BROWSE HOW TOs

How to Be Sensitive to Pronouns and Gender Issues When Talking to a Transgendered Person

By eHow Culture & Society Editor

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Whether you're straight or gay, you probably have a little trouble understanding transgendered people, and that's only natural. The idea of living as a member of the opposite sex or of changing sexes is foreign to most people. But whether you understand transgendered people or not, it's possible to be more sensitive to pronoun use and gender issues when talking with them. Here's how.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step1

Use a little common sense. If the person standing in front of you looks like a woman or is trying to look like a woman, address that person as a woman. If the person looks like a man, then consider that person a man.

Step2

Use pronouns that agree with the way the person is dressed. Some transgendered people live part of the time as a man and part of the time as a woman, and they usually want to be treated like a full member of whichever sex they're dressed as.

Step3

Address the person by a name that's consistent with the sex presented to you. Even if the person has always been Michael to you, address her as Michelle (or whatever female name she has chosen), when she's dressed as a woman.

Step4

Remember that gender identity and sexual orientation are two separate things. Some transgendered people were born transgendered and gay, whereas others were born transgendered and straight.

Step5

Be sensitive about the person's feelings if you're planning an outing with them. They may want to avoid conservative areas when dressed a certain way or if they are not yet out, they may want to avoid the area near where they work, for example.

Step6

Ask the person a question if there's something you aren't sure how to handle. They'll probably be grateful you were thoughtful enough to bring it up.

Tips & Warnings

Be careful about making judgmental remarks, assuming that their situation is by choice or a reaction to their upbringing. Many researchers believe transgendered people are no more responsible for their feelings than they are responsible for being left-handed or having green eyes.

Comments

orlando098 said

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on 2/9/2008 "transgendered" is often used as an umbrella term to include all people who have a gender identity/presentation different from the norm, including crossdressers (although I know it is sometimes used in more restricted senses too). The list above only says "some" TG people sometimes present one way and sometimes another, which is true, and taken as a whole the advice seems generally helpful, though you would need strong evidence that the person wants to be treated as the opposite gender to their biological sex before doing so - ie if you took point 1 too broadly you might decide a butch or androgynous-looking woman wanted to be treated as a man: not necessarily the case - but if she's a drag king wearing a false beard etc, then she (he) may well do, ditto a male cross-dresser wearing false ****s etc.

FECarson said

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on 9/24/2007 Transgender is not just the term that describes transgender, transgenderist, or "non-operative transsexual" as it used to be called. Transgender includes many different categories of people who have gender issues, who have alternative gender identities, or who the world has gender issues with. Some other examples of transgender people can include crossdressers, two-spirit, Hijra caste members, intergender, intersex, androgyne, genderqueer, and male/female impersonators; this list is by no means complete. I am really irritated that people try to go around dividing our community, when we are on the verge of seeing sweeping advances in our rights. We need to stick together, instead of being driven apart. I've heard too many people trying to drive one category or another out of the transgender community, and I will speak up any time I hear this kind of talk threaten our unity.

Cheetos said

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on 9/24/2007 Um...this "HowTo" is talking about crossdressers, not transgendered people. They do NOT live "part of the time as a man and part of the time as a woman". Who wrote this? A transgendered person changes their sex...physically, legally, permanently and then lives accordingly. You probably wouldn't even know one if you met one. This "HowTo" is an uneducated insult and should be modified or removed. It's doing much more harm than good.