Forum: workplace.stackexchange.com
Tags: <professionalism><communication><career-development><phone>
Title: What is a polite way to clarify my gender in phone calls?
Question: Naturally in my native language my voice over the phone is sometimes closer to a female voice. But my natural voice is sounding completely normal.  The problem is the listener in the other end of the phone will misunderstand and address me with  "Miss" . I always want to tell him/her, hey please don't address me as "Miss" , call me "Sir/Mr/or name". What are polite and nice ways to bring my point across?

Answers:
sents: text: Most of the time, the nicest way is to be straightforward.
text: If this happens in middle of a running conversation, just say: Excuse me if you got confused by the tone of the voice, but I'm Mr. X here, not miss X. Another way, lead the conversation by saying: "
text: Hello, Mr.
text: X here / speaking" include the salutation on purpose so as to leave no room for interpretation.
text: [Clarification after the comments]:
text: Based on culture, the X can be your firstname, lastname or full name, whichever does not sound egoistic and rude and super-arrogant.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/61983/Sourav Ghosh
score: 50
sents: text: I'm trans
text: so I have special experience here, I guess...
text: Whenever I get misgendered
text: I have three options: 1)
text: Say nothing.
text: 2) Immediately correct them.
text: 3) Correct them if they continue to do it.
text: You have to figure out how much it bothers you.
text: Usually if I'm say... talking to a vendor that I'll never speak with again, I just ignore it.
text: It's not worth the bowing and scraping and apologizing that follows.
text: If I correct people right away I usually say something like "Actually, it's ma'am.", or just interject "She" right after they say "He" or whatever.
text: I have yet to have a single person say anything beyond "Oh okay sorry"... if they start falling over themselves to apologize excessively I usually add "Don't worry about it, it happens all the time, its no big deal." to put them at ease.
text: My goal is to clearly communicate my expectations without placing blame on them.
text: Sometimes I'll decide to say nothing, but it will keep coming up in the conversation and I will decide to correct them.
text: This is usually the most awkward way to go about doing it - there's always a pause where they count up in their head
text: how many times they misgendered me already.
text: I try to stick to the same non-confrontational attitude with this, but it's always at least a bit awkward.
text: So I'd say either correct them right away politely and try to downplay it (after all, they're not trying to insult you or anything) or don't say anything if it isn't worth the effort.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/81084/Monica Apologists Get Out
score: 28
sents: text: I'm assuming here that these are one-time failures by people you don't know to correctly identify you, and not coworkers calling you incorrectly on a repeated basis or with intentional rudeness.
text: For one-off mistakes, an immediate, quick, but casual correction is usually effective.
text: Try not to dwell on it, and if the caller apologizes, make your response to that polite but brief as well and try to move the conversation on to reduce embarrassment for both parties.
text: For example:"Sorry--
text: I go by Mr. X""Oh
text: , I am so sorry!""No problem.
text: You were saying...?
text: "
text: I agree that Sourav Ghosh's idea of getting ahead of it by introducing yourself as Mr. before the caller has a chance to make assumptions is a good plan as well, unless your company culture on usual phone etiquette discourages such formality.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/94856/Meg
score: 6
sents: text: Why do you need to correct them?
text: I have the same problem--my phone voice sounds female enough that I will generally be assumed to be female even when they don't know my name (I have the male spelling, the female Lauren is far more common.)
text: Unless there's some reason they need to know my gender
text: I just let it be.
text: It's not worth trying to correct people.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/802/Loren Pechtel
score: 3
sents: text: When this happens on the phone, and someone calls you "Miss" or "Mrs." your reaction shouldn't be "please address me as..." but "I am ...".
text: You are Mr. Dhammika.
text: You don't want to be addressed in some special way, you want to be addressed in the correct way, according to who you are.
text: So if someone guesses incorrectly that you are female based on your voice, you should say "I'm not Miss Dhammika, I am Mr. Dhammika".
text: That clarifies who you are.
text: How they address you is then up to them.
text: (For example Mr. or Sir).
text: Now if they didn't address you as "Miss / Mrs." but as "Ma'am", in that situation they guessed wrong, and if they had guessed correctly, they would have addressed you as "Sir".
text: In that case, you can say "It's not Ma'am, it's Sir".
text: Most people will now address you correctly.
text: If they don't, you stop them and say something like "Excuse me, but I said it's Mr., not Miss".
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/16101/gnasher729
score: 1
sents: text: Another thing to try could be to explain Hi ...
text: btw.
text: I know some people think I a woman when on the phone
text: but I am male, just to add...
text: That's an interesting option in situations like a first business call where you want to avoid expecting upcoming embarrassing situations for both of you.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/83122/puck
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
The best way is to immediately correct them so they don't make the same mistake again. You could also introduce yourself with the right title at the start of the call. If it is someone you probably won't speak to again, then just ignore it.
It is generally agreed that a short, polite correction at any point during the call is perfectly acceptable. However, if the call is with someone that you're unlikely to speak to again, or it is a one-off incident, you might want to simply ignore it. One way to potentially avoid this situation would be to introduce yourself first when answering the phone.