pebblerocker | (no subject)

I can't tell which occasions are an encounter with someone who uses "bro" or "mate" as gender-neutral terms and which are people misreading me until after the double-take, if there is one. I think the man at the tyre shop is one who calls women "mate"; I mean, I've just had a haircut and was wearing my baggy checked shirt, but I was carrying a handbag.

When I was 20 it was easy to see how people could mistake me for a short, downy-chinned 14-year-old boy. I wonder what will happen as my skin shows more and more signs of belonging to an over-30 in outdoor occupations. Will having wrinkles make me obviously not a boy? Or will I turn into some sort of ageless, genderless leprechaun creature?

--

I signed up for

snapshot_bingo! I always feel arty near the beginning of the year, maybe from the general resolutionary atmosphere of New Year, maybe because I'm halfway between NaArMaMos. I'm not sure what the general artistic standard of the community will be like, and if it'll be encouraging or intimidating, but it'll be fun to try even if I don't show the results to anyone. Here's my bingo card:

N	Grand	Bird	Text	I
Fence	Apricot	Hallway	Heard	Wore
Lemon	Imperfect	Free Space	Navy	Children
Smile	Button	V	Favorite	Table
Joy	Fuchsia	Plate	Outside	Aqua

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

An interesting challenge!

I was often taken for a guy at uni until they saw my face as I do like makeup (yeah, often along with guy's clothes).

I'm thinking of the Olden Days where it was easy for a girl to cut off her hair and run away to sea without raising suspicion, because men wore men's clothes and women wore dresses and nobody thought to look beyond that. It seems the same thing is still in effect in the twenty-first century! Short hair = man, no matter how many of the other details conflict.

I never wear dresses or skirts and am used to buttoning my clothes both ways (stupid convention) so it really annoys me that the symbol for a woman is a figure in a skirt. Not to mention the colour-coding that makes me want to spit.

I've never been called "bro" but "mate" is a reasonably common substitute for "love" so I wouldn't notice that. I am called "sir" at least a couple of times a year, usually by young women. I thought this was an interesting collection of photos of Albanian sworn virgins, mostly aging and having worked outdoors much of their lives:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2012/12/21/jill_peters_documenting_sworn_virgins_women_who_live_as_men_in_albania_photos.html

Thanks for the link to the photo challenge. I've asked for a card, although I can't post the results. You could post your favourite photos to glarmaco?

I've never been "sir"! I think when I'm read as male, due to my height, narrow build and smooth face I'm also being read as younger than I am, and boys of 14 don't get called sir. Possibly people who read me as female are also estimating my age more accurately... although I can recall being "ma'am" only to Maori men. I speculate on various factors there.

Those photos are lovely! Some look like butch women and some I would never guess weren't elderly men, and the fourth one down is exactly the sort of ageless leprechaun I was thinking about when I posted.

Glarmaco! Of course. I'll take my camera when I go out today.

It's my weight gain that makes me look more feminine. In my driver's license and passport pictures I look girly in the fat pictures and boyish in the skinny pictures. In all of those my hair was quite short. At the moment I have a sort of Velma Dinkley bob and I don't know what will happen if I keep that and lose weight.

But I do think that the places where men and women put on wrinkles and fat as they age are different, so unless someone is very very skinny you can generally tell. Although the manager in a store where I took a resume last month had me rather in awe -- she was heavy but small-breasted, and wore no makeup or jewelry and had very short cropped hair. I initially thought she was a man, and when I heard her voice I had a slight doubt, and when I heard her NAME I was still on the fence, until another employee specifically said 'she' when referring to her. :)

For whatever record there may be: I apply "dude" and "guy" to all genders when using it as a form of direct address or indicator ("hey, dude, over here!" or "those guys are loud"); it seems to be a regional thing. :D

Hmm that's interesting. I reckon bro and mate are becoming more neutral. I look quite feminine - wear a lot of skirts & dresses and have hair down to my butt and people still call me bro :)

Looking forward to your photos, it's a cool idea

Some people treat them as gender-neutral and some don't. I remember a lengthy interaction with a young man who called me "bro" until halfway through, when he did a massive double-take and switched awkwardly to "sis". I don't know what I did that caused him to realise!

We don´t have these problems with vocabulary in Czech.
However I did have problems with this identification! I used to wear very short hair and I am also quite a sportish kind...no matter my wrinkles and quite obvious attributes of womanhood, I had been mistaken for a man several times on a bus. That upset me to changing my hairstyle a little - now my hair is a little longer and as always, it became wavy. It did the trick, I think:-)

I have always admired your short hair -- very sporty and chic!

Sorry, I forogt - that Bingo of yours is great! I can´t wait seeing the pictures!