Do you have a right to feel offended?

^pretty much this. I have little else to say. Yes, one may feel offended, especially if even after informing people of the doll's gender they insist it's the opposite or something like that. Now, throwing a hissy fit about it (and I've seen it happening) is quite immature and silly in my opinion and said owner should simply sit down and find good points in order to be able to reasonably defend their doll/stylistic choices without dissolving the whole argument in petty bickering.

 

I did a quick search and didn't find anything similar to this. If there is, please point me in the direction of it ~


I really love BJDs and i have a custom made wallpaper of Ducan (D.O.D) on my phone and and profile pictures of him as well. When others see this, They would think that HE is a SHE... and i tend to get really really annoyed with it >.<" and go "its a him..." in a really annoyed tone.

I will be placing my order for Ducan soon and im expecting to get alot of comments like this in future T_T ..

So... my question is

- How do you feel when someone calls your guy doll a "she" ?
- How would you tell them that it isn't a "she" ?

 

To the first question: When they call &#8216;he&#8217; a &#8216;she&#8217;, I&#8217;ve never really minded. Two of my male dolls, Albin and Connor, cross-dress. So I expect there to be confusion. One time someone mistook Finch for a girl and it didn&#8217;t ruffle my feathers as much as I thought it would. It bothered Finch a little bit but the person quickly apologized after I corrected them. So, for me, no terrible experiences about that thus far.

To the second question: I just keep it casual. I try to laugh it off. And when it comes to my cross-dressers, I don&#8217;t even correct people because Connor and Albin don&#8217;t care which pronouns you use for them.

I think it&#8217;s just best to let it roll right off your shoulder. People make mistakes and they are by no means trying to insult your doll&#8212;they&#8217;ve just gotten a little mixed up.

 

The Asian aesthetic is pretty boys, which, as hobbywhelmed mentioned, is not mainstream to the general population. Those who watch anime or read manga will have more of a clue.

Shuichi is my beautiful boy with a dramatic faceup and when I carried him around with me all the time I would get stopped for my beautiful girl. I thanked the person for complementing my doll and then say "He's a guy". Depending on the person, I might include "and he has the bits to prove it." Then I would tell them it was okay to mistake him for a girl, talk about the different aesthetic and show off his joints and clothes so they know I am not upset about the mixup.

DOD dolls ARE beautiful so you will probably get that, depending on the style your doll chooses as his own. Just smile at the person who made the mistake, gently correct him/her and introduce them to the wonderful hobby of bjds. I enabled a lot of people with Shuichi! LOL!

 

- How do you feel when someone calls your guy doll a "she" ? I don't really feel offended because I understand my boy is very effeminate, so I can see how someone would mistake him for a girl. Especially since I gave him a very feminine wig and long eyelashes. I consider it almost a compliment, because they're acknowledging how beautiful he is.


- How would you tell them that it isn't a "she" ? I just simply tell them he is a male. They're usually pretty shocked and tell me he's feminine. I then reply by telling them that I like effeminate males and that's why I chose him in the first place.

 

I wouldnt get annoyed if it was an honest mistake but some people just insist that he is a "she" and goes around asking their friends of their opinion... >.<"

Im probably gonna dress my doll in victorian styled suits with abit of chains n stuffs with his default wig (for the time being). I really hope he doesnt get mistaken for a girl ._."

I burst out laughing in the office at this T_T...

 

Question 1 - expected answer from general public so it bothers me NONE.

Question 2 - I do not feel a need to EXPLAIN anything to general public who is just passing by and make a nice comment about my doll. I just smile and say thank you. It is like a nice outfit, if it is good enough to catch someone's attention, the thing to do is just to say thank you. There is not need to tell the person where you bought the outfit, how much etc. Those are details the person is not looking for when they comment about your girl doll so why bother them with details


Otherwise there is way to make sure they look male such as



Out of my crew I think only CP Delf El and maybe my DOD Ducan were taken as females

Rest of my Volks etc - I really do not have any problem

 

It mostly only really bothers me when I need to restate time and again that the doll is male, even if I'd made it perfectly clear in the past to that same person that the doll is male.

Caleb has gotten this, and his dress-style is fairly masculine, erring on some kind of weird fusion between EGA fashion and modern punk, and his wig is also fairly short. Admittedly, his sculpt is DollZone Floy, which is a rather effeminate sculpt, but his dress-style should partly give him away as being male, I would think.

In my experience, though, most people are pretty good about it. I can only think of one or two people who need to be told time and again that the doll is male.

 

Ahhh the old gender chestnut, s'been a while since I saw this one come up! Basic rule when showing people BJD's, be they doll people or non-doll people: They will see what they want to see. A prime example of this from my own collection being the time I put up a photo of one of my boys wearing only underwear (flat chest fully on show), sat on a chair and the first comment on the thing was "I really like her dress." *shrug* People are idiots, whatcha gonna do.

Seriously, you can tell them it's a boy until you're blue in the face and they will probably still call it a girl, you get used to it and just learn to thank them for any compliments and move on, it's just easier all round and really, when it comes down to it, who cares? You know it's a boy, no one else matters.

 

They're not male or female, just representations of the human body of either sex (well "either of several sexes" if we want to be perfectly accurate). Therefore, I don't care. I don't even bother to correct people.

If I continue talking to them about my doll and/or character, I would use the correct gender pronouns. If they catch on - great! If not, oh well. No calamity will befall anyone if a person goes around thinking my male doll is female. Also, in some languages, "doll" is feminine, which means any doll is by default a "she". It's really awkward, for example, to refer to a boy doll as a "he" in Russian because it's the equivalent of saying "This woman - he has pretty eyes". Someone who is a non-native English speaker might find this a big source of confusion.

If they get confrontational with me about what a man or a woman are supposed to look like, I WILL get in their face, but it has nothing to do with dolls and everything to do with my not being particularly tolerant of generalizing, narrow world-views. However, I do acknowledge that physically, most male dolls bear more female characteristics than male, therefore the mistake is very easy to make.

 

I wouldn't be offended if my boys got mistaken for girls, a little annoyed maybe, but my boys do look fairly feminine so it's to be expected. A friend of mine, upon seeing my El and having me correct her for thinking he was a girl (a dress makes it a girl, but apparently pants, a coat and big goth boots do not make it a boy, although I suppose female-emancipation-wise that's a good thing), honestly told me that "I'm sorry, I just can't SEE him as male" even though she didn't doubt that he had his bits and all. That kind of statement I can accept, it clearly states "I know he's male, because I've been conditioned to believe that this+this+that=female my brain is not accepting him as male (just yet, I'm trying but need time to adjust to this idea)", also because this person happens to be a very openminded anti-discrimination individual.

On the other hand, not too long ago I had a discussion with someone on Deviantart who had posted to a picture of someone's doll (an admittedly very feminine looking Migidoll Jina boy that was being confused for a girl by multiple commenters even though he didn't wear a dress) "It's a lovely doll, but I don't understand why you don't just get a girl doll instead". So I explained to them (the owner wisely kept out of it all, I'm sure they must have seen it a 100 times before) that a girly boy doll is not the same as a girl doll and that this owner seemed to want a feminine looking boy doll for whatever personal reason rather than a girl. We discussed back and forth a bit and at one point the commenter stated "if I wanted a girly boy doll I would do it so-and-so-and-so (=take a feminine mold but clearly keep it a guy as far as faceup and clothing is concerned, so no heavy makeup and no skinny jeans, "girly" shirts or jewelry, which I think is fair enough, one person's awesome is another person's way overdone after all), but I feel that this owner didn't want a girly boy but a girl". That rubbed me the wrong way. I don't mind if someone is having trouble accepting a girly boy doll (why is it never about butch girl dolls?) because they were taught to believe in strict gender divisions and need time to adjust to a different way of thinking (which is basically what's going on when they insist that it's a girl when it is not, they really can't comprehend that what their eyes tell them is not what their brain thinks it is at that point), but I do mind when people pretend to know what a person is thinking and tell them how they should dress their dolls or whatever else. Sometimes I don't even have a clear reason for wanting my dolls to look a certain way, I just want it, it feels pleasant to think of them looking a certain way. It would be so nice if we doll-owners didn't have to justify all our decisions about our dolls whenever we show them off to non-dollpeople.

Little bit of a wall of text there, sorry^^;;.

 

I don't have my feminine little dainty male doll yet, but I've had a lot of gender confusion surrounding a few rp characters of mine, and that is kind of the same deal just in a different field.

Anyway, honest mistakes happen. And if I was to blow it out of proportions every time a oblivious someone went 'she is adorable' or 'what a cute girl' on me I'd be in a constant state of angry (and that is just way too much effort for me.) So I've reclined myself to that yes, it will happen, and the best way to handle it is to accept the compliment for what it was meant to be, and gently point out that it's actually a guy.

when someone gets intentionally insulting and rude about it, well that is a whole 'nother story.

 

I rememember one time, I tried to change the faceup of my first doll. his first faceup was pretty much black all over so this time I tried to make it more natural. but I am not experience with faceups so of course it was not perfect. his lips were bright pink and way too glossy.
but overall it looked pretty decent so I decided to post a picture on dA anyway, to show my progress, and a nice fellow posted said "that's a guy?? way too feminin!"
thank you for your very usefull input, kind sir. your comment has been taken into account and from now on I shall only paint manly faceups, because I am totally good at doing it!
=____=;;
yes I was offended just because it was RUDE.

 

ShuriTigerH- I completely understand where you're coming from. There are few things that irk me quite as much as people assuming they know what I'm thinking when they don't. In the case you mentioned, it seems HIGHLY rude to me to assume that someone really wanted a girl doll when they got a girly-boy. I think all of us here know how easy it is to just get a girl doll if that's what you want- but that's clearly not what that owner wanted.

I'm also thinking in terms of what it's going to be like when I get my femi-boy! His character is going to be half of a pop singing duo, and one of the key components of him and his partner's performing costumes are brightly-colored corsets and other bright-colored accessories. I'm not going to have him wearing skirts or dresses, but I know that people are likely going to mistake him for a girl regardless (which is funny, because his partner is going to be a girl so there will be marked differences between the two, and they're going to be shot in photoshoots and photostories together that will display these differences even more). But to me it's not a big deal because for the most part, the world still sees dolls as being girls, and I doubt that changes anytime soon.

 

What kind of doll is that?? I love the pose, the sculpt

Someone said that kyoshi, my favorite doll, look like a girl but I just laughed it off because I know that in their minds dolls=girls.

However, I felt offended because my boy doesn't look like a girl...the rest of my family never confused him as a girl but I didn't act on it because I know he has a cutesy face up =) and he could pass up as a girl by changing his wig only.

 

Do you have the right to feel offended if somebody outside your pop subculture isn't attuned to the signs and symbols of your pop subculture?

Sure, fine. Live it up. But chances are, you're probably going to come off as an easily-offended dork with a victim complex.

 

guess i can expect ALOT of these kinds of comments when i take him out that over time, ill just brush it off.. ._." But it would probably hurt his ego xD