often. I have longish hair, but it’s not down to my shoulders, and I don’t have boobs, so I really don’t get why. I once got mistaken for a girl twice in one visit to Bath and Body Works with my girlfriend (and her folks). That was cause for a lot of laughter.
I was at Mass one day. I apparently impressed the visiting priest with my piety because after Mass he came up to me and asked if I ever considered the priesthood as a vocation. He was a bit taken aback when I told him my gender would be a problem. I’m 5’1" and definitely built like a woman, although I was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt that day.
