Do you have a right to feel offended?

I look at it this way. You have the right to dress your doll the way you want. Everyone else has the right to misconstrue your doll's gender if they're androgynously dressed. You have the right to feel offended by this. Everyone else has the right to laugh at your being offended because you're bent out of shape over misconstrued gender of your toy.

Just put it into perspective and dress your dolls the way you darn well want to. Someone's going to dislike the way you dress/paint/wig/pose your doll no matter what you do, so please yourself and save the blood vessel popping anger for things that matter. Someone calling your boy in a frilly skirt a girl is not one of those things. Simply correct them and go on with your life.

 

I think continued mistaken gender is indeed something that people have the right to be offended over, though the initial mistake is understandable. If traditional gender roles are ever to be broken into a new age of freedom of dress and identity, then people should learn to accept a boy can still be a boy in a frilly dress...just a very pretty boy.

 

Good point... but I can't get past the real-life visual of the very pretty frilly dress with hairy legs and arms sticking out... and maybe a beard. It just won't process properly in what passes for my brain

I don't mean to belittle your point at all. It just really *shouldn't* be an issue, what a person chooses to wear or to put on his or her doll. But... *giggle*

 

The Scotts have been wearin' skirts for centuries! You'd think the world would get over it by now!

 

Well, maybe this is my personal bias, considering my own lack of respect for traditional gender roles, but my thought when people say "Well, of COURSE people will think a doll in a dress is a girl!" is, "Well, why?"
Forgive me if this is getting a bit too deep or perhaps slightly off the original topic, but I'm annoyed by anyone making assumptions based on what we're taught how certain people should look or act. Maybe it's understandable, but that doesn't mean it can't/shouldn't be changed. Why do we assume that girls should wear dresses and have long hair, and boys should have crew cuts and jeans? Why, in fact, do we assume that everyone should conform to one gender or the other? Why do we assume we know someone's gender just because we know their sex?
But then again, I'm also a gay-ish feminine but male-leaning "transsexual" of sorts (if that made any sense), so....perhaps I have a little more invested into that particular issue than most. :P
Basically, to get back to the original question (If I can remember it...), it can be an understandable mistake, and I don't think that a simple mis-assumption is worth being offended by the first time - but that doesn't mean you can't correct those who make such assumptions, and remind them that not everything is as simple as many would like to think it is. :3

 

I don't think it's entirely fair to get upset if someone thinks that a doll is the wrong gender. Now if they're calling your boy doll a girl on purpose to make you angry, then I can understand. But it's an honest mistake. I've started to get better at telling girls from guys, but even then I still make mistakes. It's a mistake and I didn't do it to purposely offend you. It happens, anyone can make that mistake. =3 Though I would admit, I would get a tad irritated if people constantly got it wrong. But again, it's not like it's their fault.

Now if you corrected them and they did get all 'but he's in a SKIRT', that doesn't give you the right to get all upset either. You just simply tell them you like him in a skirt. I think the point where you get a bit offended is when they start going 'men don't wear skirts, why are you putting your guy in a skirt?'. But again, that's when you be the bigger person say 'well that's a personal opinion. you personally don't think males should wear skirts, while I don't mind' instead of getting aggravated. If they want to get all nitpicky they can go ahead.

That's my two cents XP

 

I find it a little offending... hey some boy dolls look better as girls then they do as guys!! its a fact!! i mean i think men dressing up femmine shows that theres no boundries that girls should be the only ones wearing dresses and guy should be the only ones wearing pants. i think it redefines it!!

 

I believe one has the right to feel a bit offended by the gender-confusion comments (I mean, who am I to tell you how to feel?) , but people (meaning the doll owners in this case) shouldn't make such a big deal of it. If someone is dressing their doll to look like a feminine guy or a butch girl they should understand that they will get comments that show a misinterpretation of the doll's gender. They should be prepared to deal with it in a polite manner, because those comments come with the territory. If people continue to insist that the boy doll is a girl just because he's wearing a skirt, then they're being rude and annoying, but the doll owner should still be able to deal with it (as in just take the comment or say something to the person).

 

I would say that is so, except I have an Ark, and he has been mistaken for a girl! Even with the default mean and frowny faceup his long silver hair did him in and made him look girly :P and he was naked when this person saw him. I just laugh it off and let it go. I rarely take my dolls out, so I don't often run into this problem, but still, an ARK?


It's like when people give their kids some odd and 'unique' spelling of their name and then get all huffy when people have to ask over and over how it is spelled. What did you think would happen when you named your kid Keightlynne, Ayshleighe or Bryttny.

 

I don't have a doll yet, but I do draw veeeery feminine men / crossdressing.

My highlight was when I drew a picture of Hyuuga Neji in a dress at school and had the school bully/homophobe with his litte gang of mates come up to me, snatch my drawing away and say, "Damn! That's one //hot// little mama!"

To which, of course, the group agreed.

To which, of course, my best friend and I collapsed with laughter. A few moments later, I pointed out they were drooling over a man. In a skirt.

I take a //lot// of pleasure in telling people my 'girls' are 'guys'. I can't wait to get Lucifer into a gothic lolita dress xD!

 

Where I come from dolls are girls unless they're dressed like G.I. Joe, Batman, or another Comic book character. Anything with non masculine hair is likened to Barbie. Even if they're wearing camo and a kevlar vest, if it's got long hair and a pretty face it's a chick.

Aside from that, at least around here, girls are the only dolls around besides those random big manly things I've seen on ebay once or twice. Dolls this size are almost 100% of time female. I don't blame people for going with what it looks like, when they're talking about something they don't know anything about.

People aren't used to seeing pretty guys. Even I thought they were girls when I first started looking at them XD *remembers being corrected on CP - Harang's display page and giving a thorough "WTF?!?!?!" *

People call all my boys girls, I've come to accept that they look feminine. My CP Moon got called a woman (Manliest one I have atm), a bitchy looking woman, but a woman nonetheless, by my co-workers. Even my boss called him one I brought him in to prove it that he was a dude, he got promoted to a man that wears makeup/an "it" XD

I kinda liked the thought of him being genderless and actually wound up changing Overseer's character to being genderless.

 

it's ok when someone see that doll for a first time and think it's a girl i guess, but then if they continue to call him girl just to give you the hump, then it's highly annoying.
but if somebody dress their boy as a girl, and don'tmake his grender clear, i think they have some reason for that? and shouldn't feel offended

 

I gotta say, I think if you're gonna own a femmy male dollfie then you should expect gender confusion with people on a regular basis, especially if they're not really into anime/dollfies and don't understand that a great deal of the beauty concept is based on some level of androgyny. It's not something to get offended over in my mind, just correct them if they're mistaken.

I guess I learned this one early on when my mom thought Kenshin was a girl because he was wearing pink and had a ponytail O___o (never mind that his shirt front was totally open and all)

 

Haven't read the thread through but I agree with your sister pretty much 100% (which, based on what little of it I did read, I think is the general consensus).

My two cents (some or all of which may have been said by others): Although I can see someone getting annoyed that many people continually think their boy is a girl, really, if that person is going to dress a boy in what pretty much amounts to female clothing (by western standards, I'm not including things like kilts or thoubs or other traditional clothing), then that person should expect to have people make that mistake a lot. Especially if they are not doll people and don't recognise the head mould as being male (and even that isn't really a great factor to judge by because many people have male heads on female bodies and female heads on male bodies). Plus, in western society, dolls have been predominently female so the auto-response is to expect a doll to be female. Right or wrong, that's just the response that happens. XD

I've been into BJDs since the end of 2003/beginning of 2004 and I still get mixed up with dolls and mistake males for females. While none of my boys would likely ever be mistaken as a girl because I don't dress them in girly outfits, I wouldn't be offended or angry if someone did mistake them. I don't see the point in being offended or angry.

LM

 

Of course you have the RIGHT to be offended, everyone is entitled to their own feelings. But should you? That's another question entirely.

Let's face it, society sees gender in simple terms. A pretty face in a dress is going to be thought of as a girl by the majority of people. That's just the way it is. And most people will base their remarks on that assumption. Now that's not saying that such assumptions are correct or even desirable but unless you tack a sign on your doll saying "I'm a boy!", you shouldn't be surprised when people think otherwise.

I understand that it can get quite old & frustrating & perhaps in another place & time it wouldn't seem the norm but seriously, you're in a world where you're challenging the norm & most folks simply won't get it. So you have 2 choices, either give your doll a more masculine look or just get over it. It's easier to change ourselves & our reactions than it is to change others.

 

I don't you think you should be tooo offended. Even I get annoyed when Theo who dress's like a guy gets called a she because he dresses like a male doll. But I don't think offended is the right word.

I have a partner who is going to be doing real life next year. Which is where you practice being the other gender and dress like them for real. For a period of time before you get a real change. If people got my partner confused I would be offended...

But my doll? no...

But all people have different tolerance levels. Mine are stupidly high I think I should proberly be less tolerant but there we go everyones different

 

I agree with your sister 100%. Put a baby boy in pink, I'd think it's a girl. Put a baby boy in a bow, I'd think it's a girl. Put a doll in a dress, then I'd definitely think it were a girl.

 

I think mistaking gender with these dolls is something that goes with the territory, quite frankly. I also agree that it's nothing to get upset over. Conventionally, a lot of people who are not familiar with BJDs or the aesthetic associated with them equate dolls with girls. If a boy doll is dressed as a girl, I think it's only natural that someone who isn't in the hobby to assume it's a girl.
I mean - I dress my boys as 'boyishly' as it's possible to get short of a three piece suit (ie: loose hooded sweatshirts, baggy pants, plain t-shirts etc...) and I *still* get comments that they look like girls. It really doesn't bother me.
-V

 

Getting offended in general is rather pointless, they are still going to think he's a girl (even if you show them it's not, in some cases) but you know that he's not and that's really all that matters. My dad is one of those "refuses to call him a he" people. He says looks like a girl, dresses like a girl, long hair like a girl, it's a girl.

 

The problem is that gender is a social construction; in our society we live off of visual cues to help us discern our environment and function optimally. We've created/endorsed the notion of effeminate appearance such that when we see something in effeminate clothing that is the visual cue that we are looking at a female. It doesn't really have anything to do with close-mindedness or intolerance. It's just the way we make sense of our environment.

Here's another example: if you go through a walk in the park, you might see a thing that has leaves and is green. Throughout your life, you've seen these visual cues and have put together that you're looking at a plant. But, what if you see a thing that has leaves and is purple? It's unusual, isn't it? You still understand that it's a plant (some plants are purple) but it's definitely not the kind of visual cue you're used to. If you hadn't had any experience with a purple plant before, you may not even decide it's a plant at all! The same goes for gender-appropriate attire/behavior. It's easy to figure out if it's wearing a dress and has makeup on, it must be a woman. Only closer inspection and exposure to other instances of cross-dressing will reveal otherwise.

Like that old saying "if it walks like a duck, if it swims like a duck, it must be duck." People who mistakenly identify the gender of your dolls aren't doing it to be mean, they are just working from their foundation of visual cues that they have developed over his/her life.