So you’re talking about your trans male friend, and out of your mouth slips the dreaded “she”.
This is how you ought to respond: “Crap. Sorry. He.” And then continue.
This is how you definitely should not respond: “Oh my god! I’m so sorry! I promise I see you as a man, I really do! I’m trying so hard, it’s just that I knew you so long as a girl, but I know you’re a man. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, it was a complete accident. Please forgive me. I’m not transphobic or anything, it was a slip of the tongue…” and so on and so forth for fifteen minutes.
I can already see the people going down to the comment section to opine that people do the ten-minute apology thing because they are afraid of the evil trans cabal. But in my experience that’s not true. It’s usually because people understand that misgendering hurts trans people and, because they are kind-hearted and compassionate, they don’t want to hurt anyone. Unfortunately, this particular method of showing that you don’t want to hurt anyone is kind of counterproductive.
First of all, in general, when you commit minor acts of rudeness, you should just apologize once and not fourteen times. I know this is hard for everyone– I myself have, after a significant amount of work, managed to lower my usual number of apologies for minor mistakes to three– but it generally makes people uncomfortable to have someone self-flagellate in front of them.
Second, there are two situations that could be happening here.
First, you really do instinctively see your trans male friend as a man, but you’re used to using female pronouns for him, or actually he’s nonbinary and you’re not quite comfortable with using ‘they’ for single people yet, or you just made a dumb mistake because people do that. (I once called my extremely cis boyfriend ‘she’.) In that case, you have nothing to apologize for, because you didn’t actually do anything wrong. Everyone misspeaks sometimes. It’s okay.
Second, you do not see your trans male friend as a man, you see him as a woman. That isn’t something to beat yourself up about, because most people cannot actually switch their instinctive gender categorizations of people. I have been around enough trans people that my gender classification system is fundamentally broken and now not only occasionally misgenders trans people but also parses a bunch of cis women as being men, which I suppose is equality of a sort.
But if your trans friend is socially dysphoric, the fact that you see him as a woman causes him a great deal of pain. Like I said, it’s not pain you can necessarily fix, so it’s not like you’re doing something wrong; this is just the unfortunate way social dysphoria works. However, the polite thing to do in this case is not to rub it in his face. That’s why trans people ask other people to use the right pronouns for us: we can’t reasonably ask everyone to see us as our gender, but we can ask people to refrain from making us constantly aware of the fact that they don’t.
The problem is that spending ten minutes apologizing about mispronouning someone is rubbing it in his face that you don’t see him as a man. Like, it’s literally a ten-minute conversation about the subject! The list of events most trans people would prefer to that conversation includes root canals, having a door slam repeatedly into their face, and being left in charge of a dozen sugar-high seven-year-olds at a Chuck E. Cheese’s. This is a pretty shitty way of showing your allyship.
It is okay if you struggle with guilt issues about having just mispronouned someone. I would suggest that the correct way to deal with these issues is not to continue to hurt the person you just hurt, but instead to talk to someone else. Or journal, or go for a run, or whatever your preferred form of self-care is.
Thing of Things 
I have this problem about a lot of things.
My instinctive reaction to so many mistakes is “mustn’t minimise the harm I’ve done, must explain that I don’t take it lightly”. But I try my best to remember that *often* isn’t true, and when someone else inadvertently screws up, all I expect from them is a sincere, brief, apology that makes it clear they don’t intend to do that. And I don’t want them to bother me with the details.
So even if I have more bad-feels, I try not splurge them out over the person I’m talking to.
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I think if someone is talking about their trans friend, both parties will be sufficiently familiar with one another that a “Crap, sorry, meant ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘they’ as appropriate” will do.
But where you’ve been just introduced to a trans person or it’s someone in your social or work circle that you don’t know particularly well, people over-compensate because they’re never sure how sensitive some people may be.
Some people will go “That’s fine” and accept the “Crap, sorry” apology. Other people will go on social media about how you’re a transphobic bigot who intentionally misgendered them to show your prejudice and you should be pelted with brickbats.
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The unanswered questions here are:
(1) Does apologizing for ten minutes make it any less likely you will be complained about on social media, or in fact more likely, because they will add “and then I had to talk about it with them for fifteen minutes, christ, deal with your cis guilt on your own time, stop making a demand for emotional labor” to your list of crimes?
(2) In the event that it does reduce your risk of being complained about, why are you hurting reasonable people in order to give assholes everything they want?
Also, IME as the trans friend, my cis friends quite regularly do the “apologize for ten minutes” thing. This post is intended to be a polite way to get them to stop.
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I think that hides a really important point. It’s easy to assume that “amount of complaint”=”amount of harm”. They certainly correlate. But it’s not true. What action will harm people the least? Not cause them to complain the least.
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Oh heavens this.
The worst I’ve got is some guy, “Oh, well it doesn’t really matter, right?”
I’m like, “It matters a lot to me. Pretend it’s the most important thing in the world.”
Geeze Louise.
Often with strangers, I’d just say, “Don’t worry. I got it wrong for years.” That’s funny enough that it eases the tension and lets us move on. Most of the time.
Honestly, I think I’m kinda at a stage where most folks who misgender me are doing it on purpose. Like, I seldom get the “accidental he” any more, but from time to time I get the really loud and obvious “SIR.”
And look, it’s OBVIOUS.
Which, you know how I’m really blunt and prickly online, I’m like that in real life also. So yeah. Saying, “It’s SHE, asshole,” tends to move things quickly past the tedious string of apologies.
I’m never gonna be that person’s friend anyhow, so whatevs.
Although last time it happened was some order-at-the-counter restaurant, and then I had to deal with the manager rushing over and offering me free shit. Like, grrrrrr! That’s not helping. I can deal with your jerkface employee in my own way. I don’t want to deal with you also.
Blah.
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The manager is giving you free shit so you’ll have a positive affect for the store to balance the negative affect generated by the asshole employee. They’re not defending the employee from you, they’re defending the store from the employee.
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I understand what is happening. It’s just, the damage is done. I’d rather just get my food and be left alone.
I don’t blame the manager. They’re doing the best they can in a shitty situation. But it remains terribly unpleasant.
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Agreed.
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You can’t have a stable social system in which an act is viewed as a serious moral error indicative of character flaws that their community reviles, that act can occur accidentally, people are discouraged from asking for expiation and acknowledgement of the absence of the character flaws in proportion to the degree the act is reviled, and the overall setup isn’t literally abusive.
You can ask for that, but you aren’t going to get it. At least one piece of that setup has to give.
Most likely, if someone misgenders you, apologizes simply, accepts a quick, off hand acceptance of that apology, and moves on with no further distress, then that person doesn’t actually think that misgendering you was a very bad thing to do.
To illustrate, try to imagine that same exchange happening after they accidentally elbowed you on the face and broke your nose.
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…if someone accidentally elbowed me in the face and broke my nose, I would be *extremely irritated* if they spent ten minutes apologizing to me instead of calling 911. Like, that’s even worse than the trans example! Your apologies are actively trading off against solving the problem!
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Honestly tho, I think people — even weird-brained people like us — can usually detect a shitty attitude, which is the behavior that the community “reviles.” It turns out that having a good attitude and a willingness to be chill gets you really far. So my saying, “Hey, if you fuck up my pronouns, it’s no big. Shit happens. Just a correction and then we can move on” — it seems a pretty low bar.
Like, right now I’m sitting among a team of nerd-dudes who don’t really have a problem with this. I work at a tech company surrounded by an ocean of nerd folks who can figure it out. In my day-to-day it just isn’t a problem.
Mostly the issue is with strangers, and as I said below, it doesn’t really happen too much any more, but it used to. In any case, I’m usually able to get the conversation back on track, but it is a minor irritant.
On the other hand, I think I can sense when people are just resentful jerks. There are a few of them around, I guess. They seem to be the folks who scowl at me. Mostly I avoid them. So it goes.
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You added the “instead of calling 911” to break the analogy.
What I’m trying to express to you is that there are two problems. The first is that they made you feel bad by misgendering you. The second is that your community made them feel bad by calling them a vile person who isn’t fit for inclusion in that community.
That’s a major part of how moral norms work- by teaching people that if they do X, their communities view of them is Y. That’s why what people want immediately after violating a serious communal moral norm is reassurance from the community that the community doesn’t see them as Y. The more emphatic the moral norm, the more reassurance they will want, because they will fear that the forgiveness they received wasn’t sincere, and the community still really thinks of them as Y.
You’ve written before about the distress suffered if you have a strong desire that others alief you as a particular gender, and you suspect they don’t. Well, replace “alief that you are a particular gender” with “alief that you are not [every hostile characterization they’ve heard attributed to people who misgender].”
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I don’t think communities actually work this way. Myself, I’ve found there to be a basic assumption of goodwill that gets you pretty far most of the time.
Like, I operate in a wide variety of communities, anything from my workplace, my direct friendship circles, spaces such “queer book club”, my wife’s knitting group, other spaces like “random dance club on a Thursday”, and of course the Boston mass transit system. Anyhow, pronouns can suck sometimes, but when the women at my wife’s knitting circle would screw up, I’d just explain what Ozy explained in this thread, to which they would respond, “okay fine.” It just wasn’t a problem after that.
I’ve experienced this in a wide variety of communities. The problem you describe doesn’t seem to come up much.
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“Your community” being the key words here. And ones that deserve a serious quibble.
If you wanted to use terms like PC police/SJWs/etc. you may have a point. It’s not unknown for overzealous “allies” to march in and make a huge production out of something that reasonable people were resolving with much less fuss. (Although then you’d have to define your terms, since people who use words like “SJW” rarely specify who they are or not focusing on.) But overzealous allies rarely have any of their own skin in the identity game. And when overzealous allies build a slip of the tongue into a massive harm while actual trans people prefer a simple apology and a change in behavior, I don’t see how Ozy or any other trans people are the ones driving this cultural push that upsets you.
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Does the trans community ever argue that people who accidentally misgender are vile and not fit for inclusion in the community, or is that actually only directed at people who do it deliberately and maliciously? Because I’ve only ever seen it in the latter case.
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I mean, if someone accidentally broke my nose and then apologized and apologized about it, I would probably be like “dude, chill, it was an accident, don’t beat yourself up about it” after a couple minutes. Because it was an accident!
Some people do think the way you’re describing. Sometimes it’s because they have troubles with shame and scrupulosity, in which case excessive apologizing is not only harmful to others but harmful to themselves– while in the short run it makes them feel better, in the long run it’s just cementing their idea that the slightest mistake makes them evil. Sometimes it is because they have friends or family or lovers that hurt them, who treat minor mistakes as if they were signs that a person is vile and evil. In that case, they should stop talking to those people as quickly as possible; if they cannot, it’s still imperative to develop a support network that doesn’t hurt them and to remind themselves always that they haven’t done anything wrong. The person who punishes another for an honest mistake, product of neither malice nor negligence, is doing something wrong; the person who makes a mistake is not.
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@wildeabandon — There is no unified trans community. There are only individual trans people in their social spaces.
Myself, I’ve had to leave certain social spaces, cuz there was too much transphobia. I just didn’t want to deal. In their place, I find better social spaces. So it goes. We get to choose our friends.
That said, I do miss out. For example, Boston has one notable queer-oriented writing group, which in fact was founded by a trans man and claims to be “trans positive.” However, in practice this means trans-masc positive. I got treated badly there. I left.
I’ve thought about starting my own writing group, but then, having me, ADHD-girl-of-the-apocalypse, try to organize anything — over the years I’ve learned my limits.
Work of course is a big one. We all gotta have get money. My state, for example, includes gender identity in its employee protection measures, so companies are required to supportive. This can get complicated.
In my case it’s just never been a big problem. Since I transitioned I’ve worked for two employers. I got misgendered a fair bit at my old employer, but those folks had known boy-veronica, and now they were getting to know just-started-HRT girl-veronica, so it’s pretty understandable that they struggled. But all they same, everyone had a great attitude and was super supportive and we just worked through it. Basically, I explained what Ozy said in this post: “If you screw up correct yourself, or I will, and then we can quickly move on.” It was never a problem.
I pretty much never get misgendered at my current job. I don’t really “pass,” but I think I clock in “close enough to woman” to get the right pronouns. So yay.
That said, I literally cannot imagine any of the folks on my team being jerks about it. It’s just like, they’re cool dudes. If one of them screws up, whatevs. I’ll probably make fun of them in a light-hearted way — cuz we’re tight enough that they’ll know I’m joking.
This is what a “good social environment” looks like.
That said, I have a coworker in another department, a non-binary person, who had some trouble. It turns out, one of the people on zir team was rigid prescriptivist grammar guy. So anyhow, my friend sent out zir “transition document,” which stated among other things that ze prefer the ze/zir set of pronouns, but will accept the they/their set. So of course rigid-prescriptivist-grammar-guy (RPGG) wasted no time in approaching zir desk and informing zir how wrong ze were. RPGG would not budge. He was stubborn and argumentative. It got ugly. Ultimately my friend had to involve management.
Which is all really awful, but so it goes.
Is RPGG a bad person?
Well, I certainly found his behavior to be very unpleasant, and since I’m a moral nihilist, I can kinda leave it at that. But stepping back, it’s like this: he’s a rigid, rules-bound thinker. That alone can make a person very hard to get along with, and by all accounts RPGG isn’t such a popular guy. So it goes.
Does he want to be this way?
I dunno. The point is, everyone involved in this scenario is likely neuro-diverse, so I kinda chalk it up to “one of those tough problems you have to negotiate if you work as a manager at a tech company.”
I’m actually not sure how it all played out. I know they both still work here. I’ve never really asked my friend for more details.
But all the same, unpleasant people are unpleasant. There is a reason many RPG groups will interview potential players and try to avoid “rules lawyer” types.
Is this “ableist”?
Honestly I don’t know. When I look at RPGG, I basically see someone who is not only hyper-analytical (as if I’m not), but also very stubborn. They’ve decided what is right. They cannot be budged.
WE ALL KNOW THIS PERSON.
There is a point where we have to blur the line between neuro-diversity and matters of character. Personally, I think RPGG crosses that line. He’s a jerk. I don’t wanna be around him. You get to decide for yourself.
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“That isn’t something to beat yourself up about, because most people cannot actually switch their instinctive gender categorizations of people.”
Most people can get better at using the right pronouns for people with practice, though, whether this changes their characterisation of them out not. If I accidently misgender someone I quicky apologize the way you suggest, but then later when I’m alone I say sentences like ” Person told me he will be late” while picturing this person to teach myself that they take male pronouns.
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Does “She. [pause] [emphasis]He[/emphasis].” work?
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Yeah– basically anything that corrects yourself and doesn’t make a huge deal out of it is fine.
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What if you say ““Crap. Sorry. He.”, and then like literally 30 seconds later you do it again, because your brain just caches that shit, and then literally 30 seconds later you do it *again*?
True story.
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There is a possibility you cannot be friends with that person, at least not at that point. But then, that’s something you two have to work out. Which sounds terribly unpleasant, but so it goes.
What I mean is, once you’ve done it N times, for some non-trivial N, then at that point stop and say something like, “I obviously keep fucking this up. I’m so sorry.” Then, you know, talk to them. We’re not a hive-mind. They know their own feelings. They know their relationship with you, its value. In other words, treat it the same as any problem you have in a relationship with a friend.
If this is a work colleague, you may have to limit your contact, prefer email where you can double check, etc. It’s hard. Maybe talk to your manager (depending on the quality of your management).
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I might be missing something, but how can you use the wrong pronoun for someone that you are talking to in English? English pronouns are only gendered for *third* person. Even if it is a discussion involving more people, it is impolite to use third person (rather than name) for people that are actually present.
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@Vadim — I’m a transgender woman, which means I was born with a penis, raised as a boy, but then later switched to live as a woman. I take hormones, which causes breast growth and other changes. I dress in women’s clothes. I have legally chanded my gender ID. The point is, people need to call me “she”.
Sometimes people still call me “he”. Sometimes it is an accident. I look mostly like a woman, but not perfectly. People make mistakes. That is what this post is about.
Sometimes people deliberately call me “he”, because they object to transgender people. I don’t like those people.
Ozy, the host of this blog, is “non-binary.” Ozy is also transgeder, but wants to be considered neither a man nor a woman, which is a bit weird, but people like Ozy exist. Such people don’t like either “he” or “she.” This becomes complicated. Often we use the “they/their/theirs” pronouns for them. There are also new pronouns, such as “ze/zir”, which work, but not everyone is familiar with them. In any case, non-binary people also sometimes get called by the wrong pronouns.
Even people who genuinely want to get our pronouns right make mistakes.
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@veronica I think @Vadim’s point is that, if you’re talking to someone, you’re probably going to refer to them as “you” rather than “he”, “she”, or “they” (and so they’re unlikely to hear themself getting misgendered). This is part of why I, personally, don’t put that much effort into influencing what pronouns are used for me, since I’m often not there when the pronoun is used.
However, even if you are referring to everyone in the conversation by name (something that I, incidentally, really don’t like having done to me, though that’s another story), third-person pronouns usually will still come up, since most speakers avoid repeating a name multiple times in the same sentence.
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Veronica, thank you but I think that I understand transgender 101 pretty well 🙂 My question was purely “technical,” so to speak. That is, when you address someone directly you usually don’t address by “you” rather than “he” or “she” so the issue doesn’t arise.
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Grrr, we need an edit button. What I meant to say was “when you address someone directly you usually use ‘you’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’ so the issue doesn’t arise”
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Ah, I misunderstood. Sorry 🙂
Yeah, we use “you” when addressing someone directly. The issue is when someone is talking about me, which turns out to happen often enough. Also, people will mix up titles of address, such as “ma’am” versus “sir,” etc. It’s the same issue.
As an example, a store clerk might say to another clerk, “Hey, will you help the woman at the counter?” If they say, “the man,” it’s going to hurt my feelings.
Or the clerk might say, “she ordered a diet soda,” again referring to me. If they use “he” … blah.
Anyway, it’s not only pronouns.
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Veronica: Yeah, I see the problem. I guess that relatively speaking, it’s still more frequent in languages with gendered second person pronouns and/or gendered verb inflections.
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Not true. For example, suppose I am talking to Alice and Bob. I might say:
“Alice, you’ve met Bob, right? He’s the head of the cupcake committee. His cupcakes are great!”
Using Bob’s name three times instead of just using pronouns after the antecedent is set would just be awkward, and not any more polite.
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Hmm, my inclination would be using Bob’s name but I’m not a native English speaker so maybe you’re right.
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A comment on grammar (not a trained grammarian, just a more-or-less native English speaker):
In English, if you refer to a particular noun (such as a person) several times in one sentence–I think what’s usually done is to use the noun once, and use pronouns for all other mentions as long as the pronoun is unambiguous.
E.g. “I talked to Bob yesterday, and he told me what he was planning to do.” (Using Bob’s name repeatedly would sound weird.)
Or, “I talked to Bob and Jim yesterday, and Bob told me what he was going to do.” (You can’t start the clause after the “and” with “he,” because it’s not clear who you are talking about–but after mentioning that this clause is about Bob, you can and should use “he” (provided, of course, Bob doesn’t mind masculine pronouns) and it will be understood that you are referring to Bob rather than Jim.
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imperfectlycompetitive: This sounds right to me, I concede.
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I slipped up at work once with a new trans employee and I apologized. But next day I got a write up and next I will be terminated from my job I guess it a very big deal in work places to miss gender your employees on accident. Still no hate on trans but that will hurt me in the future if I want a new job and if I get terminated from this one.
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