Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

On Mon, 9 Oct 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 09, 2000 at 04:32:40PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > OC, I've had a couple people on this list and elsewhere mistake me for
> > male, even with the emotes.  Who knows?  =^)
>
> Honest confession: when I first saw your name on this list, the first
> impression that came across was "this is a guy". The fact that I know a
> Korean guy elsewhere who's also called "Yoon" doesn't help. But, being the
Well, "Yoon" is only half a given name in Korean, and it could be the
first or second syllable.  "Yoon Ha" is actually *either* male *or*
female in Korean, and my mom tells me it's slightly more often used for
males or something.  <shrug>

> *ahem* cautious person that I am, I silently stayed away from deciding one
> way or the other, and after observing the tone of your posts (and of
> course, the emotes), I started to doubt my initial hypothesis. Then, one
> fine day, I came across the line "YHL, wishing she were actually fluent"
> and I said to myself, Aha! so it *was* a female :-)
I happen to be one of the people who doesn't actually care whether
someone on the web is male or female except when silly English pronouns
come up.  On a somewhat related notes, some of my friends have noted that
it's disconcerting that in my fiction, I have this tendency not to refer
to the sex or a character until s/he actually appears, and they want to
know *right away* or it feels uncomfortable.  I'm perfectly happy not
knowing unless it becomes relevant to the plot and interactions
(pregnancy, societies that differentiate male and female roles, etc.).  I
seem to be a minority, though.

> (And of course, I was grateful that I didn't jump the gun and address you
> as a guy ... the wonders of ambiguity in written language -- I avoid
> pronouns (since in English they have gender) like the plague until I'm
> sure whether the other party is male or female. But this is almost
> impossible in spoken conversation.)
In my case it's happened to me numerous times before and it doesn't
bother me.  As far as spoken conversation goes, people who don't look too
closely (or when I'm wearing a jacket) occasionally mistake me for a
guy.  I think it's the haircut, plus the fact that my facial structure is
borderline for stereotypical masculine/feminine appearances, plus the
fact that I'm on the skinny side (especially with a jacket on).

I got around this in Chevraqis by not having the language make any
male/female distinction in the pronoun, like Korean.  So much nicer than
way.  =^)

For those who aren't sure, I'm not offended by referred to as an "it,"
but I suspect I'm also in the minority there.

YHL, much amused