I was working with a certain individual, we’ll call him Eric. Eric use to put bronzer on his face, use Anastasia Beverly Hills on his brows, and Mac on his lips. Okay cool.
So to me I thought it would be polite to refer to Eric as a “she”. I thought Eric would be into that because Eric has feminine traits. Eric would also refer to himself as “she” when speaking about himself third person. I really thought Eric would be into me referring to him as a girl. My manager told me the next morning that Eric didn’t take well to my approach and wanted me to refer to him as a male.
I want to point out very clearly that I’m not here to thrash the lgbt community. This post is just to address the fact that I get really confused. Is that just me? You got cross dressers, transgenders, gays, straights. It’s hard to tell the difference nowadays until you actually get close to the person.
From his point of view
I thought I would show this post to Eric before posting it to get an honest opinion. I don’t want to sound insensitive or ignorant. He thought it would be useful for me to include the information that he identified himself as gay so I should’ve automatically known that he is identified as male. However, I didn’t assume this. My bad 🤭
He also asked me why do you want to post this. I answered: “I want to post it because I’m sure there’s a lot of other people that think this too but you probably don’t realize that because you know how to communicate with LGBT probably better than people that are not in that community.”
What is the proper etiquette when addressing an individual whose gender preference you’re not sure of?
Eric’s response:
“Honestly, it just depends on the person. But, I’m sure it’s always better if you’re unsure about an individual’s pronouns, is to just ask them instead of just bluntly referring to them as [a he or her]. Some will take it to heart, some will be slightly salty about it if you use the wrong one (AKA me 😂), and some won’t mind.”
There you have it.
Don’t be an idiot, just ask.
Xoxo
#bellesbaqwaas
PersonaBelle 