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?

[quote SarahAndQuack]@ThumbWitchesAbroad - we live in a small rural village, but we had a milder version of the same experience living in a city elsewhere. We have a large circle of lesbian mum friends, and this is a common experience, it's nothing remarkable at all, just something we'd like to deal with as well as we possibly can.[/quote]
Do you like the idea of sending your book into the school to be read at storytime? If the kids get it, they'll start correcting their own parents - or they will if they're anything like my 2, who LOVE to tell me how wrong I am at every given opportunity!

OP You say your partner is 'soft butch'. Does this mean she wears her hair short? Could this be the reason people assume she is a man or taking the male role in your relationship?

@Anordinarymum

OP You say your partner is 'soft butch'. Does this mean she wears her hair short? Could this be the reason people assume she is a man or taking the male role in your relationship?

Well, I said 'soft butch' in response to a poster asking about terms like 'butch'. DP isn't mad keen on labels. And no, I never head 'soft butch' means short hair. But like I say, we both have short hair.

@ThumbWitchesAbroad - oh, if I had a book! Actually the children are mostly fine, anyway - it's the parents that are bothering us.

I mean this in the kindest tone possible, but if your girlfriend dresses in a way that is common for men to dress, then it's human nature for people to assume they are a man. If you are certain these are genuine mistakes then I don't see how you can be annoyed about it.

I'm genuinely not mocking your girlfriend or your situation; but if I was a very feminine looking man and began wearing floral dresses for instance, then it would be perfectly understandable (and you could even say expected) for some people to assume I was a woman? Would it not?

@Almostmenopausal

I mean this in the kindest tone possible, but if your girlfriend dresses in a way that is common for men to dress, then it's human nature for people to assume they are a man. If you are certain these are genuine mistakes then I don't see how you can be annoyed about it.

I'm genuinely not mocking your girlfriend or your situation; but if I was a very feminine looking man and began wearing floral dresses for instance, then it would be perfectly understandable (and you could even say expected) for some people to assume I was a woman? Would it not?

Is it common for men to wear women's jeans and trousers, and women's tops?

I mean, surely, even if you think Seasalt women's range is peculiarly masculine womenswear (and I don't think it is), surely you must realise that their stuff wouldn't even fit properly on most average-size men, as it is not cut for longer/taller bodies?

I think people do not know how to behave when they see a same sex couple because they do not understand the dynamic of that relationship so they make mistakes and assume things rightly or wrongly until they get to know the couple.

If your partner is not as feminine as you then people will think she is butch. If people mistake her for a man then there must be a reason for that surely?

I think the problem here lies with you. Does it really matter if people think something? You can put them right, but you have to wonder why they thought what they thought?

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

We'd love to get married, but we're Church of England, and the Church doesn't marry gay couples

Just because you are cofe doesnt mean you cant have a civil service.

I don’t agree. I know a few gay couples waiting for the Church of England to catch up on the subject of marriage equality. If you have a faith a civil ceremony doesn’t cut it. Christians believe a marriage before God is different to a civil ceremony. It’s sacramental, aka transformational. A civil wedding is theologically a different thing, it’s society that considers them the same.

Anyway… off topic…

I can only empathise OP. We have recently moved to a rural area and there is definitely an assumption that I’m married to a white man in a way that didn’t happen when we lived in the city (as it happens, I am). I grew up rurally but lived in cities for 10 years before moving back so I genuinely thought people would move on, it was never assumed in the city. Persevere OP. As for your daughter you know her best but I’d probably say something like “some people think all women have long hair”, rather than focusing on sexuality as it doesn’t point out the difference in your family particularly. I’m sure she is realising that families all look a little different.

@SarahAndQuack - sorry, I thought you said you had "Heather has 2 mummies" because you were given it when your DD was born! I guess if it was shit you might have thrown it out though - but that was the book I was referring to. :)

What I am worrying about isn't individuals making mistakes, it's how I deal with the cumulative effect

Given that you can’t stop it happening - as you’ve said you recognise it’s unconscious bias, and the human brain just doing heteronormative ‘sorting’ when you’re a family group, and also that others have experienced similar, then you need to - and I mean this in the gentlest possible way - stop caring so much when it happens.

Your DD will understand it because you’ll explain it - if she asks why people/that person thinks Mummy is a man, then it wouldn’t be inappropriate at all to say ‘Yes, it’s strange isn’t it,’ and go on to explain that humans are used to seeing what they think is typical a d that sometimes that’s so powerful it even overrides what their eyes are actually seeing.

Does it bother your DP more or less than you?

On books, have you got Pirate Mums? www.waterstones.com/book/the-pirate-mums/jodie-lancet-grant/lydia-corry/9780192777799

Blimey OP I'm quite indignant on your behalf, both because of other school parents being so dim as to not see your DP is female (which is all about heteronormative assumptions) and by all the posters here who are going on about "if she looks like a man ", " dresses like a man" etc.

From your description I think it's utterly bizarre she's being referred to as male, and I would be totally pissed off in your shoes.

Just wondering, have any school dads made this mistake?

I live in inner London and see women every day with short hair, wearing clothes that wouldn't look unusual on a man - I have no difficulty whatsoever recognising them as female. Of course it's also fairly obvious if someone is presenting as other than their biological sex.

I hope it's not too long before everyone around the school can see your DP for what she is. Maybe if you get on friendlier terms with some of the parents, you can mention the issue in a "how weird is this" way, and the word will get round.

You may think it’s obvious DP is a man but clearly some others don’t find it that clear - I’m not sure why you assume they don’t genuinely mistake DP for a man, seems like a very likely possibility to me. If different people keep doing this why don’t you think it’s genuine?

All you can do is correct them. It is what it is and if there not doing it on purpose there is literally nothing to be done about it.

"MY wife" isn't a protected term, you don't have to actually get married to use it... "My common-law wife" if you really feel other people need to understand the exact legal status, but it is as a PP said, unambiguous

This is totally one of the most annoying things, that and the “who’s the Mum” question my wife and I get absolutely constantly when out with our babies.
Pirate Mums is quite a fun book that doesn’t focus on the whole 2 Mum family thing and actually has a story unlike most of the others.
Sorry no helpful advice as ours aren’t in school yet...but hopefully if you keep correcting them eventually it will click (very annoying that this needs to be done!)

Opinion of someone living in suburban Hicksville:

OP my friend introduces herself as “Jenny’s other mum”. The first time I met her I blinked and my brain was a bit slow to process because I’d never met two mums before outside of the TV and I’d already assigned “Jenny’s mum” to someone else. A mutual friend even replies “you’re not Jenny’s mum!” Before realising what was going on.

Jenny’s other other mum joined the PTA and got heavily involved with fundraising so everyone knew who she was.

My point is that most straight people are living in heterosexual little bubbles and have created mental boxes to store people in. We all use these boxes to some extent to save time and mental energy. When someone comes along who doesn’t fit it takes a bit of time to create a new box.

I wonder if you can teach your child to laugh at people who assume your partner is a man and teach her to say “haha that’s not my dad, I have two mums”.

I'm tall and until recently had very short hair. I also wear actual men's clothes or unisex clothes, - baggy shirts, boilersuits, dungarees etc. People on first glance would often assume I was male (once, someone even tried to stop me going into the women's toilets in a theatre, much to our mutual embarrassment when their mistake was realised). Now my hair is longer and it never happens even though I still dress the same. People don't really look at a person properly until they need to - they get a general sense of the person and make an assumption, that's how brains need to work otherwise we would be overloaded with information all the time. It never bothered me - the way I looked was an active choice.

It's not exactly the same situation as with your DP of course - I have no idea about what it's like when people make assumptions about your gender roles in a relationship and as parents, as I'm married to a man. I can imagine that would be frustrating and tiring!

This thread is strikingly strange in that so many people are insisting that it's normal to assume women with short hair and jeans are men! It absolutely isn't!

Its fairly clear it's just the initial assumption that the partner of a woman who has a child is a man, and the not wearing a dress not immediately slapping them in the face to contract that.

The issue clearly isn't with the OP but that its upsetting her daughter, who is only five snd too young to be secure enough to laugh it off.

I remember children insisting my mym was a nurse when I was a small primary school child. It upset me only because she wasn't, she was a doctor. It's also a gender roles thing obviously. I didn't actually remotely care that she was a doctor rather than a nurse or a dinner lady or a teacher or anything else, but it upset me that people were trying to correct me about what my own parent was when I knew she was a doctor not a nurse. Imagine being five and being told regularly that a biological woman who is your mother is a man - it would really mess with your mind!

All schools are like Stepford! I think lesbian mums are still unusual enough that straight people don't expect them- there's usually only one or two in a primary school. School world assumes heterosexual couples and often people will even read lesbians as sisters or mum/daughter. Or think you are the same person... Eventually you'll have to laugh with your dd about the presumption of heterosexuality but I guess right now she's still figuring it out. Does she know other lesbian families? That helps.

*t makes her feel upset. She's been mistaken for a man when she was breastfeeding DD in a cafe - it's not about what people see or how she looks, but about the way two women with a child look. In that situation the waitress had seen me come in holding DD, and in her mind, she'd clocked the baby and the mum, so the other person must be a dad .

DP makes a good attempt at finding it funny, and we talk about it lots, but it obviously hurts. I don't honestly know what else she could do. If she's on her own, people see she's a woman.*

Really? I've accompanied many other women to coffee shops, breast fed etc and no one assumes I'm with a male partner? Woman and children often go out with friends and no one would think or the other person must be dad. You're massively over thinking this.

This must be hard for both of you, and really irritating. It does seem bizarre though. You are saying a handful of people you regularly meet with in a small village school consistently confuse your partner’s gender, despite the fact that she looks like woman, doesn’t dress like a man and speaks like a woman? And you’ve corrected these people in the past?
I would be inclined to continue correcting them and if it’s a small school, it will definitely get round soon enough. Do you have a parents what’s app group? If you really want to hammer home the point I suppose you could maybe share something with her in it to make it clear she is not a man. (eg would recommend this great day out at this museum with my gf and daughter)

@doublemonkey

It's a sign of the times OP, that lesbians have become so marginalised and invisible the general population don't recognise one when they see one.

If Stonewall could get their head out of their arse and do the job they were set up to do this type of thing would be a thing of the past.

This is very true. Since BLM, we see a lot more diversity in advertising for example. We don’t see families with f/f or m/m parents represented in ads. Always heterosexual couples. Of course there is trans recognition and visibility.

@NoSquirrels

What I am worrying about isn't individuals making mistakes, it's how I deal with the cumulative effect

Given that you can’t stop it happening - as you’ve said you recognise it’s unconscious bias, and the human brain just doing heteronormative ‘sorting’ when you’re a family group, and also that others have experienced similar, then you need to - and I mean this in the gentlest possible way - stop caring so much when it happens.

Your DD will understand it because you’ll explain it - if she asks why people/that person thinks Mummy is a man, then it wouldn’t be inappropriate at all to say ‘Yes, it’s strange isn’t it,’ and go on to explain that humans are used to seeing what they think is typical a d that sometimes that’s so powerful it even overrides what their eyes are actually seeing.

Does it bother your DP more or less than you?

This is very good advice. I used to talk to dd like this often when she was little. It’s non judgmental and says well they do it like this, we do it like that but we are all ok and they’re just doing them and it’s not designed to be hurtful. This can diffuse a wealth of pain. Maybe if you could involve your dp in this process, she would also be less hurt because you’re teaching your dd to love her lovely mummy even more.

@2319inprogress

Humans, particularly females, can accurately identify the sex of other people nearly all the time so I would assume that people think that your partner wishes to be perceived as male & are trying to get it "right".

Unless this is when she's not actually there in which case I would think people are forgetting who you/she is & defaulting to assuming that you have a male partner.

What a load of shit

People regularly misgender people, especially if the dont perform their gender in the expected way

If you reach any further trying to stretch the world to fit your view you’ll put your back out