You ever have a stranger meet your pet? With many animals, their sex isn’t obvious, so unless you give them a hint, or the stranger goes out of their way to look up your pet’s behind, they have about a 50% shot of getting it right when making casual conversation.
Which means that, when hanging out and strangers meet an animal I’m chillin’ with, the animal is frequently misgendered.
Now, this is no biggie! I kinda doubt the animal cares, and it doesn’t hurt me any. Pets’ genders are really more just a human construct that we project onto them.
But see, the people get so embarrassed if I bother to correct them. They may blush or get flustered, and they apologize sincerely. They then use the animal’s correct pronouns without fail, and immediately fix the way they construct that animal’s gender.
However, when I’m chillin’ with a friend of mine who is genderqueer or trans and non-passing, if people interacting with said friend get corrected about their pronouns, they don’t have the same reaction at ALL. They often continue to misgender the person, no matter how many times they’re corrected, and if confronted about this will whine that it’s just too hard to remember.
What it comes down to is that people have more respect for the gender and dignity of a goddamn golden retriever than for a human being.
A+
A thing that bothers me.
Published
callanswall 