PinkArrow said:
I've seen this come across other social media, made online gender identity mistakes according to my roleplaying partners, and have even had discussions with my mom about whether or not telling your true gender online is safe or not. This subject might seem kind of pointless and corny, if you will, but at the same time, you don't know who another online person truly is unless you meet them directly, face to face. Generally speaking, you don't know if they're truly a female or male. Pictures on the internet don't even prove to you whether that person is truly who they say they are- a female or a male.
However, they may or may not continuously correct you on their gender identity, and even after one thousand times, would you still know for sure whether what they say is true or not? Does gender revealing online really make much of a difference? Is it that important to know a person's gender down to the point where they have to correct you every time you call them a he or she? You don't even know what their gender is truly, so why does it seemingly matter across online social media?
The thing is that whether or not what they say is true, it's all you have to go on. Some may have good reasons for lying about their sex or gender, which others have already listed. Others might just like lying and creating a false persona. Whatever the case may be, it's all you have to go on. The real question, in my opinion, is why in the hell would anyone need to be corrected a thousand times (or even like a dozen) about someone's gender? Seems like something that should only take a few times until you get it right. You can never know that the person saying they're a male actually has a penis, but so what, use the male pronouns anyway.
Revealing gender online can indeed make a difference. Whether they are consciously aware of it or not, people treat differing genders differently. Everyone has a whole slew of thoughts and opinions and biases that they've accumulated through their life, and some of them will be based on sex and gender, so they will treat males and females and the variety of non-binary gender identities differently. It could be very blatant and obvious, or it could be subtle, but the differences will exist in the behavior of the vast majority of people. It comes down to how our brains work on a basic level, can't really help it. Some people purposely avoid revealing their gender because of this (and because of safety reasons pertaining to internet predators), and that's a perfectly valid choice. Nobody ever has to reveal their gender or sex online, nor should they be pressured to if they don't feel like doing so.
The importance of gender identity differs from person to person. If they're getting upset and correcting you over and over, then it's important to them. Gender is a major part of identity, so plenty of people will take it as a sort of attack on their identity if you refer to them with the wrong gender terminology. Other people won't give a shit and will be fine with whatever pronouns you use for them. How much one cares about their own gender identity likely impacts how much they care about getting it right for other people, so it comes from the other direction as well.
It only matters because, related to above, some people really care about how they are perceived, which is all about their identity. Gender identity is part of that. Just because you can't know that someone is a certain gender doesn't mean you should automatically doubt them and use other pronouns. If you were gonna do that, you ought to only use non-gendered language when talking about everyone on the internet because you can never be sure about anyone. That's just silly. Seriously, it's a simple matter of calling people what they want to be called. Doesn't matter if you doubt it, doesn't matter if you don't think it's important, it's just easiest for everyone if you identify them as they identify themselves.
Oh, and as others have said, the main place where gender matters is if you decide to meet up with an internet friend in real life. Even then it really only ought to matter if you're looking to have a romantic relationship with and/or fuck them, because who cares if someone who's just a friend has a penis or a vagina really? But if you're gonna meet someone from the internet it should only be if you've known them for quite a long time and trust them, which means they will hopefully at that point already have come clean about any gender lies, and even then your first meeting should be in a very public place just in case. Safety first.
Azarthes said:
How the fuck does saying "I am a boy/girl" change anything about interacting online?
All it does it make people use a different pronoun
All this other shit is you complaining about nothing.
This isn't that big of a deal guys.
In a perfect and ideal world it'd make no difference at all.
In reality people do actually treat boys and girls differently. It's a fact of life.
It shouldn't be a big deal, but some people make it a big deal because they're turds. Turds (both metaphorical and literal) existing is also a fact of life, sadly.
Diana said:
People will lie about their gender online yes.... but people also lie about things in real life. You'll get different kinds of lies, but either way, a predator (or an asshole, or a pathological liar) is going to stalk their prey, lie, be an asshole, etc.
The internet is not any more dangerous than interacting with strangers in person. You just have more opportunities to interact with people online because it's so easy to do.
If anything it's probably safer than interacting with strangers in person. You've got extra layers of defense there in the way of distance, anonymity, and the option to cease all contact whenever you feel like it. It's a lot harder for some random jerkass from the internet to mug/rape/murder you than it is for a dude you meet in a dark alley at night, y'know?