Analyzing the gender biases you have

I have them, you have them, she has them, let's all work on addressing them

What do you use to determine how you are going to address someone? Do you look at their clothes, their hair, their build? Likely, you don’t even know exactly what it is you’re looking for when determining the gender of someone you don’t know.

Most of us are guilty of doing it, using these non-gendered things to try and understand more about them. Undoing how we make these snap judgements is essential if we want to avoid misgendering. I realize at this point there is a massive group of people who do not have any interest in doing this work, but for those who do, you are helping create a loving space for trans and non-binary people to exist outside of their home.

I am absolutely saying this because having short hair has led to so many more instances of being called sir out in public and to be honest I just don’t like it and want people (including me) to work harder on changing our biases. We have these because, well, we grew up around many humans who hold these biases, because we watch media, and because we just live in a world where the default is needing to separate people into gendered categories.

• Hair salons that offer hair length pricing versus gendered pricing help change this.

• Clothes sections that don’t indicate gender help change this.

• Gender neutral bathrooms help change this.

• Us working on biases helps change this.

Being aware means taking a few additional seconds to recognize what it is you’re about to do. As in, “look at that suit, that’s a guy,” or “ok, long hair, and makeup, let’s go with ‘her.’” Next it is about realizing you are connecting non-gendered things (or at least things we should not be gendering) to someone’s identity without them telling you anything about themselves.

Finally, it’s about using the thought process you just managed through and not using that to make a call on someone’s pronouns or gender etc. Then you repeat this over and over because you’re going up against years of unconcious bias building up and it’s no easy task to break those ideas.

This is five seconds maximum at first to ensure you aren’t making a mistake with someone. I promise you that not getting pronouns wrong because of an assumption your brain makes automatically will make someone like me feel good. Not taking the time and making that mistake will make someone like me sad or tired or maybe a whole host of other things.

So let’s all try and get rid of the thoughts we have about hair and clothes and makeup and alcoholic drinks, and food and shoes and just let one another let us know they are.