Transgender(ed) people have an expression used to describe the way another person looks at them, sees certain identifiers they link to a particular gender and then assigns them that gender.\u00a0 Misreading.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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An androgynous person with a prominent Adam’s apple is read as male.\u00a0 If they instead had long nails and heavy eye makeup, they would probably be read as female.\u00a0 In our heads, we all have traits we consider “male” and traits we consider “female.”\u00a0 Based on their presence or absence, we assign gender.\u00a0 a collection of traits goes into someone’s head and out pops a gender label.<\/p>\n
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This drives some trans people nuts.\u00a0 So what if you can see their Adam’s apple?\u00a0 If they call themselves female, then they are female.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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People with disabilities are misread in an entirely different way.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For us, it starts with a single entity \u2013 white cane, dog guide, wheelchair, prosthetic, support cane, hearing aid, use of ASL or informational disclosed \u2013 that identifies us as disabled.\u00a0 From there, we are assigned traits and entire lives are created for us in the mind of another.\u00a0 We are a word that leads to an entire story.<\/p>\n
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Maybe the word “misreading,” already claimed by another group to mean something specific, is the wrong term to use.\u00a0 Maybe it should be “misconceiving,” which has the element of *creating* in its crafting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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To the stranger who has decided they know what my life must be like, I can say, “You are misconceiving me.”\u00a0 They might not know what I mean, but the explanation “You see my disability and then create this concept of what you think my life must be like which is inaccurate,” is far easier to give than debunking each false belief, one after the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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A broad term to convey a cognitive tendency.\u00a0 Works for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Transgender(ed) people have an expression used to describe the way another person looks at them, sees certain identifiers they link to a particular gender and then assigns them that gender.\u00a0 Misreading.\u00a0 An androgynous person with a prominent Adam’s apple … Continue reading