I know Covered_In_Bees is (to borrow a phrase from Dave Barry) a male guy of the extreme opposite sex. Honest. But for some reason, my brain insists on thinking of him as a girl. Why? Brains don’t need a reason.
Likewise, Qadgop the Mercotan. Maybe it’s because I think of Q as a feminine letter? Whatever the case, though I know he’s a he, I get disoriented whenever our resident prison doc mentions his wife.
And then there’s me. On message boards that don’t show gender, I’m almost always taken for a man. When I mention that I’m of the fairer sex, people say, “Waaaait a sec… you’re a girl?”, like I’d posted that I’m a trained dolphin with internet access or something. Maybe it’s just my writing style- a site that supposedly analyses your writing to determine your gender thought I was male for all four samples I submitted.
To round things off, I remember **Drain Bead **complaining that no one gets her right, either, (back during my lurking phase).
The internet is a classic example of people being assumed to be be male until they prove otherwise (e.g. first-person protagonists in fiction). I’ll admit, I have trouble keeping Dopers straight and have no shorthand mental description for most usernames, but I do remember someone commenting on your being female, and several other times that it’s happend on the SDMB. It’s bound to happen, but it is odd that being confused for male is often perceived as some sort of compliment.
Off topic, I know, but a lot of people avoid gendered words like that, and would call both men and women “heirs” – and, for example, people of any gender who serve food in restaurants “waiters”.
**Malleus, Incus, Stapes!**I always assume you’re male, but only because your name appears grammatically masculine. Checking a dictionary, I find that I’m wrong. You’re actually pretty balanced if you discount #3 on the grounds that it’s a neologism.
*I mistakenly thought incus was masculine second declension, not a bizarre feminine third declension (incūs, incūdis)
*Romans didn’t have stirrups, so scientists had to coin a word for “stirrup” in the 17th century.
This thread is disturbing. On one hand I want to be happy that people actually notice me. On the other hand, these people that notice me apparently think I’m a woman.
It’s probably what I had coming to me by going with an Eddie Izzard routine.
Can you tell me what this means so I’m not jumping to any unwarranted conclusions? I’m not the biggest Dave Barry fan. Yes I’m a guy still though.
If the name ends in “us” I usually assume it’s a guy. So to the OP, I’ve always assumed you were male. Same with Malthus. I often tend to assume dopers that end in -a are female. Lamia, Aanamika, etc.
In some column he referred to a woman along the lines of “female woman of the extreme opposite sex”- it might have had something to do with bathrooms or dating or something. Anyway, the phrase just stuck in my mind. Sorry if I worried you.
Whoa. Weird. I always thought you (Malleus, Incus, Stapes!) were a guy because your name sounds like some sort of spell incantation out of a video game.
And always assumed Covered_in_Bees was a girl because “bees” is one of those vaguely feminine terms to me, like “ladybugs” or “flowers”. My mental image was not “beekeeper” but “nudist hippie who runs with insects”.
(…must…erase… image…!)
Qadcop, on the other hand, I’ve always pegged as male. No woman would name herself something like that. If any name could be thought of as aggressively masculine, “Qadcop the Mercotan” is it.
I’ve been spoken to as a Person of Unidentifiable Gender on several occasions (s/he?) too, and also mistaken for a different race once.
