How fast do you figure out someone's gender?

[Guest aleon515]

Hi,

I doubt I would have given this a thought a few months ago. But I was walking the dog tonight. I am doing this at dusk due to the desert heat. I saw someone maybe a block and half down, I could not see the face. I don't know but it was within an instant that I decided it was female. Before I could process how the information, I knew. I decided there were probably a lot of factors-- I saw clothes, but the clothes wouldn't have done this. I've heard there are unconscious cues.

Very surprising that someone took an instant to figure out what gender I was the other day. I'm guessing the act of getting others' to pause that instant is probably very hard. So I will need to resign myself to the "miss" or worse "lady", ma'am or worse-- madam (grumble, grumble).

Any thoughts? I think it would be an interesting discussion.

--Jay Jay

[Guest Juniper Blue]

Hey Jay Jay ... now that is a trick question ... I am trying hard to not follow the incination of determining gender unless it is necessary in the context of a situation ( which is rare) ... but how long does that take? ... HA!! It depends on the person! I have met a few people in my life who still have me scracting my head. I do seem to know immediately .. within seconds if I trust a person or not .. now that is something, an intuition that I am interested in heeding.

Best to You,

JB

[Guest otter-girl]

Hi Jay Jay, Unless your highly empathic bordering on psychic, I dont think it's possible to tell at all even at the binary extremes and regardless of appearance because gender is within and is easily hidden, often even suppressed in the individual themselves.

Hugs

Rachel

[Guest agfrommd]

Two cases to consider:

Case 1: A cisgendered person making no effort to present off-gender.

I agree with you that there are dozens, if not hundreds of queues. Posture, Body movement. Skin, facial structure, etc. etc. Gender identification is nearly instantaneous for me.

Case 2: Someone who doesn't present binary, or is deliberately masking their gender.

In extreme cases, you can be 100% the drag star you've been watching for ten minutes is female, so I'd agree with other-girl that you can, with effort, make it nearly impossible for someone to peg your gender.

I used play a game when I was driving on the highway. Pick a random car, and try to figure out whether the driver is female or male. Can take into account the make, model, color, decals or stickers, driving style, anything. Then drive alongside them and see if I'm right.

It was surprisingly hard.

[KieranD]

I ask. There are plenty of people with identities outside of the binary, trans people who don't get seen as their gender, masculine women, and feminine men.

[KieranD]

Adding: it takes me as long as it takes them to answer.

[Guest Ney'ite]

I will say that I have found myself not gendering someone very quickly anymore. Often you really do not know, and so I just let them gender themselves for me if I interact with them, and just go with that. I think the longer you are in this trans world, the more sympathetic one becomes towards others when it comes to gender. I dunno, maybe not, but I know I have.

[Guest Micha]

I have to admit that there are things ingrained into my subconscious as "tells" when it comes to sex. I try to ignore these. Why should it matter what someone's gender or sex is? Does it really effect how we interact with them? What we expect of them? And if it does, should it? It is subconscious, but it annoys me so much how even with cis people, gender and sex are so important for determining other peoples' qualifications, personalities and characteristics. I am still a work in progress in this regard, but my goal is to see all people as one, just people.

[Guest aleon515]

Well now I am assuming that 90%+ of the people I see are cisgender. It's probably a LOT more than that actually. If this were a trans* conference, the stats would be a lot different.

Also I had no interaction at all. I saw her dog, and she was maybe a block down. It was also not a conscious reaction. I didn't go, "I have to figure out what gender this person is". I didn't DECIDE to determine gender, my BRAIN decided for me. What was different, was after I did this I thought, "how/why did I do this?"

I am not interacting at ALL in the trans* community, I am only interacting online (two forums and some youtube stuff). This is not that much interaction. This is NOT a conscious reaction at all. I didn't interact or make assumptions (okay I am making assumptions but had nothing to do with behavior, as I did not interact).

I agree it is a good goal, Micha. I don't know that it effects my behavior. I know all kinds of people who do not adhere to any kinds of gender stereotypes. I'm not sure how you get your brain to stop doing something though. This is, i think, at the perceptual level. I don't know exactly how you stop yourself from perceiving something. You can say, "well I am likely to be fooled". And yes, I have met people that had me scratching myself. There is a kid at school, for instance.

--Jay Jay