Axe Princess • The solution is to not gender others when you...

The solution is to not gender others when you don’t know their gender. If you see someone, you don’t just think you know their name right? Like, if you saw someone walking down the street, you wouldn’t just be like, “Their name is definitely Mark.” Genders/pronouns/etc. (as much as people want to argue that this isn’t true) work the same way.

thelacydisease (via radicalqueery)

blumineck:

#when did we become dwarves? :s #Can I make assumptions about people’s sex based on appearance instead then? #cos there’s no way I’m greeting each new person with #’hi #’what’s your name?’ #’and are you male or female?’ #plus #would make surveys and bio practicals a lot more difficult #and when you’re pointing people out in the street to other people it could get really confusing if you can’t even differentiate between m… #just saying

[Tags retained because I want to comment on them.]

And merged from a separate post (sorry):

blumineck:

I put a lot of tags on the last post that I reblogged. Maybe I’m trying too hard to cling on to the stereotypes that I was born with, but I feel that being unable to make at least a decent estimate of whether someone is male or female based on appearance would complicate life far more than I would like to right now. I’m happy for people to identify as whatever, but the fact is that I am always going to initially assume that someone’s gender is the same as their outward appearance. I would sort of like to be more open-minded, but there is nothing that is going to stop me from seeing things like that. If someone wants do identify differently, then that’s fine, and I’ll accommodate that. But my initial assumption is going to be the obvious one, because life is complicated enough without having to say ‘well I was talking to them just now, yeah, they were tall, blonde hair, blue eyes… what?… well how am I supposed to know if it was a man or a woman?’ when describing someone.

I don’t want to cause offence, and I don’t have any hate for people who identify differently, but I am saying that assuming no knowledge of someone’s gender based on their appearance is not something that my mind is capable of, as much as I would like to pretend I can. As I said, I won’t stick with my initial guess if I’m corrected, but I will need correcting.

Welcome to another chapter in the eternal struggle against the way your brain wants to do things.

Unfortunately, like with stereotypes in general, gendering people is a really useful thing to do. Judging someone based on their appearance gives you a starting point; a vague idea of how to relate to someone. If you don’t assume anything about someone then, yes, you may have to ask them a lot of questions. And some people aren’t going to take kindly to being asked if they’re male or female*.

Way I see it, the far more important thing is just to be aware that you may be wrong, and to respect that someone’s identity might not match your perception of them. That, to me, is what it means to be open-minded. Even if someone doesn’t make assumptions about someone’s gender from their appearance or presentation, that’s no guarantee they’ll respect it.

Myself, though, I’ve caught myself using the epicene they far more than necessary.

Source: notaskingforpermission