...to expect people not to assume I'm a man because they don't recognise my first name?

[MrsThierryHenry]

If I ever receive an email from someone who signs at the bottom and I don't recognise the first name (i.e. it's foreign), I would never assume the gender of that person. I would just right back: Dear or Dear .

But people are always writing back to me 'Dear Mr '. I know it's not the biggest issue on the planet, but it's bloody irritating! If they're going to be presumptuous, why not assume I'm a woman, for goodness' sake?

Maybe they think that by default senior management is male?

Emmabeemma - my Mum must have been an early feminist. Back in the days when married couples could share a passport she was the lead spouse with my Dad listed as the secondary one as he worked fulltime but she was able to slope off to France or wherever for a day. So he couldn't leave the country without her but she could without him . This puzzled no end of customs officers as it was highly unusual for it to be this way around on passports.

emma, if anyone did that to me they would LOSE my business, but I would ask to speak to a superior first just to make that clear.
(short tempered on OP's behalf...hot here, need beer)

If you don't give a clue to your gender and it's unclear (remember, you know. The email recipient doesn't) then you either need to use a title to specify or make it quite clear in some other way.

What's the hapless recipient supposed to do? Write back saying "Hi, not sure if you are a woman or man so please forgive my crassness in asking...."

Politeness is two way, I'm afraid.

Maybe if it's a joint undertaking/agreement, they have to get both partners agreement to make changes?

I get the same - and it pisses me off too

Totally!!

No for whatever reason they say they need to speak to him for security reasons and then they will speak to me? Umm...I made the security info...we are partners...I signed too...WTF??

So DH gets all anoyed too and answers their stupid questions and then when they say how can I help you he says 'It was my wife that wanted to speak to you not me so here...' then they will speak to me.

I just don't get it...

And then the paperwork arrives in only his name. Am I invisable??

emmabemmasmom I got that also.
They rang up, checked it was me and then asked to speak to my Dh to get permission to talk to me again...

Very odd - but culturally relevant in the particular company's MO.

Any one read The Second Sex by Simone deBeauvoir? still relevant today..

I have the opposite, that people assume that ds is female because of his name. Sometimes they will refer to him as 'she' when he's standing right there in front of them with a buzz cut, camoflage trousers and a t-shirt with a dinosaur on the front. His passport says he female FFS, and that's just laziness/slap-dash on the part of the admin person who dealt with it because they mustn't have looked at the relevant section of the application form. (I really must get that changed, otherwise it'll cause us dreadful trouble one day.)

MrsTH, have you ever counted how many have got it right/wrong? If people are forced to guess then they should logically get it right 50% of the time, but you might not register the correct ones because it doesn't annoy you. Also, if your industry generally has more men than women that would influence the guessing too.

I regularly have to send emails to various people, and often don't recognise the names. My policy is always to write Dear 'xxxx' using the name I've been given as a first name since it seems daft to assume a gender. I used to put Dear 'xxxx xxxx' and use the full name (but without a title) but it felt a bit too formal for what I do. Putting 'Dear Mr/Mrs xxxx' would just be asking for trouble.

I get a bit annoyed when I get emails back from people who automatically shorten my first name.

bran - what is your son's name?

My aunt's name is Jean.

She moved to France, and went to the doctor's to register. When the nurse called her to take down the notes, she noticed they'd started to write them on the blue paper they use for men, not the pink for women. Queue plenty of explaining that Jean is not Jean (john)!

I get people calling me Mr when they are speaking to me on the telephone

It must be my husky, gravelly voice

Maybe they know by the way I speak that I do actually look a bit like a bloke in a dress.

LaComtesse - things still haven't changed in the travel world... I live in Holland and sometimes fly back to the UK for family visits etc. I used to fly a lot for work so have various frequent flyer memberships so I end up doing all the flight bookings if DH and I go back to Blighty. Because I'm logged in under my name when booking online, I'm automatically the lead passenger on the form and DH is "accompanying passenger". However... fill in the Mr / Mrs field, save, et voilà DH is lead passenger on the e-ticket confirmation.

We women really should know our place.

And errrrr to go back to the original question... (sorry)... being male is still seen as the "default" sex while being female is still seen as being "other".

My room mate at work and I frequently have loooong whingey conversations about this...

branflake, it's Georgie, which I don't think is uniquely female. But perhaps people hear/read Georgia by mistake.

OOOH, JaneHH, that flying thing really annoys me. I often fly with just DS, so I book the tickets but with both Air France/City Jet and VLM all correspondence is sent to DS because he's 'Mr', despite the fact that he's 3 years old.

Ah, DP has been speaking to someone on a forum for the last few weeks, and emialing them about a job they are both hoping to start in the near future, their name was George so he assumed it was a male, then she said something about being female and her test being different because of ehr gender and it was the first inkling he had.
I don't think it's unusual to assume if a name is masculine or feminine that someone is a certain gender, he didn't call her 'Mr' at any point but did say he'd been typing to her as one would to a fellow male calling her 'mate' and things.

Mrs Thiery .... glad you confirmed you are not " the mrs TH", cos i'd have been mortified....... why..... because i want to be( sadly no chance, but we can all dream)

Branflake - oh yes Air France/KLM and VLM are particularly good at this... Would also be extremely if the idea of your 3-year-old being sent corespondence wasn't so fecking ridiculously laughable!! grrrr I work in IT so sometimes send rant-like e-mails to the website contactperson with a few IT terms dropped in in an attempt to get taken more seriously and get it sorted out (yeah right...) Does anything change...? mmhhh what do we all think...?

Although to be honest with a name like Georgie I would be a bit unsure (can be either girl or a boy imho). Nice name though

It's a bit like being called "sir" by a shop assistant staring you in the face !!! YES I MAY BE 6 FOOT TALL BUT I DO LOOK JUST SLIIIIGHTLY LIKE A WOMAN, NO??? I sympathise, OP. (I am 6 foot and I have been called "sir" in shops. Feel like saying "But I'm a laydeeee")

ahem correspondence

My DD is always presumed to be boy until she turns up for class(in sept) or a party.
"Oh shes a girl I was expecting a boy We will have to change her locker to pink"

Then I get asked where it came from and explain.
I don`t need to explain . It can be a girls name

Two-PhD household here. Almost worth doing it just so the bloody bank can phone up and ask to speak to Dr Wellies, and I can say 'Yes, speaking...'
Usually produces a looong pause while they try to work out whether I'm a bloke with a very squeaky voice, and whether there is any PC way they can ask.
Bwahahahahahahahahaaaa

You have my sympathies on this one. I had to change the way I spelled my name when I moved from Wales to England as everyone assumed I was a Jewish boy because I spelled my name Eli rather than Ellie.