Again with the gender thing...

[strangetomato]

Gender is weird, huh?

I've noticed that people on lj (and other places online, I assume) tend to make something of an issue out of people getting their gender wrong. Someone made a secret about me at one point, saying that they always thought I was a guy, and I wonder how they thought I was going to react to that. I don't really care. If anything, I think it's nice to be anonymously without gender on the internet, and I usually don't select a gender when given the option in profiles and such. If people don't know, then you don't have any of the baggage that comes with it. It's the same reason I use SO instead of husband. Husband feels like such a loaded term to me.

I see people rushing to correct people when they get the gender of a simmer wrong, whether it's themselves or someone else. I notice, too, that it's always males. That's not surprising. It makes sense, given the predominantly female nature of the sims fandom (and fandom in general). We're going to assume y'all have ovaries unless we're told the difference. But why is it so important to correct people?

I was curious about it, so I thought I'd ask (rather than make a simsecret or some such nonsense). For those of you that have done it (and I know a number of people on my flist that have), why do you feel the need to inform people that you or someone else is a male? Note that I'm not here to pick a fight or anything of the sort. I'd just like to hear your side of it.

(Oh, and... for the record, fanseelamb is a female. :P This one seems to come up over and over again.)

And another thing...

I've always been one of those people that tries to be conscious of the gendered messages I give to children in the way I talk to them, like not telling girl's they're "pretty" while telling boys they're "smart" and crap like that (which people do ALL of the time, if you listen to them), but then I noticed I was treating Petey (my first male cat) in a distinctly different way than his big "sister," Suki. How much of that is personality, and how much of that is me projecting? (He's a total Momma's boy, by the way. :P) It's crazy how we slip into these things. The cats are both spayed/neutered, so it's not like they even have any sex-based behaviours to speak of. And they're cats! Do they even have gender?

What do you think? Have any thoughts or interesting stories to share?

Comments

[fantasyrogue.livejournal.com]

It is funny that in the sims community one tends to automatically assume someone is female but in the mmo games I play(ed) people generally assume the other players are male. And I have been mistaken as male on numerous occasions (more often outside the sims community, but it has happened in the sims community as well), whether or not I will correct someone on my own gender depends on how much I care at the moment (if it's someone I know I will spend more time talking to, I'm more likely to correct.. though I think I may have corrected people through a comment left somewhere before, I cannot recall). I've gone with gender neutral options in places that have you list your gender before but mostly to avoid the whole "omg it's a "girl" (woman, thank you very much) on the internet!" thing.

I will correct people on other people's gender on occasion but generally only in the chat I'm in, which are people I talk to on a daily basis. I've never really thought about the why much, it sort of becomes an automatic response. Maybe I'm projecting my own insecurities and fear of accidentally offending someone (by referring to them with the wrong pronoun) out on others. Or sharing the knowledge as beyondheroism said.

And it's not like I would really be all that offended if someone referred to me as "he". I haven't been in the past. (Well, I was sort of wavering between amused and mildly offended when someone took a look at my male character in one game and exclaimed "That is a woman?", but that was more over his usage of the word "that". It did kind of amuse me that he had such trouble wrapping his mind around the concept in the first place.)