There are a couple of issues here. Firstly, I know of more than a few cisgendered people who get clocked with the wrong pronoun. My partner Richard has a rather impressive beard (http://pics.livejournal.com/baratron/pic/0015x0tb/g28), but accompanied by long hair and a waist, which is unusual in men. Personally, I'm not sure how anyone could see "person with a beard (http://pics.livejournal.com/baratron/pic/0014s0cp/g28)" and not think "male", but he gets called "Madam" all the time. Especially when I'm with him and visibly being a couple - the two of us are often referred to as "Ladies", even by people who can see the front! While I'm delighted there are so many lesbian-aware customer service people, in this case we're not actually a same-sex couple! Secondly, while the wrong pronoun is amusing or just annoying for a cisgendered person, it is actively offensive for a lot of transgendered people. It leads them to self-doubt important things - even their own identities.
My belief is that the best approach is to simply avoid gender-identifying words until you have been told the correct one by the person in question. I've forgotten where this story came from - a friend of a friend's livejournal one day when I was bored and following links. The person who wrote the entry is a transwoman who currently has an ambiguous gender presentation. She explains how she was visiting a part of North America that is much colder than where she is from, so went into a shop to buy gloves for herself. It was a large shop and she was unfamiliar with its layout, and more to the point she wasn't sure whether gloves would be counted as "Clothing" or "Accessories". So she asked a member of staff "Where could I find gloves?". The member of staff clearly clocked her unusual appearance, but then told her the locations of the men's, the women's and the children's gloves. This is, in so many ways, the right answer. Because a person might be buying gloves for themselves, or they might not.
One of the problems is a lack of third gender honorific. We have "Sir" and "Madam", both clearly attached to one of the binary genders. 36 has written before about how they think "Sir-Madam" is the perfect third gender honorific, but I can see that offending some because Your Transperson May Vary. If I was in a customer service job, I would prefer to avoid honorifics for everyone to avoid getting them wrong, and simply being extremely polite. After all, the second person "you" is ungendered. "Good evening, how many I help you?" is, in my opinion, polite enough that a person wouldn't notice the lack of sir or madam.
I have to admit that, being a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, where there are three genders: male, female and hermaphrodite, I do often find myself thinking life would be so much simpler if we had "Sir, Madam, or Honourable Herm" :)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 04:57 pm (UTC)My belief is that the best approach is to simply avoid gender-identifying words until you have been told the correct one by the person in question. I've forgotten where this story came from - a friend of a friend's livejournal one day when I was bored and following links. The person who wrote the entry is a transwoman who currently has an ambiguous gender presentation. She explains how she was visiting a part of North America that is much colder than where she is from, so went into a shop to buy gloves for herself. It was a large shop and she was unfamiliar with its layout, and more to the point she wasn't sure whether gloves would be counted as "Clothing" or "Accessories". So she asked a member of staff "Where could I find gloves?". The member of staff clearly clocked her unusual appearance, but then told her the locations of the men's, the women's and the children's gloves. This is, in so many ways, the right answer. Because a person might be buying gloves for themselves, or they might not.
One of the problems is a lack of third gender honorific. We have "Sir" and "Madam", both clearly attached to one of the binary genders.
I have to admit that, being a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, where there are three genders: male, female and hermaphrodite, I do often find myself thinking life would be so much simpler if we had "Sir, Madam, or Honourable Herm" :)