After finding fame as the mauled zoo keeper in the hit Netflix documentary Tiger King, Kelci Saff Saffery has also found himself in another spotlight - a row over gender pronouns.

Saffery appears in the series as the victim of a tiger attack at Joe Exotic s zoo in Oklahoma who opts for amputation rather than two years of reconstructive surgery after the accident, and is back at work days after leaving hospital.

Throughout the series the good-natured keeper is referred to as she despite identifying as male since childhood.

Saffery, 34, said he didnt mind being called she in the series but the anger this misuse of pronouns had provoked online towards had been an eye-opener for him.

I dont think they intended to be cruel in any way, but dismissive or not, it still made a very, very loud statement about the way they feel about the (LGBT+) community, Saffery told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Personally it doesnt bother me ... (but) these titles and these pronouns, they matter just as much as calling someone by the wrong name. Its something that you shouldnt dismiss.

Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.

Netflix recently collaborated with LGBT+ advocacy group GLAAD on the #FirstTimeISawMe campaign to raise transgender visibility in the media. GLAAD found 38 transgender characters on television in 2019 which was up from 26 a year earlier.

But the misgendering of Saffery was a sore point for many.

They practically erased Saff as a trans man, said a blog by LGBT+ business network MyGWork, while news site LGBTQ Nation said Saffery was shown as a lesbian without any context.

Saffery said, however, he did not identify as transgender as he had not had any gender reassignment surgery or taken cross-sex hormones, but he lived as a man and used the pronoun he.

My children call me dad, they do not call me mom, said Saffery, who has three children, aged from nearly one to 11, with his longterm female partner.

I cant remember a time when I knew (anything) different... I just think it was obvious, what I wanted, the way I wanted to live and my family immediately supported that, he added in a phone interview from his new California home.