> If someone assumed I was brown-eyed (when in fact I'm blue), I'm not going to write about it, because it is a non-issue.
(for the sake of argument I'm going to assume you're male). Imagine you moved to a country with a different language, and your given name sounded feminine in that language. Every time someone met you in person they would look at you strange and go "oh, I'm sorry! I thought you were a woman!" Perhaps you would be assigned to the female dormitory if you studied abroad there, and embarrassingly had to file paperwork to change that.
Would you want to make a small note on your email signature saying "I'm a man!"? I know I would. This is something you would write about, because it kind of is an issue.
These are the kinds of things female developers have to deal with all the time: "wait, you're here for the conference? As a developer? I'm sorry, I didn't realize!" "Okay, but you're not like a developer developer, right?" This shouldn't be the case. The annoying thing is that if a woman writes a note saying "I'm a woman!," they get put in a different class of developer than if they left it off.
The solution is to let it emerge naturally and subtly. Like the advice I've seen given to gays: don't have a big dramatic "coming out", just have a picture of your partner on your desk and let it come up naturally in conversation.
Sure, plenty of people will assume you're male (or straight) to start with. But keep writing good technical articles and don't hide your gender, let it come up naturally - just don't make a big fuss about it on day 1. If people read stuff you write, and appreciate your technical competence, and then realise you're female /once they already respect your technical ability/, then the attitude the OP complains about will change.
> The solution is to let it emerge naturally and subtly.
I reserve the right to let people know who I am at any time and to deliver it how I please. I don't want anyone to tell me I should "let it emerge naturally." If I want to do that then sure, that's very tactful. But sometimes I don't.
The author has an obligation to do nothing. It is up to the audience to change their perceptions.
If you open with angry social commentary about being a woman in tech, then the perception being complained about is in fact accurate and your audience has no obligation to change it.
As a counter example I have a good male friend, who, even being born in the US, still has a name most often mistaken as female.
He does not have any such note in his email, works in a well respected field with a much more even gender ratio and hasn't written about it, because as far as he is concerned it is a non-issue that only leads to harmless, sometimes funny mistakes.
Perhaps your example is just not perfect, but without a good non-gendered pronoun, this is hardly an easy problem to solve. And let's be serious, "he/she" sounds and reads awful, and "they" is dehumanizing. In many languages, ungendered items will takeon the male form, which seems to serve them well.
(for the sake of argument I'm going to assume you're male). Imagine you moved to a country with a different language, and your given name sounded feminine in that language. Every time someone met you in person they would look at you strange and go "oh, I'm sorry! I thought you were a woman!" Perhaps you would be assigned to the female dormitory if you studied abroad there, and embarrassingly had to file paperwork to change that.
Would you want to make a small note on your email signature saying "I'm a man!"? I know I would. This is something you would write about, because it kind of is an issue.
These are the kinds of things female developers have to deal with all the time: "wait, you're here for the conference? As a developer? I'm sorry, I didn't realize!" "Okay, but you're not like a developer developer, right?" This shouldn't be the case. The annoying thing is that if a woman writes a note saying "I'm a woman!," they get put in a different class of developer than if they left it off.