Ugh! He's not a girl!

Other doll owners will usually be able to tell your doll's gender but random people won't. Your average non-doll collecting person associates "doll" with little girl porcelain doll or sexy woman anime figure no matter how boyish they are. If someone sees my dolls or photos of my dolls their response is usually either:

1) Did you make that? :O
2) She is so pretty!
3) That gives me the creeps (expected uncanny valley response)

I don't usually correct people who mistake my boy dolls for girls and just say "thank you" when they tell me "she is pretty."

 

I can totally understand how people - even people who've been in the hobby a long time - could mis-gender boy dolls and think they're girls, especially with the proliferation of boys dressed and styled as girls. Half the time I can't tell, and I've been in the hobby over seven years. I mean, honestly, if a doll is styled in a stereotypically "feminine" way, what are people supposed to think? I just refer to these dolls with the gender-neutral pronoun "they" to be on the safe side.

What I don't understand is how people manage to mis-gender boys who don't look like girls. I have two boys with beards and even they've been called "she" and "girl" by people both outside and inside the hobby. Ironically, my IMPL Tony, who has very long pale hair and frequently wears a pink dress shirt, has never been mistaken for a girl. Go figure.

 

@SapphireStargazer ... I am soooo pleased you have trouble gender-fying dolls too!!!!
I am pretty new to the hobby, and constantly get it wrong when reading doll profiles etc... Looking and thinking they are female, just to read that they are a male character. But, thinking a beard belongs to 'She' is like, whhhhaaat???!!

 

If I have a doll who is borderline hard to tell, or even a long haired guy, I don't really care at first, since most non-doll people do associate dolls with Barbies or babies. Even within the hobby, it's not unusual to use a female sculpt as male or vice versa, and some bodies, especially clothed, are hard to tell. It is a little weird to me when people misgender, say, Iplehouse EID men and women. But it happens. That doesn't bother me.

BUT! When I have corrected the person and they continue to do it, it really annoys me, and then I tend to think they're doing it on purpose. I had a coworker at my last job who kept saying my boy "had to" be a girl. Or when my dad kept referring to my first doll (an Angel of Dream muscular guy in a men's suit with a short wig) as "that girl". Mistakes happen, but once you've been corrected, you need to start getting it right.

 

I honestly don't understand why doll owners get so upset over this...especially when they crossdress their boys. ^.^;; I expect it I guess, especially when a sculpt isn't necessarily locked into a gender. Sure, it may look masculine/feminine, but that doesn't mean every doll you come across is going to be that gender specific.

Now that I can understand...that is just rudeness. O.O

 

A large number of my boys have long hair and because they are pretty, they're often mistaken for girls. I do correct people that they're not girls and that's usually enough. However I did have one person insist that one of my boy had to be a girl because of the long hair and "make-up". I have no problem pantsing any of my boys and there was a certain bit of satisfaction going on when they saw the boy bits and gasped in surprise.

I've come to accept it as a norm that people automatically assume my boys are girls, usually because of the long hair and many wear a style of clothing based on ancient Chinese clothes that gets mistaken for a dress. I'll gently correct the error and then pants the doll in question if the person persists in calling him a her.

 

Oddly enough, despite all these stories I read of owners getting super upset about their boy dolls being constantly mistaken as girls, I've never ACTUALLY seen someone say anything about it in real life other than a quick (and non-angry) 'Oh, he's a boy.' When people call my dolls girls I just agree with them and don't bother to correct them unless it's someone like my husband or sisters. It seems like these stories of owners getting irate and loud-mouthed about it are alot like the 'Volks elitist' stories...hugely exaggerated online and mostly nonexistent in reality.

 

I think it's normal to be a bit annoyed, but I've never felt irate or upset, and I've never yelled at anyone. It's pretty okay because the only people who get confused are non-doll collectors and half the time I don't bother to correct them.

 

Honestly even doll people have had a hard time recognizing the gender of some of my dolls. It's understandable with the smaller dolls because they're usually sculpted pretty androgynously but one of my large guys in particular keeps getting called a lady because of his long hair despite his chest and abs being partially exposed. He is pretty though, so I don't take much offense. I think as long as a doll falls in between the dichotomy of "obviously female" (Dollfie Dreams, Iplehouse women, etc.) and "obviously male" (Iplehouse men, Granado men, etc.) then it's easy for non-hobbyists to make that mistake.

 

I can usually tell the gender of a doll, but I could see how it would be a little confusing. There is a wide variety of androgynous males in the BJD realm, so I'm pretty understanding when it comes to people calling "he" a "she". I don't think people should get too bent out of shape about it, especially if they are complimenting the doll by calling him/her pretty

 

My parents have two dachshunds, a boy and girl, but they both call the male "she". Even they don't know why. It's habit by now. I think some people call all dolls by female pronouns, even when they can see otherwise.
People whose first language includes gendered nouns often carry that through into English, too.
So I think their can be a variety of reasons someone would call a beaded doll female. I don't think most people mean anything by it.

 

ah man this happens all the time. i don't have any especially feminine boys, but people still misgender them all the time. even my iplehouse boy has been called a girl and he's very boyish looking haha. i have one boy doll (kyle, my mystic kids milo) i will sometimes dress in pink, purple, heart-pattern shirts, etc, so a lot of people just assume that means he is a girl haha.

it doesn't bother me at all unless people are going to be rude and insistent about a doll's gender by using gender stereotypes to reinforce what they're trying to say like: "NO that is definitely not a boy idc what you say blah blah he looks like he's wearing girl clothes wah wah" etc etc. that kind of comment gets annoying haha, but that has never happened to me and i've only seen it happen to other people a few times.

i've never seen anyone get incredibly upset about their doll being misgendered. usually people make a post to inform people or correct them and then life continues. personally i can understand it. sometimes even i can't tell! i don't like to assume, so i will use gender neutral term until i find out for sure just in case.

i don't really mind it and i usually don't bother correcting people, especially if they are outside of the hobby. people tend not to misgender my dolls now because i always caption photos with their names when i post pictures and my boys have pretty "boyish" names haha (funnily enough so does my lone girl doll, but hey).

 

I have taken my doll out with me to work and other places. My boys often get called girls by my family or co-workers. I usually just tell them politely that they're boys and that usually fixes the problem. I can see why my boys get called girls though. Most of them wear suits but most of them have some kind of frills or ruffles on them. When my boys are wearing modern clothing like jeans and a shirt, they usually don't get misgendered.

I think I only had one time where I was annoyed by someone who insisted I change a doll's gender. I was sitting at a church activity and this one guy kept telling me that one of my dolls was a girl and should be wearing dresses. I think it's because the doll had long hair at the time with bright red lips and long eyelashes. Even when I kept telling him it was a boy, he kept telling me that it should be a girl.

 

It doesn't bother me since I know it comes from the uncanny valley. BJDs fall into that for a lot of people, too realistic and human-like but with something just slightly off. It gives people a natural fright response and most can only articulate it as "creepy." I find as a gamer and BJD owner my uncanny valley is super narrow.

 

My go-to response to things like 'oh, she's pretty' from non-doll people is 'thanks, I ordered him from Korea' (or some such thing), but without making a big deal of the 'him'. Which is about the same response I'd give if I showed a stranger a photo of my cat and got the same response. My cat has big blue eyes and long hair, and like dolls being a 'feminine' hobby, people tend to think 'cat=girl and dog=boy'...

Sometimes my dolls look pretty girly anyway... and when they don't, I can understand the mistake... Since neither the dolls nor the cat can really have their feelings hurt by a compliment being misgendered, I don't normally get bent out of shape the way I would if it was a human friend being misgendered, I guess.

 

I don't have this problem with my bigger dolls, but when I showed my mom my Soom Cheshire (purple, small, full lips, long violet eyelashes, there's some lace on his outfit) she of course thought it was a girl. I didn't care enough to correct her, and if the doll is ambiguous enough, I usually don't bother.

Like others have said, I think it would only bother me if they continued after being corrected. Otherwise, I'm so nonchalant about my own gender that I think it carries over to my dolls.

 

Oh, I'm sure people don't mean anything by it. That wasn't the point I was trying to make. I don't actually care if people mis-gender my boys and I don't usually bother attempting to correct people when they do. All I was saying is that I find it baffling that someone whose first language is English and all other things being equal could look at a male doll with a beard and think "she". I am bilingual and one of my languages is a language with gendered nouns. "Doll" is, in fact, a feminine noun so I get why someone whose first language isn't English would just refer to all dolls as "she". It's more or less the equivalent of an English speaker referring to all dolls by a gender-neutral pronoun "it" (because a doll is an object).

As for the thing with dogs, I have a female Boston terrier and my parents also have a female Boston terrier. When the two dogs are together, my parents' dog is often called a boy by people who see her. My parents' dog looks more bulldog-ish (and therefore more "tough" and "masculine") than my dog, and we think that's the reason people identify her as male.

 

I'm kind of surprised no one has mistaken my doll for a girl yet, considering he's an explicit cross dresser. Maybe it's his size? There aren't that many 72 cm girls out there, I suppose. Then again, I haven't shown him to any non doll people yet, so that might help.

I've found I'm pretty good at discerning doll genders, but I've also never had problems identifying girly anime boys as boys, either. Generally I think Asian media has different conventions about what's considered masculine and feminine than the West...I mean, look at a boy and girl doll side by side and I think it should be fairly obvious their genders, no matter how androgynous the boy is. You just have to be able to read the conventions in the first place (I mean, considering you get ignorant Westerners thinking k-pop stars look like girls, yeah, I don't think it's only a doll thing).