I don’t think it’s surprising at all
Mattie over at xoros.net recently posted A Funny Thing. From the post:
A funny thing, but it’s taken me a long time to adjust to the idea that I pass as cis. I mean, it’s been going on for over a year now but I still don’t expect it. It still surprises me. Not only that but I find I feel guilty towards other trans people who do not pass. So oddly I find myself having very mixed feelings about doing so. On the one hand, it does indeed rock, it’s just… incredibly pleasant to know that people see me. That they aren’t staring at me, well unless I’m out with my partner when they sometimes do stare but then they are staring at the lesbians. Which feels different to me. Actually it feels safer, believe it or not.
I completely agree with the sentiment that it’s a time-consuming adjustment from being seen/read as male (or whatever your assigned gender is) to seen/read as your identified gender. But I don’t think it’s funny or surprising. (I’m reading “funny” as “surprising” – please correct me if I’m wrong, Mattie!).
First, there’s the huge amount of momentum and time behind being read as male. I don’t know Mattie’s age, but for me I have 22 or 23 years of living as male, versus 11 months living full-time as Rebecca, and a year-ish of being androgynous and being read as male or female depending on the situation. Things are slowly shifting, but I still have the huge expectation that people will see me one way (male), and it’s often a surprise when there are specifically gendered situations and I’m unquestioningly placed in the ‘F’ category. There’s a moment of, “Wait, I want to be here, but doesn’t everyone else expect me to be over there?”
Mattie continues in her post about not feeling worthy of being able to pass, of “having undeserved luck.” I totally get that too, and think that also makes sense. I’m not going to discount the amount of work that goes into transitioning, of retraining myself to present as female after years of presenting as male, of the mental and physical energy it all takes. But a lot of it is also genetics – I’m very unhappy that my genetics left me with tons of body hair, ridiculous eyebrows, and a large frame (not to mention, y’know, XY in the first place), but I’m also very please that it gave me a beautiful head of hair, a good facial structure, and a frame that isn’t overbearingly large or (for lack of a better term) “male.”
I do think that, to people who aren’t trans (or somehow experiencing or expressing non-conformist gender expression/behavior) it might not make sense that passing as you desire doesn’t result in purely positive emotions. That there’s a mix of feelings, and it’s actually more complex than just, “Thank the gods that I’m passing!” As Mattie says, there are also political ramifications – being trans can certainly and appropriately be used to make a statement on the negatives of rigidly enforced gender roles. And there can be a nice feeling to being on the edge, to having had a wider range of experiences than most. I’ve definitely enjoyed moments where I’m able to “translate” experiences I had on testosterone to those while on estrogen, or the other way ’round. And sharing those, to some extent, inherently requires outing yourself.
That said, I’m going to completely agree with Mattie: Being able to pass does, indeed, rock.
Themocracy
Thank you for your words here, Rebecca
I did mean funny as in surprising. So you know, I was kind of aware of being trans from about 13, consciously aware from about 18 and then in denial to greater or lesser extents until I was about 33. I started transitioning about.. erm three years ago now. I think part of my surprise comes from having chosen a very unorthodox manner of transitioning. Unsupervised, undirected and self determined. I didn’t conciously seek to retrain my gender presentation, it did swing about wildly for a time until it settled down, but I never set out to conciously do anything with it but let it work itself out subconciously. I don’t have a sense of having lived as male so much as having lived closeted and in denial as a trans female… a subtle difference perhaps and one maybe only of semantics. I’m not sure. I sometimes think that I hit upon a state of mind that suited me perfectly by luck, rather than judgement and in no small part down to the cis women I know who gave me interesting insights into myself.
Given that this is not how anyone I have met went about it, or how anyone says you should go about it, I guess some of my surprise is that I ended up where I have. Also surprise that it… well… worked. Given that most of the fear one has before transition is all the internalised transphobic stuff about passing, self worth, life quality getting to the other end and finding that they were just that, unfounded fears. The surprise is a pleasant one, one of finding that one was being silly all along and there was less to fear than one thought, however huge they seemed at the time.
I think I am also surprised at the complex feelings I have about it all. No one really talks about this kind of thing. Transition is cast as the promised land, where everything is pure perfection and simplicity, if you can pass. Of course life and people are more complex than this!
I feel I have more to explore about these things and some of those you mention too. I shall think about it and blog
That makes sense.
Definitely! That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about, and always find frustrating in the media. Transitioning (and, particularly, “the surgery”) is always portrayed as this amazing, unambiguous thing. “Oh, I just can’t wait until the surgery! Why, I’m gettin’ the vapors just thinking about it! Fetch me my fainting couch!”
I’m not denying that some people feel that unambiguous or ambivalent, but not everyone does…
I think also some of my mixed feelings are to do with how I dislike the idea of passing politically. It is so loaded with ideas of deceit and dishonesty. I would far rather consider the time I spent appearing to be male as passing – as I was indeed then seeming to be something I was not.
Nineteen years (so my entire life) and people are still thrown off until they see my mustache. Small frame, five foot four inch height, no muscle mass, hair almost down my full back (four inches from the tail bone), then they see my face.
I’ve had my friend’s father see me from behind and say “*Friend’s name*, you know you can’t have girls in your room. Oh, it’s *my name*, sorry.
I’ve actually used the urinal and had someone in shock. “How are you doing that?” they say.
Someone thought they walking into the wrong bathroom, someone’s daughter said “Daddy, that lady has a mustache.”
Though, I have been made fun of several times; rocks, even barbeque sauce thrown at me (who throws BBQ sauce, seriously?), being hit on from people on the street (just once though), and the old “YOU’RE REALLY A MAN!” thing which gets really, really old, really, really quickly.
Though nothing gets on my nerves more than the man-hugs (all straight and cis as far as I know). Sure, I don’t mind it from some men that are my friends, but when someone I don’t like hugs me, it fills me with fury, especially from behind. They used to whisper in my ear too!
Though, I’m sure you’ve had it rough as well.
If my high school life sucked so much why do I miss it?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of touch being consensual (or not!). There’s a great piece about that in Yes Means Yes (which is also worth reading for other reasons). Here’s an interview with the author of the piece. Basically, I’ve had a few people I’m a little friendly with come up to me recently and give enthusiastic hugs, and there’s sort of no socially acceptable way to opt out, to make clear you’re not interested.
I’d imagine that, being short, you also have the cultural expectations that short=young or short=female or short=immature, all of which add up to others respecting body autonomy even less…
What are you missing about high school? Can you recapture any of that in your life now?
The people who would hug me were also the people who made fun of me for seeming feminine. So these people were not even on neutral terms to me.
One example went like this: I was eating my lunch (snack foods but it was lunch time), one of the people who usually gives me crap comes and gives me a hug, then says “Yeah baby you like that? (or something very similar)” then yells “YOU’RE A MAN!”
Some of it could have started in my freshman year, when I would change in the stall and the others would call me gay. But they were the ones who wanted to see other guys in their underwear. Sophomore year onwards I changed in a unisex, single use bathroom
I know it was the hair, but I didn’t think I should have had to cut it for them if I didn’t want to cut it for me.
I was harassed verbally, physically, and sexually by those people even if you disregard the hug.
Even if people I didn’t know too well hugged me I don’t think I would mind.
But I do miss several of my friends who I don’t see anymore or very often. And I miss most of my teachers, one of which seemed to shed a tear when he found out I was the last in my family he would teach (my sister and I, but he said we were pleasures to teach despite being so different).
I have to make arrangements with the teachers before hand or else I can’t even enter the building, and I can’t get ahold of some of my old friends.
Thank you for your concerns.
I’m sorry your time in high school – and since then – has been so difficult. I think high school can really easily become both a refuge and a prison… It certainly was for me, albeit in different ways. I hope you’re finding areas of safety and security post-high school, too.
Don’t be.
It was high school when things were so rough, but the bathroom story and the little girl I thought were pretty funny.
The only thing that has been difficult since I graduated is all the self doubt, much of the time I feel like I don’t even know who I am.
When ever I fill out a job application, I always leave the gender blank. In New Hampshire, they can’t legally ask that when hiring.
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