Neil retailed an anecdote of his youth (sorry lost original message) about someone who mistook him on basis of perceived gender for a car mechanic, and implied (I think) that this person's eventual assessment of him as 'bloody useless' became in some fashion part of his 17-years-ago self.
I find this extremely odd. I work a lot via telephone and e-mail with men of (self-)perceived high status who often choose to treat me like a secretary. These days I find this rather amusing, and certainly do not feel it reflects on me in the slightest. If people choose to misassess other people on the basis of gender, appearance, job title or whatever, this has no effect whatsoever on the misassessed person (though clearly it reflects on the assessor). Um... surely?
Tavia