Do you have a right to feel offended?

When I was at school, and my hair was long, and I wore a skirt - and bear in mind I've always been smallish and petite - the school dinner ladies used to say, "What would you like, son?" If I didn't flip my lid as a teenager at being taken for a boy then I don't see why people are getting steamed up over the perceived gender of their dolls.

 

Everyone has a right to be annoyed. However, I think they should try to just accept it. If you do something that you know generally causes questions/reactions then you should expect that people are going to be rude and find ways to make them leave you alone.

If I went out with blue hair I know that people are going to act immaturely about it. If someone came up to me and said, "Hey, it's not Halloween you know!" (Insert snide laughter here.) I would simply reply with, "I know, and?"

In your example, I would just say, "He's a boy, and thank you." (Assuming the comment was: "What a pretty girl!") If people decided to mock my "girly-boy" I'd just say, "Your opinion of my doll is none of my business."

Sometimes it's hard, people can really push your buttons. But if you learn to accept that people are going to be confused, act ignorant, or be honestly mean then it's no big deal. It's just how people are.

Like I said before, you have a right to be annoyed but you have to learn to accept that people are not going to know everything or act politely.

(This is exactly why I ask. Especially if it's not obvious what the gender of the doll is.)

 

My Paymon has never been recognised as a boy by the general public. He's never worn dresses or anything but people think hes a girl because of his face up. This personally offends me, yet if I dressed him as a girl I dont think i would have any right to be offended

 

It's hard for everyone else outside of the Asian world, or really, outside of the Asian BJD/anime world. We're just all tuned correctly to recognize androgynous guys. Most people aren't. xD It's definitely not a big deal.

Although I can understand that people might get frustrated occasionally, especially if other people don't believe them, but no one's at fault here.

 

Well, I can understand both sides... But I don't think people who dress their (sometimes quite feminine) boys in a dress have a "right" to make a fuss over people making a mistake. Politely correct the mistake, yes. But some of the reactions I've seen or heard of, are completely inapropriate. It's expected that us collectors can tell a girl from a boy, but even we can make a mistake, so we should understand non-collectors making them.

 

Annoyed, yes. Maybe a lil' bit, but I'll get over it.
My boy gets a lot of 'she's so beautiful!' and he's wearing shirts, jeans and combat boots.
BJD owners have the right to get offended, but what can we do?
It's like parasite living in non-owners, making them think male BJDs as female (with dress or without dress).
I got tired of correcting people and just live with it.
I mean,some BJDs are beautiful even for male sculpts after all.

 

i get a little annoyed when people mistake Astro for a girl, especially when the do it repeatedly. one time he was wearing his adorable pink and blue striped shirt and a pair of jeans to the zoo, and my friend's mother kept mentioning how cute and creepy and silly "she" looked. i kept correcting her, and finally i got fed up and pulled down astro's pants to show off his prepubescant goodies.
she promptly responded, "wow! he really is ball jointed!"
Astro is not allowed to wear his favorite girly clothing in public anymore.

 

If I get angry every time anyone calls my boys "girls" I shroud get a serious amount of psychotropic pills to ease my internal pain...so after like 20 years of it I just ignore them...

 

... Is it weird to be offended when man-parts are hanging out and they still call them girls?

 

in that case i think you're justified in calling them out on their complete and utter idiocy.

 

I have to agree with your sister. If you dressing your doll up to look like a girl be expected to have him thought of as a girl. Plus you shouldn't get annoyed if your doll is mistaken for a diffrent gender. It happens

 

I can understand both sides. I've got a 27cm boy who only has Barbie clothes ATM, so he gets mistaken for a girl quite often; it can get a bit pesky telling several people in a row 'no, he's a boy'. But with the pretty androgynous looks of most BJDs combined with girly clothes, it's reasonable for people to get confused. How much trouble is it to explain, anyways?

 

I think I have to agree with your sister here, and agree with what a lot of people have mentioned. If you intentionally dress a male doll as a girl, or a girl doll as a male, it's common sense that someone who doesn't know any better is going to assume their gender based on their attire. There really isn't a reason to get worked up or offended over it.

 

I may have replied in this thread before, but don't quite recall. You certainly have every right to get offended for any reason, whether it's reasonable or not. Getting offended over unreasonable things, though, it just isn't healthy. That doesn't stop it from happening -- or even reduce the frequency of it happening for most people -- but it's true enough all the same.

Personally, if someone is deliberately trying to be a jerk, it's perfectly reasonable to be offended or irritated by it. It's not really what they're being a jerk about that is the issue here -- it's that they're deliberately trying to be a jerk/be annoying. That's asinine behavior on their part, and while getting irritated or offended doesn't really help or put a stop to it usually, it's certainly a reasonable reaction.

If someone has no idea, and blindly stumbles to an incorrect conclusion, it's a little less reasonable to get irritated with them. People can be hopelessly oblivious. There's that old saying that goes, "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity," and it comes in very handy here -- especially if you remember that there really are some powerfully stupid people out there that will indeed still call girls boys when their junk is hangin' free to dangle in the wind, or think that studly guy in spiked leather is such a purty little dollbaby*. Really, people can be dumb. Massively dumb. It can be annoying, and it can try your patience, but generally speaking, they don't mean harm, and it doesn't do much good to think they're trying to cause it.

* Though she's definitely a she, a friend of my mother's calls my hugenormous MA Deneb, in her spike-heeled streetwalker boots, thigh highs, and all around trampy get-up 'my sweet little babydolly'. I have the urge to throw her through a window, yes, but then I remember that old saying, and all is well.

 

i love this saying i have to remember this a lot when dealing with my classmates.

 

Yep, that quote ought to be on a sampler.

Still, if you're going to dress your boy dolls up all girly, you shouldn't be too surprised when people make mistakes. If you don't like it, don't take your dolls around with you.

 

Heh. I have only one male doll right now (and seven females), a Luts Ido. He's dressed in a manly pirate outfit, and has what I think looks like a male faceup and hair--minimal color on the face, hair short in front. Still, when my mother came to visit for the first time and saw him, she said something along the lines of, "She's lovely!" I replied, "No, that's Fredric, he's a boy." She teased me, and insisted that "Noooo, that is definitely a girl!"

My response: I laughed, and didn't bother to correct ma again.

I really don't care if ma thinks my doll looks like a girl. It's MY doll, and /I/ think he looks quite handsome!

 

I agree with your sister. If a person puts a boy doll in a dress, they obviously want him to look like a girl. Many boy dolls are pretty androgenous so if you put them in a skirt or even frilly boy clothes, there is really no way to tell the difference. Infact, they should take the other person's mistake as a copliment because they're basicly saying that you did a good job with your doll's outfit, especially if the mistake acctually takes the form of a compliment like saying "she's so lovely" or whatnot. You have every right to correct their mistake if you want to but keep in mind that they were most likely not trying to insult your doll and are just being nice.

 

I have SO many times on flickr seen a pretty doll with long lashes, pink sparkly lips and pink blushy cheeks with long hair, and beautiful frilly outfits in soft pink settings and said "AWWWW she is so pretty i LOVE her blah blah blah" and so on...
then "OH sorry, he is a boy actually" "...really? My mistake, sorry! well, he is great!"
I feel a bit stupid then but then i think...wait...frilly....flowers...pink...hearts....dress...tights....wth????

SO i see it being annoying about butchy girls and girly boys because in a way they are like your creation/children but getting upset about a VERY easy mistake to make...is a bit much

 

My Dorian is always getting called a girl XD It only bugs me when hes in pants, and even then its kinda funny. Yes, tiring, having to tell everyone its a boy again and again, but still funny and he does have a very soft face. I put him in a dress and a long purple wig once... I told everyone they are free to call him a girl XD I wasnt going to argue. Once my friend was showing him to some of her male friends, and they refused to belive it was a boy. So she pulled his pants down. XD That kinda shut them up.