Do you have a right to feel offended?

I can understand if people get offended, but I agree with your sister when it comes down to it. The general norm of people is to assume that a doll in a dress is preferably a female.
I can understand being offended if it's clearly male clothing and just because the doll has long eyelashes and hair makes it a girl. That is what I count as allowing for annoyance.
But when a doll owner puts their doll in a dress they should expect some normalcy in the assumption of gender.

 

Yeah, but you shouldn't make a huge deal about it. I mean, yeah, some people will honestly make mistakes calling the gender of your doll.
Like having someone accidentally mistake your actual infant boy for being a girl.
Honest mistakes.
But they shouldn't make fun of it.
But it really does come with the territory if you think about it.

 

I think your sister has the right of it. I agree with her %100.

It's really not such a big deal, especially to people who own these "girly" boys. Most of them expect it by now and laugh it off.

 

I think it asking for too much if someone has a crossdressing boy and expects people to know he is a boy even though the dolly boy is wearing a frilly pink lolita dress or whatever. I hardly think the average person goes "Hmm... maybe that's a crossdresser!" every time they see someone in a dress. Though, my lesbian friend said that the polite thing to do when referring to crossdressers is to call them they gender they are dressing as... though that seems to completely not apply in dolly-dom.

If the same person insists the dolly boy is a girl even after being corrected, then you can be annoyed. Because people not listening to what you say is bloody annoying!

 

You have the right to feel offended, upset, or annoyed but you still have to expect to deal with it.

 

Honestly, if a boy doll was in a dress and looked extremely feminine, I'd think it was a girl doll.
Sure, you can get offended but it's intentional. Dressing a boy doll in girl's clothing will make the buyer think it's more feminine than masculine.

 

i can see why that would be annoying and a little upsetting to have to repeat "actually its a boy" over and over again but if you dress your doll in a dress most people are going to automatically assume its a girl. cross dressing dolls are not popular outside of bjds (atleast as far as i know) and alot BJD boys that are dressed as boys are mistaken for girls already so the dress just adds to it. owners who cross dress their dolls are not the only ones that have to say "he is actually a she"

i think its just another one of those parts of the hobby we dont like but deal with anyways. just like the "you paid that much on a doll??" everyone gets tired of it but there is only so much you can do or say, eventually you are going to have to learn to put it behind you

 

I have a boy doll that everybody thinks is a girl. Except he is very obviously dressed like a boy. It actually doesn't bother me much because he's a doll, and basically a lot of people don't expect male dolls of any kind (well, at least the ones I know). Probably the only male dolls they've ever heard of are Ken and his little brother Tommy. So, yeah, I'd say to pretty much expect that kind of mistake, particularly when the dolls are not dressed in clothes men typically wear.

 

A boy doll dressed in girl clothes will be called a girl and no offense should be taken.

However, my Soo Ri (a masculine sculpt) gets called a girl and he wears jeans, tee shirts tennis shoes and a short fur wig and I do get a little annoyed about it.

 

Yeah, I'm with your sister. Dolls are really hard to tell. I mean unless it's obvious male face, for the most part there isn't always that huge amount of difference in body looks to tell what gender the doll is, not to mention some dolls have same head mold or people put male heads on female bodies vice verse. Most male doll bodies don't have enough umm junk in that region anyway And if it's a small bust girl, well you get the idea. If you're going to dress a doll up that way, expect that.

But I do agree after they've been corrected, the mistaken person needs to just drop it.

 

I'm in complete agreement here.

Stylized features can be very androgynous, and BJDs tend to have very stylized features (other than portrait minimees). How many times have gender-switches of a doll been posted where it's just swapping a body and faceup and the effect is completely convincing? That sorta leaves us with clothes as a determinant if we don't know one way or the other, so I can't really fault someone for being confused -- and confused about why someone was angry at their confusion.

I'd go on a tangent about various cultures and eras and the appropriateness of certain garments for either gender at varying ages, but it really isn't terribly relevant -- the culture someone comes from is going to have an influence on whether they see a boy in a skirt and think "boy in a skirt" or "must be a girl". Mainstream western culture still involves very few men in skirts or dresses aside from kilts or religious garb, so I'd expect the assumption to take place more often than it doesn't if any of my boys are skirted.

 

If I had a "girly" boy, I wouldn't be offended. I mean, if I wanted him to be all macho and stuff, I'd get him short wigs, the most muscular body possible, etc.. You can't expect people to instantly know your long-haired baby is a boy. Hell, that even happens with small human children sometimes if you don't style their hair and dress them accordingly, doesn't it?

Then again, I have a weeeeird sense of humor. If anything, I'd make it a running gag if a boy doll of mine were consistently mistaken for a girl doll. Specially if I had a more masculine-looking one to balance him off.

 

Absolutely agreeing with this and everyone else who's said your sister has the right idea. Personally, my girly-boys are very girly and it's to be expected that people get their genders mixed up when they're long-haired, pretty and decked out in jewellery and a hundred different shades of pink. And at the same time, it's funny when someone insists one of my boyish boys (as far as these dolls go, anyway: short hair and a vicious expression might not be the biggest clues to most non-BJD people) is anything less than the manly man his character thinks he is.

Bottom line: I love my boys, but I don't take them too seriously.

 

It seems to be a sister's job in life to annoy the heck out of her sister :P My little sister loves to pick arguements over anything I really get in to so I got picky on what I tell her. Then again we have 6 1/2 years between us and have never been uber close. She doesn't rag on my dolls I don't rag on the music scene she hangs with. We did come together with the dolls when I got her to photograph my mini and we won prize heads but I watch over her doll.

My mini guys go out in short wigs and suits but some people will still think all dolls are girls. Oddly enough the only one who hasn't been called "she" is 70cm Jareth and he has the longest wig, and it can't just be people who know Labyrinth or his skin tight pants because they ask if his short wigged twin Taffy is his girlfriend. One of my guys is named Shi Shi so at least people get his name half right.

 

I think it's perfectly ok feeling frustrated when it's no longer about pople misunderstanding the gender of the doll but when they/he/she starts mocking you.

 

i think you are setting yourself up for major disappointment if you dress your boys in a feminine style and expect people to assume that they are male. i see dolls all the time posted that i seriously can't tell what gender they are male or female.
sometimes i see male dolls posted that i assume are female and the person posting says, " isn't my boy pretty"? and i wonder if they have made a mistake due to a different language. in that case i usually respond, "yes he/she is lovely". that way, i feel that i have shown support for their post, and at the same time have made it known that i am unsure of the doll's gender.
you should have confidence in your choices as to your doll's style, and accept that others may see him differently.

 

I completely agree with your sister and I had the same thoughts yesterday while browsing the forum.

 

My opinion might be a bit controversial and sound a bit harsh, but I don't think girly male owners have a right to complain (or butchy girl owners, for that matter) if someone (particularly someone not in this hobby) consistently thinks their doll is the 'wrong' gender. The fault doesn't lie with the person who got the gender wrong!

Unless you live under a stone you will know that in wider Western culture, at the very least, it is considered un-masculine to wear pink, to have long hair, to wear make-up, to wear women's clothes. Therefore, as a doll owner (presumably within this cultural sphere), you should know that when you dress your male doll in clothing that is not considered masculine, you are bucking the majority trend, you are operating outside most people's perception of what is normal dress for a male. It might get irritating and repetitive to have to explain that the doll with the flowing locks, cherry lips, long-eyelashes and pink DollHeart Fer is a boy...but that's what you sign up for when you dress your doll like that and you cannot expect everyone outside of this hobby to understand that your doll is supposed to be male when he is ostensibly dressed in a feminine style.

The only people who have a right to complain about people misgendering dolls are the owners whose boys in short wigs and jeans get called girls, and the owners whose girls in spangly tutus and bouffant wigs get called boys.

Someone on another thread suggested that perhaps all dolls in dresses should be referred to as 'he', which actually annoyed me because I don't want to have to correct people when my female dolls wear feminine clothes!