Assigned Smol Bean At The Doctor's
Jul. 17th, 2024 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricA nice thing about being back in Australia is that very few places address one as "Ms/Mr Name". The doctor's waiting room, for instance, will call you by first name or full name.
What is very odd is that since I got back, I have been getting a barrage of "love, lovely, darling, my dear" from medical professionals, at a rate I normally associate with Northern English tea shop ladies. It'll be "[Name]? Come in, dear. Now, what can I do for you darling?"
I don't remember ever getting this in Australia pre-transition. I don't get it from male health professionals (although I must admit that I wouldn't notice a few 'darlings' from, say, the very gay male nurses at the Albion clinic). It seems to be race and class and location neutral: I get it from my psychiatrist (Balmain, white lady), my Sydney GP (inner west, Indian subcontinent background the details of which are unknown to me), assorted pathology techs and technicians of assorted non-white backgrounds, and the middle-aged dental secretary in my home town.
I also seem to get it regardless of whether I have informed the person what my gender situation is. It's like they look at my name (which is clearly masculine, if not terribly popular for my age group) and my presentation and think "Ah. That's probably not a woman. That's a darling, that's what that is." I'd think it might be a case of "wallet name looks masculine, person looks feminine, let's go out of our way not to be transmisogynistic", but I get it from my GP and my psych, who definitely know which direction of trans I am.
I'm loath to correct people, because as long as they're providing me decent care, and not actually patronising me re how much I know about my nine million health issues, why dissuade people from being nice to me? But it's really very odd to be getting it equally from a pathology tech who's just met me and my psych. The psych in question treats primarily adults, too, so it's not bleedover from her primary patient base.
I wonder if being identifiably trans but either explicitly or assumed nonbinary (I do not usually make an effort to masc up for these things - especially if I'm getting blood drawn or something, as my most convincingly masc clothes are my work suits and stiff shirts, complicating access) is causing me to be read as much younger than I actually am? But I swear this didn't used to happen nearly as often when I was a young woman.
Australian wonen's semi-professional conversational dialect could just have shifted (this doesn't happen in cafes, for instance, where staff can be more casual but aren't expected to be as personally attentive; nor does it happen in circumstances where professional distacne is stepped up, eg, HR, insurance helpline, ServiceNSW) while I was away? If so it's probably gently misgendering, in that women are more likely to address other women like this (calling a straight man "darling" is too risky - lbr, even Northern tea shop ladies do this less toward men, and younger women in the North of England are less likely to do so than middle aged to older women). I'd be interested to know if slightly camp gay men get it too.
The other possibility is that the frequency of 'darling-ing' has not increased toward adult women in Australia, and I'm being Assigned Smol Bean At the Doctor's.
What is very odd is that since I got back, I have been getting a barrage of "love, lovely, darling, my dear" from medical professionals, at a rate I normally associate with Northern English tea shop ladies. It'll be "[Name]? Come in, dear. Now, what can I do for you darling?"
I don't remember ever getting this in Australia pre-transition. I don't get it from male health professionals (although I must admit that I wouldn't notice a few 'darlings' from, say, the very gay male nurses at the Albion clinic). It seems to be race and class and location neutral: I get it from my psychiatrist (Balmain, white lady), my Sydney GP (inner west, Indian subcontinent background the details of which are unknown to me), assorted pathology techs and technicians of assorted non-white backgrounds, and the middle-aged dental secretary in my home town.
I also seem to get it regardless of whether I have informed the person what my gender situation is. It's like they look at my name (which is clearly masculine, if not terribly popular for my age group) and my presentation and think "Ah. That's probably not a woman. That's a darling, that's what that is." I'd think it might be a case of "wallet name looks masculine, person looks feminine, let's go out of our way not to be transmisogynistic", but I get it from my GP and my psych, who definitely know which direction of trans I am.
I'm loath to correct people, because as long as they're providing me decent care, and not actually patronising me re how much I know about my nine million health issues, why dissuade people from being nice to me? But it's really very odd to be getting it equally from a pathology tech who's just met me and my psych. The psych in question treats primarily adults, too, so it's not bleedover from her primary patient base.
I wonder if being identifiably trans but either explicitly or assumed nonbinary (I do not usually make an effort to masc up for these things - especially if I'm getting blood drawn or something, as my most convincingly masc clothes are my work suits and stiff shirts, complicating access) is causing me to be read as much younger than I actually am? But I swear this didn't used to happen nearly as often when I was a young woman.
Australian wonen's semi-professional conversational dialect could just have shifted (this doesn't happen in cafes, for instance, where staff can be more casual but aren't expected to be as personally attentive; nor does it happen in circumstances where professional distacne is stepped up, eg, HR, insurance helpline, ServiceNSW) while I was away? If so it's probably gently misgendering, in that women are more likely to address other women like this (calling a straight man "darling" is too risky - lbr, even Northern tea shop ladies do this less toward men, and younger women in the North of England are less likely to do so than middle aged to older women). I'd be interested to know if slightly camp gay men get it too.
The other possibility is that the frequency of 'darling-ing' has not increased toward adult women in Australia, and I'm being Assigned Smol Bean At the Doctor's.
no subject
Date: 2024-07-17 08:37 am (UTC)The shop keeper near our old house (Midlands UK) used to call all customers that he perceived as female 'darling' and all that he perceived as male 'boss' and I always found it really icky (but his gender attitudes were dodgy anyway according to my son who worked for him for a while)
no subject
Date: 2024-07-17 10:56 am (UTC)Do I have a plot? Nope. But I sure do have a premise that, if I can find a plot for it, would make a nicely unsettling story...
no subject
Date: 2024-07-18 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-07-18 02:44 am (UTC)In my first job, men customers would so often say "thanks mate" that I started saying it back, and my (older, female) boss had to pull me aside and tell me that it's not professional or in any way normal for teen girls to address middle-aged men as "mate".
no subject
Date: 2024-07-18 03:05 am (UTC)Now that I am thinking about it, it was always older men. Certainly no one below the age of 40/50, or anyone who... looked socially maladroit. I didn't even think about it consciously. Those people would get a "sir."