Why do we just assume things about Flutherites?

It could be an involuntary response to the fact that your name begins with “man”. That is what they read and in their heads that was what they pictured.

THAT DOESN’T COUNT

1st impressions are usually the culprit, and on here those are designated by a person’s name and avatar pic.

Not really sure why your cat wouldn’t have led anyone to believe you were either a woman or gay man though lol

Why?

AHEM…..! I ALWAYS get peoples gender correct! Ok, well maybe not. I think I thought you were a guy because of your name “mangeons”. Its just seems masculine. Sorry, I lurve ya though!! And then I went to your profile and I saw your name was Jessie, and I thouht you were a guy from that too.
Im Jessica :)

It’s not my cat, just a random cat. I was kidding, Bri_L. :)

I guess it seems kinda masculine, I never thought of it as masculine, I thought of it as more feminine?

My real name is Jessica, but I hate being called that. It is now clarified on my profile, if you feel like checking. :)

So mangeons, what ‘cha in charge of? lol

I thought Darin was a guy for the longest time, probably because her avtar looked like a dog. I always seem to call dogs he and cats she. Your avtar is not feminine at all and your name does not seem to reveal your sex. If it makes you feel better, people are assuming your a guy probably because your writing comes across as strong and bold. (I haven’t followed you so tell me if I’m wrong.) Even if my avtar was different people would probably assume I was female because my writing probably comes across as a nurturer which is more commonly associated with feminity. My maternal nature (I would guess) shines through.

Bri_L, I actually always thought you were a girl until I looked at your profile. Your username and avatar seem feminine to me. :)

It’s natural to fill out a mental “picture” from someone’s answers—like the ones we create for characters in books, but it’s easy to guess wrong so I try not to guess anymore.

Lol, it means “we eat” in French. :)

Marina, I could always tell you were a girl, because of the feminine name/avatar, but just now I thought you were Bythebay, because of your avatar. :)

From now on I’m just going to assume everyone’s a fish until proven different.

I am going to guess that Sakata is a guy?

Not much of one at times but, yes, I’m a guy.

I don’t know why others assume things. I know I don’t assume anything. I don’t really care if the person is a girl or a guy unless it has relevance to the question, and then I look at their profile to see if they’ve chosen to indicate their gender. I have such in my profile for just this reason.

I am going to guess that dynamicduo is a GUY.

Naw hes a she…I just read. I always thought she was a he :)

@Judi: Your caring nature always shows through!

Wrong. I’m a girl.

I mean, don’t we all constantly assume things about people in general? I feel like that’s a pretty automatic, ingrained mechanism that’s tough to fight.

Wow, really? Well, I thought your username, avatar, and answers were kinda masculine, I ALWAYS thought you were a guy. :) I always thought nikipedia was a guy, too. :)

It’d be nice if the profiles told a little more about us. I think it’d be good to definately know the gender of people. Some I can’t tell even from reading the profiles.

I have been mistaken as a guy a few times. Having “jon” at the beginning of my user name is the reason why, I guess. Jon is my husband, I’m his “blonde”.

I do my best to not assume. If I want to address someone, I do a little research before calling them he or she.

! Jonsblond, I ALWAYS thought you were a guy! Man, I’m not doing well today. :(

@mangeons I noticed, that’s why I answered this question.
:D

It clearly states in my profile that I’m a girl. I put it in there for just this reason – there seems to be a prevailing assumption that most people on the internet are men. Which is, of course, a faulty assumption.

Then again, gender doesn’t matter, except in cases where it does help to know the gender of the person, in which case I usually note it in my answer. For instance, it helps to know in a thread about uteruses or menstruating that the person giving the answer knows it from personal experience versus knows it through observation.

I sure don’t assume things though. You know what they say about assuming.

“When you assume things, you make an Ass out of U and Me”

And i was wondering when you’d show up, EPZ. :)

I always/usually get it wrong, and I can either assume everyone is a fish, or just call everyone ‘it’ until know for sure. I’m going to go change my profile right now, to keep things straight. I should also do a little research, but sometimes, that doesn’t help either, when profiles are intentionally vague.

Nah, with assuming, you make an ass out of you and some guy name Ming. You sure don’t make an ass out of me.

NO ONE makes an ass out of dynamicduo. :)

I’ve had people get my gender wrong too, and my username starts with TITS.

But I think preconceived schema regarding names and images/avatars are what causes us to assume gender one way or the other.

@TitsMcGhee I thought you were a guy for awhile, and I just figured out that you were a girl a couple days ago. :)

@TitsMcGhee: You’re a Girl? No way?!? hahahahahah :)

Once I assumed that Nimis was a man and Nimis and Judi were married.

@mangeons: Oh my, oh my… I’m starting to think that I should just use my picture as my avatar to sort things out…

Ha. I’ve always assumed Nimis was a girl. :)

I laugh whenever somebody thinks my name is “Trumin”. Yeah, cuz that makes sense.

It’s “Truman”.

I assumed Nimis was a mod for awhile. Must be her aggressive personality, or something. As for Tits, I assumed you were a guy, because in my world, men call em tits and the females call em boobs.

@evelyns_pet_zebra: Haha, I could see where that’s coming from. Maybe an avatar change would help…

My avatar, btw, is writing on a street-facing wall that says ‘DO NOT BE AFRAID.’

@TitsMcGhee ; I thought you were a guy for about 2 minutes until I read about the priest thing! I think that I assumed that only a guy would just “throw tits” out there. It’s bold and shame on me for thinking only guys can be bold.

Most people thought I was a guy until I clarified. Now my picture is up so there’s no confusion. Ultimately though, it doesn’t really bother me if people guess the wrong sex, because it’s not what defines me anyway. :)

I think we assume things because our framework for relating to one another is so solidly instilled in us from infancy onward that we tend to think it is necessary to know. And sex is the absolutely primary element of that.

Our language requires that we choose between two gender-specific pronouns in referring singly to one another. Many people are insulted if we misread their gender (even when they don’t help us get it right), and our mistake makes us appear either rude or ridiculous or both. Those are socially uncomfortable feelings, and so we try to avoid them.

I think many of us also subtly alter our posture with respect to one another depending on perceived sex and/or sexual orientation. Again, those things are built into us from birth because of how we are treated and taught.

If we don’t know whether someone is male or female, we fill in with assumptions based on the clues we have.

Of course, most of the usual clues are missing in an online environment, so we make inferences based on allusions and analogies to real-world traits. But they can be either unintentionally or deliberately misleading. Here just as in the real world, many people don’t have a sense of how they come across to others, and some cultivate the ambiguity. Culturally and socially, we are really only beginning to learn how to interact as virtual entities in a created environment; in another generation or two, when there’s no one left who didn’t grow up with computers, there’ll be new conventions for many things that are awkward now.

I read somewhere that (in real life) people almost always automatically attribute “male” to an unknown person they see. To change the default “male” assignation, there need to be at least three clues that point to femininity (the way they’re dressed, breasts, hairstyle, that sort of thing). Only then do we regard the stranger as female.

On Fluther (or online in general), it’s sometimes hard to round up those three clues. We can’t see a person, so we have to go by what they say. And there’s so many people. And the clues for any one person are so widely dispersed amongst different questions. We really have to pay attention and get to know someone (relatively) well before doing more than default thinking. Obviously this point is void if the name or the icon are a giveaway, but those can also be misleading.

For the longest time, I assumed @Bri_L was female because I prounounced the name “Brielle” in my head. This is the name that a couple I know gave to their infant girl. I also assumed @dynamicduo was male because of the whole “Batman and Robin” thing. In both cases, preconceived notions led me astray. It’s harder with a person like @Judi because the name and avatar both point to female, but that’s what led me astray with @evelyns_pet_zebra at the beginning, too.

I try to default to “without gender” if I don’t really know, but I’m a human being and that’s hard, especially when there is the beginning of a mental picture from previous conversations.

I never thought of that. Brielle. It is just short for Brian and the initial of my last name.

This is really interesting finding out why we all made the assumptions we did.

Totally cool question.

I wrote a long in depth consult to a girl her about how to improve her sex life with her boyfriend.

I found out later it was two girls. Surprised me on two counts, I thought the girlfriend was a guy, and I thought the girl was straight.

I was also asked if I were a guy or girl, and my avatar shows me with a beard, go figure.

Avatars are tiiiiny, though. I mean, I can tell it’s a person holding an animal, but I can’t tell what kind of person or animal.

So wait, Judi is a girl, correct? Laureth confused me.

Yes, Judi is female. :)

I learned on Askville not to assume someone was a male or female, mainly because I mistook someone and thought they were female – of course, the person was a male.

Names can be so misleading, so I don’t go by the names! I look for the clues, read the profiles or just ask!

@mangeons: I hate to be the first to break it to you, but you are not a girl!

I am in fact a very girly girl. I am even acting in the Vagina Monologues this weekend and I am pretty sure you have to have one to be in that. :-)

@daloon What? This is the first I’ve heard of this!

@mangeons: sad, but true. Take a look at your birth certificate. Not the one they pretended was yours. The real one. It also described the operation you had soon after birth. Those menstrual cycles? Fake. A little movie blood is all it takes. Breasts? Artificial. Hairless face? Estrogen snuck into your breakfast cornflakes. It’s a vast conspiracy to make you think you are a girl.

Listen, I really didn’t want to tell you, but my little faux pas forced the issue. As we all know, I never make mistakes, so, if I thought you were male, it must be because that’s the case. Now, all I have to do is convince you that this incredible cockamamie story is true, and I’ll have my record unblemished.

Convinced?

I thought not. mangeons 1, daloon 0 ;-)

More like mangeons (GIRL) 1039505, Daloon (Unknown) -3456 :)

@mangeons: you drive a hard bargain, don’t you? Oh well, you win. I shall hereinafter and forever think of you as female even though I know you really aren’t.

Ouch! Hey! Fingernails? No fair!

I know your secrets daloon. And I WILL use them against you.:)

Sucrets? What Sucrets? Are you saying you don’t like my hacking cough?

I said secrets

Sure you did. Now you tell me. Sheesh. Teens!

With that cute monkey it’s clear that you are a girly girl. Now eponymous hipster monkey- man.

Haha! You’re so funny, I’m not really. :)

I am not going to take the time to look up everyone’s profile when I answer a question. And what good would it do anyway, there’s no proof that the gender stated in the profile is any more real than the assumption I might make in my comments. I say I’m a sweet, little, old grandma, but maybe this is the real me.

@YARNLADY lol I did not need that visual before bed! :)

@YARNLADY: I think I’m in love!!!! Will you marry me?

@YARNLADY ; I don’t think I have been so creeped out since I watched the birds when I was a little girl and had night mares for months. I wonder if I will EVER recover from that picture!

@Judi It was originally posted to help kids understand how easy it is to be fooled by the person you are communicating with. The parent/teacher first says I’m a cute 16 year old boy, or sweet 16 year old girl and I want to be your bff, and then eventually sends this picture.