Surprised later.
Someone wrote…
Yesterday, I was in a chat room, and a guy who’d been there for a while asked me what gender I was. It made me smile — most people just assume the gender of other people in the room, and then are surprised later when it turns out their guesses were wrong.
What’s your experience?
Posted by julian on August 5th, 2009 at 08:00 am
Category: your voice 2 comments »
August 5th, 2009 at 5:16 pm |
It's funny, because most of the internet assumes most internet users are male (which may be backed up by research?? I'm not sure, really), but I tend to spend time in internet spaces that are mostly populated by women — equestrian and feminist circles.
Unfortunately for everyone, neither assumption would be particularly right in my case, and the horse places I hang out are still throwing fits like "but wait, you HAVE to be either a boy or a girl, so which is it?!"
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August 5th, 2009 at 6:06 pm |
This reminds me of when I used to go on Second Life and decided to model myself as an adnrogynous looking genderqueer. I wanted to go to some queer clubs but some of them were very gender-focused and the first question they'd ask me is "are you female or male?" and I'd be all like uh… I'm genderqueer and they ask again 'female or male?" so I finally say, well I'm a female-bodied genderqueer? They'll then let me in if they accept people with a female body. I also had people walk up to me in SL and be like uh… what are you? I can't tell?
Ugh. It was surreal to realize that hah even in Second Life gender was a big deal, and while I do understand why like at a dyke club, they wouldn't want a man there or whatever, but still it was actually kinda painful/annoying.
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