Notice I said WANT. Previously I had felt a bit of sympathy for masculine-looking girls and feminine-looking boys, but lately I’ve been seeing so many that I figured it may be a trend. Is it? Does it have a name? I met a young woman yesterday who had to be trying to look like a boy. Others that met her, and didn’t hear her name, kept referring to her as a “him”. At first I felt sorry for her, but the more I thought about it, I felt she purposely chose this look so she shouldn’t be offended when people call her a guy.
Was she offended?
Good question. I didn’t see it when it happened.
Perhaps she was transgender, or wished to otherwise appear androgynous. She might just like that style, and/or not care if she’s misgendered.
I think the change is for it to me more OK amongst peers to openly express oneself. At least where I live there is so much less social stigma to being different than the standard girly girl and boys boy and kids don’t feel so boxed in any more.
This happened once in a club down in old Soho, where they drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry cola. C-o-l-a cola.
The person could consider themselves as non-binary: they don’t associate closely with either the male or female gender. I say live and let live!
Gotta love the Lola reference PG…
Androgyny I suppose is the name!
Move-in day at Wellesley for D freshman year. We (H/D/I) drive up. A young man and two young women direct us where to park and help unload. H and I said to one another sotto voce, “oh, how nice they bring guys in this day to help everyone unload!” Let’s just say we were mistaken!
Perhaps a way to consider this is that we tend to have stereotyped expectations about how males vs females should look. There isn’t a rule book anymore. 
Is it o.k. to be mistaken? I certainly hope so, as I feel if it’s being done on purpose. I’m not sure of the purpose, but frankly, I don’t care. We just need to know it’s o.k. to be mistaken.
My understanding is that the opposite gendered pronoun is often preferred by young men and women who dress or present themselves in this way. So, regardless whether you are mistaken, you may be using the preferred pronoun anyway. And it fine to be mistaken. But in my experience some people will be gracious and others will be offended no matter what you do.
Such a minefield these days. I’m taking the approach of treating everyone with respect and trying to use the pronoun someone asks me to…but it’s an uphill battle for me. If I knew one of my children’s friends as, say, female, growing up, I’m prone to use the feminine when referring to that person, even though I know intellectually that they prefer a neutral pronoun. I appreciate the struggle that’s involved, and I hope the individuals can step back and appreciate my efforts, but sometimes I feel that every.single.thing. I say gets judged as being offensive. When it’s not meant to be.
I have a friend whose adult child is a transman. I want to use the right pronoun for this person, but I knew him as a little girl and I make mistakes sometimes.
I obviously can speak for all gender fluid people, but the overwhelming majority just appreciate the effort. They know people slip up- where they get irritated is when people purposely use the non-preferred pronoun.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I’m sure if it bothered him/her/hir/them, I’m sure he/she/ze/they would’ve corrected you.
And, fwiw, you don’t necessarily know that she was purposely trying to look like a boy. I have a good friend who is in her mid-late 20s and had a preventative double mastectomy (she has the mutated BRCA gene) and shaved all her hair off when her aunt went through chemo (many in her closeknit family did). She looks like a guy but it’s not her intention and she still uses feminine pronouns.
My point is, you really shouldn’t assume that someone is PURPOSELY trying to dress like the opposite sex or a gender different than their birth sex. Short haircuts are in and then there are some like me that are just as comfortable in men’s clothes as women’s. Honestly, if I didn’t have long hair, people could easily mistake me for a guy many days.
I know a number of trans people. It is definitely more difficult to seamlessly use the correct pronoun when the person was first known to you for some time as one gender, and then transitioned to the other gender with a new name. But one can only try. There are definitely a fair number of people with female partners who may be transmen or transmen in transition, or who simply may be on the very un-traditionally-feminine end of the female spectrum. In that case I make no assumptions re gender until introduced by name. If the person uses a gender-neutral name, well, then, I may simply ask what they prefer if I have to.
One transwoman I recently met has a child who identifies as gender-queer and prefers to use “their” as a pronoun. I haven’t quite gotten the grammatical hang of that, I admit. Luckily, she usually sidesteps the entire thing by referring to “my oldest child.” To complicate matters, the gender-queer child recently married. I haven’t asked the gender of the new spouse, who has a name from another language that does not have a gender identity to me. Not that that would necessarily prove anything anyway! Maybe someday I’ll meet them/him/her and all will–or will not–be revealed. I really don’t care either way, as long as the person doesn’t become mortally offended if there are slip-ups with new people. (Okay, I just googled it. Apparently the spouse is female.)O brave new world!
Is anyone else’s head spinning?
I have a few trans friends and several acquaintances but there’s one person (male to female) who is bound and determined to get offended. I recently sent out a change-of-address mass email and used old email lists in compiling the recipients. I accidentally used her old email address which contained her old (male) name. She got very angry with me and I apologized profusely for the error. Now she’s apparently not speaking to me. (We had had dinner several times after her transition, and I had always used the correct name, pronoun, email address, etc. She had to have known it was just a slip up on a mass email list, not an intentional slight).
I don’t know, I don’t think it’s that hard to just accept and respect others’ gender identity and preferred pronouns. I don’t personally find a need to dissect it that much, and most people can tell if you’re trying and only unintentionally slipping up (but then, of course, there are those who will feel slighted by any accident anyway).
There are people who are bound and determined to get offended no matter what adjectives are attached to them.
Hell, my MIL was deeply offended yesterday by the fact that Greek Mythology was in the “History” section of Trivia Crack because “Greek mythology isn’t history!” but was totally cool with Christian mythology being there because the Bible is fact.
Those people aren’t worth your effort IMO.