Still passing as male

[julesjones]

Now there's a coincidence. I was in a conversation elsewhere yesterday about female authors of m/m pretending to be men for commercial reasons, and pointed out that readers keep thinking of me as male even though I have never explicitly presented myself as a man, and have in fact made efforts to correct reviews that referred to me as male.

And this afternoon someone linked to my post about my Cybook, and referred to me as "he". Okay, this is a stranger and someone from outside the world of romance epublishing who was obviously misled by the subject matter of my books, but it's not that many months since the last time a romance reader did it. (I'm not going to embarrass her by naming her.:-) I suppose I *could* redecorate the blog in pink bows and hearts, but I'm not really into pink. Which is doubtless a contributing factor in why so many people think I'm a guy, or at least can't decide.

Comments

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

I think it's your user name more than anything - I thought Jules was a masculine name and Jones falls on the male side of my brain for some reason. I still have trouble remembering you are a girl when I'm skimming over my flist quickly.

When I chose my fandom name and designed my journal, I somewhat deliberately chose something that was ambiguously on the masculine side of things. I wasn't trying to hide behind that or intended to present myself as male but I wanted to appear somewhat tomboyish and masculine at first glance - That just embodies my inner fangirl, not my outward persona. I don't think anyone who actually *read* my journal would mistake my gender. I could be wrong about that though - I had an old high school buddy look me up on the internet and find my journal... He posted and when I asked him how he found me he said it wasn't hard through Google (because he knew enough about me) but he just needed to make sure he was emailing *me* and not a gay British man. LOL! I wasn't going for gay or British but there you have it! :-)

[julesjones]

In the UK "Jules" as a formal name on the birth certificate is normally male, but it's also used as a nickname for the whole group of names derived from Julius/Julia, both male and female. So to me it was a gender-ambiguous name, even if it leans to male. I had no idea that in the US it's typically seen as male-only, not until some of my American writer friends explained why an American editor of a "women-only" anthology had got in a huff about me submitting a story. (Even with a cover letter signed in my legal name, which is quite definitely gendered.)