Reporting the mods

Wait, there's much worse stuff?

 

It's fleas, and I caught some of them here. While I haven't been trying as hard as I could have, it's incredibly exhausting to constantly deal with people constantly tearing me down.

As far as apologies...

Keep in mind that I get misgendered all of the time and realize that it's my fault for dressing masculine and not keeping my grooming up. If I cared, I'd start wearing a pink hairclip or something instead of getting angry at the world when I've made it so hard.

What happened is that it's hard for me to keep track of genders online, especially in a crowd of transpeople where I get 360 errors, and Spock was especially hard. (1) Yeah, I got distracted with trying to come up with an apology. I did explain why it was hard, and maybe I didn't say the words "what do you expect me to do" but I don't think I got any reasonable suggestions. I renamed them Spockette to help me remember. (2)

1. How do I apologize for having the cultural conditioning that misgendering is going to happen and it's no big deal? I can try to keep in mind that it's somehow the biggest deal even if I don't understand it.
2. So this one is tricky...

• Apologize for going through the effort of trying to resolve the problem?
• Apologize for being stupid?
• Take responsibility for something that is not true, like claiming to deliberately be annoying?
• I got nothing.

 

Yeah, genders can be harder to read online, but that's no excuse for you to say it's Spock's fault for... liking robots? I like robots too. So do a bunch of other people here, a ton of which are women. It's not a boy's club anymore!

 

im sorry but you dont get to rename people at your whims, that's. not how that works, going forward. it's really not how it works with people you're not super close to at best.

 

Like presumably you can figure out I'm a woman because of the 'Petra' and the pink and the woman in my avatar. Except- some people have been uncertain of my gender here with all these factors, and that's fine, because you don't have to be a woman to like the character in my avatar or to go by a traditionally feminine name! One of my best friends isn't a woman and they* go by multiple feminine names because those are the names he* likes!

* Clarification: not misgendering, friend is non-binary and masculine so I'm using both they and he here to convey that.

 

I guess what I'm saying is, it's fine to be uncertain, it's fine to default to 'they' when you're not sure, but you cannot keep trying to read the same cues you might in person, especially on a forum with a high percentage or trans and/or non-binary people. And the things you're reading as social cues are, unfortunately, kind of crappy, like 'liking transformers makes you masculine'.

 

Plenty of people put their pronouns in their profiles here which can be super useful if you're bad at keeping track, btw. I know I do.

 

Yours was easy, Spock's stumped me.

 

I don't understand. What was easy?

 

Apologize for insulting and demeaning her this. Is. Not. Hard.

 

"Sorry for getting your pronouns wrong. It wasn't on purpose. There's a lot of new people here and I have a hard time keeping track of who uses what pronouns - would you mind if I use "they" for you (and everyone else)?"

pretty sure no one here has objected to "they" as default pronoun.

 

it's not your fault for getting misgendered. i wear pants and neutral colors and such a lot, basically the only traditionally femme thing about my everyday personal attire is that i like to wear my hair long. and yet! if someone persistently called me 'he' then they'd be a huge dick and it would in no way be my fault for confusing them or whatever.

people get to dress however they like. people also get to be called whatever they like. these two things are not in conflict. in no circumstance is it ok for someone to casually misgender someone else because their personal preferences doesn't match some internal list of 'girls = pink, flowery, unicorns || boys = dark, smelly, skulls and robots.'

you have not made it 'hard' for people by dressing in a way that suits you and your preferences best. no one, including you, is obligated to present a certain way in order to get basic respect.

 

Both me and Spock have profiles set to say 'female' as soon as you click on our avatars. Hope that helps!

 

If someone misgenders me once upon a first meeting, that's generally fine, and I and in fact most people on this good earth are capable of correcting them politely. "Oh! Actually I'm a girl!"

If someone (you, in this instance) continues to misgender me after they've (you've) been corrected (more than once, by more than one person), then yeah, I'm going to get a little... oh what was it? "Pissy", "Uppity", "Crazy", because you're either being an asshole or not putting in enough genuine effort and either way it's making me mad to be continually misgendered in such a way that puts the blame on me for dressing or acting or, *gasp*, presenting online in a certain way.

You don't have to understand why being misgendered is such a big deal to a lot of people, cis, trans, or nb, but you still have to respect that it hurts people when you do it, especially with how many times you've done it to Spock especially and then had the gall to blame her for being mad about it.

 

bolding mine for emphasis. you did it proper just there, before the nickname even. They is not hard just like Them is not hard. changing your default response to people online is really easy even if it feels weird at first.