Do you have a right to feel offended?

It has been said, but the bottom line is these are dolls. If you are actually getting offended you are taking things far too seriously. I assure you the dolls don't care, nor do they have gender issues.

People always mistake my girlfriend for a guy and even she doesn't get offended.

 

I mostly agree with the OP's sister. For one, I have a boy who has the girliest hair. He is only in dresses for LOLZ or some random occasion, but his wig makes people think he's a girl. Usually I'll just nod and smile and say thanks. If the conversation continues, I'll correct them that it's a boy, but unless I see a need to, I don't really say anything. Because after all, it's not an insult. They say it's a pretty girl, but it's not like they mean "OMFGHAHAHAHAHTRANSEXUALDOLLOMGLOOKSLIEKAGIRL". They think he's real pretty and sweet, and that's what I think too

When I introduce him to people, I always apologise (with a smile) that my doll is a boy, despite looking like a sweet little girl. Some people get a little befuzzled and ask why isn't he a girl, and to them I'll continue to chat and explain. Some people tho, would push on you that he needs to be a girl because the opposite is sinful/wrong. Or would start to use the term "girly" on my doll as an insult. Now those people would be deserving of a wrath from my side. Usually I just dish them out equally snide remarks behind a smile if I feel like I've heard enough.

TL;DR, doing what you do, gender bending, you NEED to understand that people will think as a norm. If you take your freedom and throw a fit when people constantly mistake your objective, then maybe you don't deserve that freedom yet, because you don't know how to handle the freedom of assumptions.

 

If a character *is* a crossdresser or transgendered, and attempting to look female, isn't it a compliment that they've achieved that goal? Otherwise, it's a doll. People have this set idea of dolls in their mind as a female-gendered object, and unless they mean it in a derogatory way to begin with ('EWW, that doll looks like she's a drag queen!') it's no insult to be mistaken for the opposite gender. It's all right to gently correct if it goes on too long, but unless it's an issue of gender politics just humour them.

Though that is precisely why Victor goes around topless all the time :3 Nobody can force you to not be offended by something, or tell you it shouldn't bother you, but it's hardly worth actually confronting people over.

 

Well, you have a right to feel however you like, but I don't see this as a cause for offense. I don't particularly mind when people mistake my (pretty girly- looking) boy for a girl. Unless we end up having a conversation about him, I usually don't even correct people. Where it gets offensive is after I've stated that he is, in fact, male, and someone wants to argue that he isn't, since he doesn't look traditionally male. That will end the conversation right there, because then it's not my doll that's being discussed, but my views that are being insulted.

 

PROTIP: If it would bother you to have your male doll mistaken for a female, then don't dress him like one.

At the end of the day, people have the "right" to feel however they like. But I have the "right" to think their feelings are unreasonable.

IMHO, people who make choices they know will cause confusion or controversy and then get upset over the fact that those choices have caused confusion and controversy seem, to me, to be actively looking for a reason to feel offended and persecuted.

 

Agree 100%

 

I wouldn't be offended that someone made an honest mistake about gender. I have a very girly boy, and it does confuse people sometimes, but I see no reason to get upset about it. I'll just correct them, smile and say "that's alright, he does look very feminine" because, after all, he does.

If someone was being nasty over my choice to put Hikaru in a skirt, that would be a different situation, and it would irritate me. But, just being a little confused is no big thing. A lot of bjd heads actually make good girls or boys depending on how they're done up, and some people see dolls and just automatically think "girl" unless it is otherwise very obvious.

If you feel offended, then that's how you feel, but I think it helps to realize that people aren't being intentionally insulting or difficult and that in the grand scheme of things this is a very very minor issue.

 

IMO you have the right to be offended about whatever you want, but being offended about people mistaking your doll's gender is foolish and pointless. I've found that basically all BJDs look female to people who aren't familiar with them (my boyfriend thinks even the dolls I find very masculine, like Dollshe guys, look like girls) no matter how you dress them. I can't blame them -- I still can't always tell what's a girl and what's not!

I had a girl Camine for a while, and people on DOA routinely mistook her for a boy despite me noting in thread titles that she was a girl, having her on a girl body with boobs and hips, and dressing her like a girl. I just sort of rolled my eyes at the failure to read the thread title and moved along.

 

i pretty much agree with everyone else's comments. and just to restate what someone mentioned earlier, in real life, when addressing or referring to someone who is crossdressing, it's rude to not address them by the gender they are dressed as. so if your boy doll were real and had a dress on and i referred to him as a "he" or "sir" i would be rude.

 

I agree with you for taking the cultural values into consideration.
It's interesting to see how the gender assignment in this society impacts on our doll playing. Why must we assign a gender to our doll? According to the body and the sexual organs? According to the faceup and dressing?
Should anything that looks like human be categorized into the opposite sexes?
I often think BJD is a realization of ideal femininity, ideal masculinity and especially ideal androgyny. I don't know if anyone have the same sort of feelings as me.

To answer diamondust ,

I think people still have the RIGHT to feel offended.
One may think if some people cross dress their dolls, they should expect the reactions. However, expecting doesn't equal accepting.
I think it'll be easier if we think of an analogy.
If person A is American, but A has been brought up in England. A has a British accent, yet A still identify himself as American. When other people constantly think A is British by judging from his accent, do you think A has the right to feel offended?
I think the complication here is, the gender role identity for a doll is intensely linked with the owner's beliefs/views on gender. Therefore, people may feel the social expectation for male and female violated by cross-dressing dolls, and the owners may feel their cross-dressing dolls not accepted as who the doll is by others.

 

To go with your analogy, we have the real life John Barrowman. Born in Scotland, brought up in the States, he speaks with a Scottish accent with his family and an American one in public...but he doesn't flip out at people when they assume he's American.

Like it or not, we human beings have to take things at face-value when we first encounter them, we categorise and attempt to understand things by what we already know. If we know from experience that American people have American accents, English people have English accents and Scottish people have Scottish accents...and then later we meet a guy who speaks with an American accent but was born Scottish, we're going to assume he's American at first. It's a natural reaction because we don't know the whole story. Once we do know the whole story we can learn from it and add it to our store of knowledge for next time...but until that first encounter we just don't know and can't be expected to know that the American-accented guy is really Scottish underneath. And so it is with dolls in a dress.

 

Sure, I understand your point. I'm not blaming people who judge the others based on what they know. It's the mental schema everybody relies on.
My point is, people still can feel offended even if they knew what reactions they would encounter. In that case, they can either correct the others, or complain
It's more a issue for these owners, who cross-dress their dolls, to cope with. It's almost impossible for us to take the misunderstanding for granted.

 

At the end of the day in Western culture we are conditioned as children to follow the norms and values dictated to us by wider society. Girls wear pink, boys wear blue. Girls play with dolls, boys play with toy cars, etc. To deviate from these norms leaves you open to ridiclue as a cultural deviant, so if you want to dress your boy up as a girl then you have to accept it. These dolls are very androgenous (even the more 'masculine' ones), so it is very easy for somebody who doesn't understand Asian doll esthetics to get confused. You just have to either ignore it because if you allow yourself to get offended, then it will end up driving you mad. I do agree however it is very annoying when people are like "no, its a girl" over and over again after you tell them its a boy. For most people its an honest mistake. Its just how these dolls are. I have one boy with longer hair, but I dress him in boy's clothes and people still get confused over his gender. I just roll my eyes and ignore it! ^_^

 

Agreed. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck...it's probably a duck.

I don't have a problem if your doll is a crossdresser/girly or whatever. I don't care if you turned a common female sculpt into a male. If you tell me it's a boy, I'm down with that, but if you expected me to know that at first glance, well, I'd have to say you're a bit off your rocker.

 

I think if a person purposefully dressed their doll in a way that is gender-confusing, then they do not have the right to be offended when non-dolly people get confused. I mean, how many boys do you see walking down the street in pink getup with lace and ribbons all over the place? The fact that the BJD faceup esthetic tends to be on the more metro-sexual side (no beards, eyemakeup, long eyelashes, fine eyebrows) and most male bjds do not have an especially square jaw or manly physique... well, what's a person who isn't in the hobby to think, when faced with a very femininely dressed doll?

That said, I do think that "making fun" of a person's doll (once you are told its real gender) for what it's wearing is right.

 

Naturally, a person has the right to feel offended if they really want to, but if someone isn't trying to be rude by calling a male doll a female one, there's not a whole lot of point to it. If it happens consistently, yeah, I can see how that's going to be really annoying, but you have to realize that it's most likely the person who made the mistake's first time even encountering something like a BJD, and/or the J-rock/Anime/Bishounen culture that comes with it. They don't know they're making a common misconception, and they're not trying to be rude, especially if they're complimenting the doll in the first place. (As with the infamous, "That's a pretty girl!" remark.)

Of course, if someone's making fun of the fact your doll looks girly or insisting you're wrong for saying it's a boy, then you have every reason to be offended, as that behavior is pretty obviously intended to be insulting.

Wow, I so did not contribute anything original to this thread. XD

 

In the general agreeance that people can feel how they want to, I just don't think many people actually do get offended when the gender of their doll is mistaken if the doll is wearing unisex clothes or clothes that are typically seen on the opposite gender.

Personally, only one of my dolls has been constantly mistaken for a girl, my WS Angell-Studio Gus, despite his having a short wig and wearing pants. However for me, since his character is supposed to be extremely feminine, not to mention I've seen more female Gus's on this board rather than male ones ( despite the mold being originally created as a boy ), it doesn't really bother me and I see it as an understandable mistake.

But, I do agree on the fact that if someone mistakes one of my boys for a girl and then even after I tell them he is a boy they continue to insist that he is a she ( I know some people get a kick out of it, but I personally do not like stripping my dolls in public to show off their goods -_- ), then yes, that can be very frustrating. Okay, maybe he has a girly sculpt and eyelashes but you know what, I'm telling you ( general 'you') he is a boy, I'm the one who paid hundreds of dollars for him, I'm pretty sure you can just let it go that he is what I say he is. And I'm talking about one person constantly making the mistake that is somewhat offending, not just lots of random people who don't know. It's only after I explain the dolls gender and they continue to fight with me do I get annoyed. But thankfully that doesn't happen with me very often as I'll usually just nod and say, "Thank you for complimenting her." x3

 

Well on the practical side, short of pantsing him, how is a viewer supposed to know it's a boy? And if it is not the viewer's doll, or a doll the viewer cares about, why should the viewer be expected to remember? So on that score I side with your sister.

On the Real World side, every single one of my tranny friends gets offended if she is referred to as masculine when she is all decked out in her finery. So if the dolls were real and had "feelings" one would expect THEM to be similarly offended and PREFER to be called a girl.

 

I would say...you'd get the right to feel annoyed/offended if a person is asking if your boy is a girl all the time. But not the first time; most people would think that pretty boys (in OMG, dresses, no less!) are girls. I enjoy their faces, actually, when I tell them that this "girl" is really a boy. xD It's always like,"o[]o!!".