To be fed up with people misgendering DP (not trans)

[SarahAndQuack]

My partner is female, as am I, and we have a daughter who recently started school. DP has always had the odd person be confused about her gender, but when we got together there was a big surge in people assuming she was a man, and when DD was born, even more so. DD is nearly five now, and I still find people glance at DP and assume she's a man. I'm posting because one of the school mums - and DD goes to a tiny rural school so there are only a handful of us - has still not clocked that DP is a woman. I was at the school gate chatting and she asked about my husband, so I replied my partner's a woman, and she clearly didn't know what to say.

I find it frustrating because, if you actually bother to look at DP, you can see she's a woman. She always wears jeans or trousers (but women's jeans or trousers), and usually a shirt or a hoodie. Sometimes the shirts are from the menswear section, but the hoodies are generally Seasalt women's. Her hair is short, but so is mine, and no one ever mistakes me for a man. She wears unisex doc martens, but so do lots of women. She's all of 5'8 so not exactly a towering masculine height.

I am aware people misgender her mostly out of kneejerk, unconscious bias: they see one woman (me) and another person, and they automatically decide the other person must be a man. Or they see me and DD and decide the other person must be the dad.

But it's really starting to bother me, because DD is getting old enough to start wondering about what people say, and she is trying to understand what makes someone a man or a woman. She is getting a clear message that her mum is doing womanhood 'wrong', and that people don't think she is a woman, and she's started asking us why. I don't know what to say - and I don't know how to respond to people misgendering DP in a way that is still friendly, but does get across that it's not ok?

This whole thread is showing how the idea of being homosexual still not fully accepted in society and seen as ‘normal’…. :(

OP what do you want from this thread?.Every suggestion people have made you've knocked back? Ever considered that some people just might not be that interested in whether shes make or female and pay no more than a glance to someone who in your own words presents as 'soft butch'. Honestly some of us are just too busy to pay.more than a passing glance to a stranger.

What is your daughter actually upset about? I have two boys who are both consistently mistaken for girls (and have been their whole lives) and they have never cared. They understand that people often have to guess whether someone is male or female and sometimes they get it wrong, often more than once. It's a relatively minor and inoffensive mistake in most cases, so why do you think your daughter is struggling so much?

@Mantlemoose

OP what do you want from this thread?.Every suggestion people have made you've knocked back? Ever considered that some people just might not be that interested in whether shes make or female and pay no more than a glance to someone who in your own words presents as 'soft butch'. Honestly some of us are just too busy to pay.more than a passing glance to a stranger.

No she hasn’t, she liked my idea of a Christmas drink party!

Hi OP, this got quite spirited even for AIBU, didn't it?!

I'm in a similar situation. DW gets misgendered and occasionally missexed (two different things):

1. misgendered by woke acquaintances who assume she is trans. On one occasion she was speaking at an event on LGBT history and was persistently "they-ed" even after correcting this person several times that she uses "she". That is quite annoying - but not applicable here.
2. genuinely missexed by children and occasionally by idiots, usually male (women seem to be better at identifying sex). Here she gives a firm "I'm a woman".
3. accidentally missexed by people looking too quickly and not processing what they see correctly. This she tends to ignore unless it persists past a quick look and becomes 2).

People do not misgender/missex DW to me in her absence, but that's probably because I constantly refer to her as "my wife". I have to agree with PP who say this helps, and that you don't need to actually be married to say it. (If you really do want to be married, and can afford it, have you considered the Episcopal churches in North America? That way you could have a religious wedding in the Anglican tradition, with the sacrament.)

I did ask DW (who is not on MN) her opinion and she says "OP should tell her daughter that some people are just a bit stupid and not worry about what they say, but that DD should keep that thought to herself - and that there's no right way to be a woman, or a man".

As lesbians, we can't protect our children entirely from other people's silly judgements about sex and gender. All we can do I think is trust in our own parenting, and feel glad that our children learn early in life that it's important to think for yourself and not go along with other people when they are being obviously foolish.

@Benjispruce5

Keep correcting. I’m more confused by the fact that you still describe yourself as Cof E when they still won’t marry gay partners. Why would you want to be part of that church?

Asked and answered already.

@PerfectlyUnsuitable

This whole thread is showing how the idea of being homosexual still not fully accepted in society and seen as ‘normal’…. :(

Is it? Or is it just showing that most people don't care enough to pay attention and do generalise based on statistical likelihood?

@SarahAndQuack my sister gets this. A lot. Assumed she is male just because her wife has long hair and she has short hair. She looks typically female. I hate using those terms but I am trying to say she doesn't look typically male.

They got married and were really pleased to be able to say "my wife" in conversation rather than my partner. Partner has no defined sex whereas wife is female. The majority is husband and wife and so you are constantly swimming against that assumption. However, once it is on someone's radar it becomes easier for them to add another possibility. It is like the old puzzle of the child in an accident with their Dad, child gets to hospital and the doctor says I cannot operate on this patient as he is my son. The assumption is or used to be that the doctor is male so people are saying but the Dad was in the accident etc.

Even when I talk about my sister and I say her wife you see it takes a second for that to sink in. Re the whole Mum and Dad thing in the primary school my children went to they had a poster that said things like Mum + Dad = Love, Mum + Boyfriend = Love, Mum + Girlfriend = Love etc and as a volunteer in that school children felt "different" because they have a Mum and Step Dad not realising at least 7 other children in the class also live with their Mum and Step Dad. You have to teach children that there are many different family set ups, step siblings, half siblings, full siblings, not that those are the terms used, usually they just say my sister. Same with parental possibilities.

Or like my children they just accept that they have Auntie X and Uncle Y but also Auntie J and Auntie F. I think Ds1 was about 8 when he first asked me why Fiona was not "uncle" as he understood Joyce was my sister so therefore his Aunt like my other sister. He didn't realise that Aunt meant "female" as Dh and I only have sisters. So we even had to clarify that. He thought "uncle" meant someone who was married to your Mum's sister, regardless of whether they were male or female. (not real names above)

I would just drop your partner's name into conversation, so yes I was just saying to my partner Mary the other day that...etc. Adults also sometimes need educating because sometimes stuff just isn't on their radar.

@PerfectlyUnsuitable

This whole thread is showing how the idea of being homosexual still not fully accepted in society and seen as ‘normal’…. :(

No, some of us just care what people are/do but because we are happy to let people do whatever they want we are still in the wrong.

Sorry, that puzzle is the doctor is female.

@LethargicActress

I don’t think it’s fair to blame your daughter being upset on parents who have made innocent mistakes, which as you recognise, aren’t done maliciously.

Your daughter is at the age where they start noticing the similarities and differences between other children and themselves and other families and their own. It’s not reasonable to have expected her to go through childhood and starting school without ever being upset that her family is different, or without expressing the wish to have a daddy. Your daughters reactions seem entirely normal for a child in her circumstances.

I don’t think @SarahAndQuack is being at all unreasonable, I think she’s bemused by the effects of unconscious bias overriding people’s actual information (they know she and her partner are a female/female couple, her partner has a woman’s name and a woman’s voice and has been wrongly sexed even while in the labour ward , and is worried about her daughter being upset.

I agree, though, that there’s a childhood developmental state that clicks in at some point after they start school where they get (temporarily) very worried by their parents’ difference — for my DS it was that I was an older mother (I was 39 when I had him, and stood out as unusual because this was a Stepford-ish village and all the other mothers of his classmates were still in their 20s), and also that I worked — there were only three WOHMs out of 27 children. (Added to that we were Guardian-reading foreigners in a village of English Tory voters.)

If it’s any consolation, @SaraAndQuack, he soon passed out of that phase, and later we moved countries — he’s now 9 and at a school with a much more varied intake, quite a few same-sex parents (2 sets in his class of 23), where all the parents work, there is a wide ethnic mix etc.

I think all you can do is talk about things with your DD and find out what, if anything, is causing upset. (It turned out DS aged 5 was afraid I was going to die soon because I was older than his friends’ mothers…)

This whole thread is showing how the idea of being homosexual still not fully accepted in society and seen as ‘normal’

Oh so?

@HaveringWavering sorry missed that one!

They’re probably misgendering out of politeness

Since are all so scared of mislabelling each other now 🙄

People are so scared of causing offence hat they’re probably not thinking logically

Oh, and on unconscious bias — for some people, height overrides all other info, weirdly. DH is short, and despite being very male looking, including having a beard, and I can think of several times he was with me and/or women friends going into a pub or club past a bouncer, and we’ve been told ‘Have a good night, ladies.’

The fact that your partner is five ft eight May account for a surprising amount of the mis-sexing.

I’m sorry this is happening. I think you’ve been really thoughtful on this thread, btw, in the face of some ignorant comments.

My neighbour has a little boy with long curly blonde hair halfway down his back: he is constantly, consistently mistaken for a girl – the postmen, trades, randoms. Even once corrected, they do it again. And I really think it’s a case of them all having another priority – their job – so the saying hello to a small child is a peripheral thing, not much room in their focus for it, just “long curly blonde hair = girl = hello, girl, whoops not a girl” and move on with their day. Then like my plumber, come back the next day and do it again. The correction doesn’t filter through because their focus is elsewhere.

And the same thing with your partner, it’s happening on school runs and other crunch parts of the day, right? Where other parents’ focus is: have I got the PE kit, the 50p for mufti day, stop running you’ll fall over, bollocks we’re late, after this I need to get petrol, do I have time to book in the big shop before work? Dreading my KPI meeting, oh hello SarahandQuack’s daughter’s dad, got to dash.

It’s similar to (though not malicious) why catcalling is so irritating: to that person it’s a tiny part of the day; to you and DP it’s cumulative and wearing. I agree with the PP you should host something, an occasion that isn’t about “showcase the lesbian couple” but has that as a consequence – a time when people’s focus is on meeting you both, and drumming into their brains that lesbians exist, and woman come in all aesthetic varieties. Because at the moment they’re not stopping to process the information you’re giving them.

FWIW also people are quite stupid: my friends just had a baby and it was the “soft butch” (also not a fan of the term) partner who gave birth. Someone genuinely said to them “Oh, I thought it would be [other partner] tbh, she’s the girl. Good for you for doing it.”

Is there a chance she doesn’t actually know who your partner is so just assumed you’re with a man?

It’s easy to make assumptions, I know of a little girl who is looked after by two granny’s so I assumed it was the dad’s mum and the mum’s mum. But the granny’s are a couple. Sometimes it takes a while for the penny to drop.

TBH .I am female and where Jean's, Trainers, TShirt .I have short hair but have never been mistaken as Male. Can only presume that your partner looks more butch than you realise. This is not a criticism but she needs to make more of an effort with her appearance if it bothers you both so much. This is genuine,common sense advice.

@SarahAndQuack Letterbox Library curate and sell books that are diverse, like disability, religion and so on. They have a theme on LGBT. £5 to see them, but taken off order, I think people used them to find books but not buy. They’re really nice too, so if you contacted them and described what you’re looking for, such as what kind of discussion you want to have, I’m sure they can help. They might know one that’s out of print. www.letterboxlibrary.com/acatalog/Book_Themes.html

I don’t think there’s anything you can do to stop this happening repeatedly, but I don’t think that’s what you asked either. For talking to your daughter, I would discuss it in the context of religion and dealing with life through acceptance and others with humility, and that regardless we all shine in god’s love (sorry short summary, I don’t know your congregation’s specific teachings). A conversation with your vicar may help too, after all that’s what they’re there for, guidance. They’ll have some wisdom on having an age appropriate discussion. It’s awesome you have such a lovely vicar.

This is not a criticism but she needs to make more of an effort with her appearance if it bothers you both so much. This is genuine,common sense advice.
No, it isn’t. Stop goading.

Yes, but we're C of E, so we'd like to get married in Church

But if you really wanted to be married then you would have a civil ceremony. Sorry, but this just sounds like an excuse not to get married.

You can't have the wedding you want (in a C of E church) but you could have the marriage you want. Wouldn't that be better?

I agree with @Tailendofsummer.

I think it’s most likely a case of seeing what you expect to see

I agree with this. It happens in all areas of life.

No - this is a religious issue. A wedding is a transitory celebration; you could have that anywhere. But a marriage is based (for me) on religion. A civil service would not be a marriage.

Marriage is a legal transaction though, so while you might not think of a civil ceremony as a marriage, in law it is. Is it possible to have a civil ceremny followed by a church blessing?

You need to think carefully about the legal implications of not being married unless you both have watertight wills in place. This topic often comes up on mumsnet.

@foodanfagsjokiing

TBH .I am female and where Jean's, Trainers, TShirt .I have short hair but have never been mistaken as Male. Can only presume that your partner looks more butch than you realise. This is not a criticism but she needs to make more of an effort with her appearance if it bothers you both so much. This is genuine,common sense advice.

What do mean by make more of an effort with her appearance? I am genuinely confused. Do you mean more effort to ‘look like a woman’ or are you presuming OPs partner looks scruffy and she needs to make more effort to look after herself?

@hotmeatymilk..I 100% do not intend to goad !!I am just giving a practical solution..absolutely no offence intended.

I think it's sexist and homophobic - even though no doubt many of the people doing it are not consciously trying to upset you or make a point. It may also be people trying to be woke and assuming that anyone who doesn't look ultra feminine must identify as a man.

I get misgendered often despite looking very feminine, because I have short hair (I assume). And more and more often people assume I am trans, because I have a nickname that's a traditional man's name. It is frustrating.

Honestly I think short hair is enough for people to assume you're a man or want to be a man.

@foodanfagsjokiing Can you really not see it’s offensive to suggest she should make “an effort” to present to societal expectations of her gender? What does “an effort” mean – the woman wears Seasalt which is fairly spendy, obviously gets her hair cut regularly. Or do you mean apply such efforts in a different direction: grow her hair, wear lipstick, basically put on being female as a costume? Why should an adult woman who’s happy with her appearance it change it in order to drum into people’s heads that lesbian couples exist? Unpack your words and you’ll see that even if unintentional, it’s goady.