Mistaken Identity or Mass Confusion?

I'm constantly amazed at how often I get mistaken for being male. My friends can't believe it either. I'm not that butch. But it's happened three times in the last week and twice today.

The first time this week was on Monday when I was on the subway, on the way to the airport to return to New Jersey. It was rush hour and the train was really crowded. I was squeezed in among the people with my suitcase. At one stop, a man got on the train. He seemed to be drunk. He started striking up a conversation with a couple of people, first asking them for money, and shortly after ranting about how "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." I heard this, but was not acknowledging it. Then he looked at me squarely and said, "Hello, you big bugger!" It took a minute for this to register, but he had clearly mistaken me for a gay man! Luckily, my stop was next, so I quickly got off the train and moved swiftly through the crowd to transfer to my next train.

My first encounter today took place in a McDonald's. Having been bombarded by the "elephants" for the last day or so, I was craving easy, fast food, so I slunk into the McDonald's for my french fry fix. As I was sitting down to eat, I noticed a man having an exchange with a woman across the store. I saw her give him his tray and he was trying to convince her to visit a particular website. She wasn't terribly interested and walked away from him. Then he came over to me and started to talk about how he didn't much care for women anyway. He was clearly talking to me as if he expected me to agree that women are fickle and not worth bothering with. I got this strange glimpse into a bizarre form of male comraderie.

Shortly thereafter, I was on my way home and decided to stop at a used furniture store (I'm in desperate need of a bookcase). I was just walking around the rather packed and disorganized place, when one of the deliverymen walked through. I bought most of my furniture for my New Brunswick apartment at this store and recognized him. I've had a my hair cut shorter since then, though, so he didn't recognize me. Instead he complained lightly about how there wasn't much space to walk around, saying "You know what I'm sayin', brother?"

I wonder what it is that makes it so clear to my friends that I am female, but so indicative to some strangers that I'm male?

An old friend of mine to whom this often happens, too, one explained her reaction to it this way: she didn't mind one bit. What bothered her more was that people often recognized their mistake and then started apologized all over themselves for having made the mistake to begin with, as if recognizing her masculinity had been insulting. I think she has a good point here.

Posted by Bush Whacker at October 10, 2003 04:59 PM