The other is travelling between countries. I find that in one day I can go from passing, to mostly passing, to mostly not, without me changing behaviour or appearance. It totally depends on the culture where I am, rather than me, on those days I think – how people expect a woman to look, how gendered their expectations of people are.

Anyway, these kind of led me to the idea that I can really not do much about passing in some senses – it either happens or not and I can’t really control how people are going to perceive me. So I go for feeling I look nice in the mirror for myself and trying to feel confident enough to just be myself, that’s good enough to just get on with life

Personhood inertia is an awesome way to describe it It completely chimes with how that experience works for me too.

I guess I’m also just in this very weird space where I don’t really know how well I’m passing. I’ll catch myself in a mirror and think, “Damn, I look good,” one moment and, “Who is HE?!” the next. Likewise, I’ll get “ma’am”ed at the checkout line at the grocery store or while taking my mom to the hospital one day, and my boob grabbed by some guy who thought I was in drag the next…

Specifically thinking about passing with people I knew pre-transition, I’ve framed it in my mind as ‘personhood inertia.’ That is, people’s concept of others has a certain inertia and changing that concept takes a lot of time and effort. Likewise, the bigger the concept, the bigger the time/effort: If I told my friends/family/coworkers I was getting a drastic haircut or joining a gym, it might take a little getting used to for them, but not much. Changing religions? Probably more time. Changing _genders_? Well, that’s up there for most people in terms of how much time/energy it takes to push through all the inertia of thinking of someone as male or female.

( I hope that makes sense. )

So yeah, I’m not completely shocked that this guy had trouble seeing me as a woman, but – as you said – it’s trying…

-R

One of the weirder things with passing (plus extremely trying) is how people who knew you before have such trouble shifting their old perception of you. A complete stranger will see you as you are now, while the old aquaintance is seeing their memory of you. It seems to overide what is in front of their eyes. Really vexing! And yes, somehow it feels worse too I guess it takes them time to see what everyone else sees, perhaps they have to want to as well? Every now and then you notice someone making that shift… although it takes a few occurances for it to stick I think.