[207/365] zero out of two

[cosmolinguist]

"Is anybody in the queue?" the person who'd just arrived asked the hairdresser. (This one doesn't do appointments.)

I was the only person waiting so it seems like a bit of an odd question but whatever. It made me brace myself to hear "just this lady" or something similar though, but no! Instead, the hairdresser said "Nope, just this person!"

Hairdressers' are usually such gendered places, this makes me feel good.

It was actually kind of nice that this wasn't specific to me, either: As I was leaving I said the hairdresser could have a little break since no one else was there. But someone had just walked in behind me as I was saying that, so she said "no, I'm going to cut this person's hair now!" And the person was really femme-presenting so it'd have been very easy to say "this lady" and I just think it's nice that she didn't.

Calling a stranger "person" rather than "guy" or "lady" or whatever is something I'm working on myself. When I notice it, I always think of my mom who, if she's yelling from inside her car at someone else's driving will address the driver as "guy," like "what are you doing, guy?" or "get out of the way, guy." But if she looks more closely at the driver and thinks she sees a woman, she'll correct it: "er, lady!" I'm sure sometimes I've even heard her say "sorry, lady."

Even as a kid who'd never had a thought about gender, I thought this was weird. She's often insulting the person, they can't hear her anyway, but still she'll correct a perceived misgendering! (Not that I knew the word/concept misgendering then of course, but that's what it is.)

It's so weird that people feel compelled to do this! We're careful about the gender of strangers we momentarily hate! Concern for babies' gender is as well-documented as it is bizarre. Yet we can just say "person"! Or "kid," "baby" or whatever.

I extolled the virtues of "person" as a word with a friend the other day: we'd been walking down the street, saw a dog being walked and since both of us love dogs we slowed down to admire the dog. The dog's human said some kind of greeting to us, I don't remember exactly what, except I remember it ended with "girls." When we'd crossed the street away from the dog and human, my friend theatrically looked back and said "well, zero out of two!" He's non-binary, and I'm...whatever I am. Neither of us are girls. We marveled at just how easy it would've been for that human not to say "girls" to us! Our gender didn't matter at all in this interaction!

It's funny how what's becoming habitual and therefore less noticed to me can stand out to someone else. The other week a friend and I were talking about other friends' children. I said "their kids" at the same time my friend said "their girls" and then repeated "kids" like I'd corrected her but I hadn't. I just succeeded that one particular time in avoiding unnecessary gendering of toddlers.

Comments

So true

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks to reading you I’ve been noticing the ubiquity of carefully gendering even *pets*.

I’m glad the hairdresser provided a wee respite.

Re: So true

[cosmolinguist]

I've seen people comment many times that cis people are happy to misgender trans people are careful about not misgendering dogs.

The place I get my hair cut is at my university so while it's two middle aged white women who work there, maybe being around students all the time has broadened their minds a bit. :) They are certainly willing to cut your hair exactly how you want; they're the only place I've tried that hasn't tried to make mine "more feminine" than I ask for (and I've tried actual barbers! one called Fellaz!). But they have referred to me as a woman or lady before, and I've let it go, but it made yesterday a nice little surprise.

[alatefeline]

Much appreciate this post. Agenderish flail of incoherent positive from me.

[cosmolinguist]

I feel pretty incoherent myself. :) But I'm glad you liked it! <3

[silveradept]

Once you start paying attention to it, you see a lot of the gendering that happens by default, and how easy it could be to remove most of it.

[momentsmusicaux]

> Calling a stranger "person" rather than "guy" or "lady" or whatever is something I'm working on myself.

Me too, but it feels so difficult! Saying 'kids' I find fine, but 'person' feels like it has an element of neutering, or reducing a person (!) to a not-quite-human state, like they're some sort of plastic crash-test-dummy.

Although one amusing thing is that because the word for person in French is feminine, if I do that in French, everybody becomes a 'she'. (It's the gender of the noun rather than any gender of the thing being referred to that counts, as in the phrase 'la star internationale, Johnny Halliday'.

[cosmolinguist]

'person' feels like it has an element of neutering, or reducing a person (!) to a not-quite-human state, like they're some sort of plastic crash-test-dummy.

So interesting isn't it, the humanizing effects that we perceive gender to have.

Does it feel as weird in French as English to call someone "une personne" rather than un homm or une femme? I imagine these kinds of humanizing connotations might differ a lot from one language to another.

[momentsmusicaux]

It feels less weird in French, but that could be because if I'm speaking to the kids, I can assume that other people don't understand what I'm saying!

It's a bit disturbing how in-grained it is, that it goes against what I believe to be my opinions!

[gender_euphoric]

I like it too! Not everything has to be so damned gendered.

[finding_helena]

2 out of 3 of my offspring have penises, and I feel uncomfortable calling them "the boys" because the younger one is too young to even know what gender is. The older one now says he's a boy (we've talked about trans and nonbinary genders a fair few times, and he used to say he wasn't a boy or a girl, but I'm not sure if this was due to feeling like he was really nonbinary or due to not really understanding the topic). So I figure I'll wait. "The kids" or just using their names is okay. But when I am dealing with kids who I know are confident in their gender, I don't want to refuse to refer to them by gender.