Presenting female: I'm Doing It Wrong...

[sophie]

...but I wish I knew how. :(

For some time now I've been getting "sir"red wherever I go, even on the phone. I was at McDonald's today getting a meal, but my burger had to be made to order (I like my burgers plain, without cheese). When the burger was ready, one of the staff carried it through, and said to me "Here's your burger, sir."

It's been said to me that I should correct people when they do that, and I try to keep it in mind. But after thanking her, she turned away to clean a table too quickly and I didn't get the chance to say anything. Maybe I should have said "...madam." quickly before thanking her?

In any case, I was doing okay up to that point, but that made me feel depressed again and reminded me why I'm not going out very much. The trouble is, neither of my housemates are able to help me with this, and what I really need is someone who I trust to be able to tell me what's wrong with my looks, or my voice. People have done this, but I need reminding.

I think the main problem is my voice - so I've recorded an example of my voice and uploaded it. If you could, could you listen to it and tell me how it is, honestly?

I'd give you video too, but the only things I have that can do video right now are my mobile phone camera and my webcam, neither of which is particularly good. I'll get my regular camera back at some point from my parents' house and see what I can do.

Stacy pointed me to a spectrogram program that I haven't yet used but that I'm going to start using, which should help.

Thanks for reading. <3

Comments

[nova]

Hm.. I think it'd be easier to work on appearance first (though that won't help with the over the phone bits). How's the makeup kit working out?

[damned_colonial]

The pitch of your voice sounds feminine to me; when I was listening to your recording I spoke over it for a bit, and you are pitched higher than me, and my voice isn't particularly low (I sing alto, for what that's worth).

One thing that I noticed is that women tend to soften factual statements with phrasing that seeks an answer or confirmation from the person we're talking to, or by raising the pitch at the end of a sentence to turn it into a question. I notice you're not doing that so much. That could be something to look into.

[cesy]

I suspect it's one of those things where the little things all add up, and some will go unnoticed if the rest are all okay. So maybe start with straightening or curling your hair, and shaping your eyebrows, as people suggested the other day, as those are relatively easy to fix.

[rho]

Only tangentially related, but an anecdote of great facepalmworthiness:

On my flight to the US, while in Zurich airport, I was showing someone my passport and getting handed my boarding pass. This all went entirely without problem except that as he handed me back my passport and gave me my boarding pass, he said something along the lines of "there you go, thank you sir". Immediately after looking in my passport, which names me as Rachel and lists my sex as F.

The lesson I took from this is that it's good to know just how much attention airport security personnel are paying.

On a possibly more relevant note, what I've found is that people will often make an initial judgement of your gender fairly quickly and then will stand by that judgement regardless of any evidence to the contrary. This means that the first few seconds of interaction/observation are important, and you may (or may not) want to think about how people are perceiving you initially. (eg, are they seeing you or hearing you first? Are they seeing you up close or from a distance? What are you doing when they first notice you?)

[distractionary]

I am having an equal but opposite problem: on my birthday, the waiter at the restaurant called me sir without any hesitation at all, and most all the rest of the month, people keep calling me ma'am or otherwise female terms. :(

(and it is so incredibly awkward when it's in school, where I've already told everyone I'm trans (massage school, people touching each other, kind of harder not to communicate things), when teachers are slipping up and doing the same thing, ugh. How many times do I have to correct people? When will they learn, or change, or prove they never will and I might as well give up? :| )

I uptalk way too frequently, and keep forgetting to drop my voice or fix my walk. I hate it when I screw up. :(