u/hausinthehouse

The short of it is that people tend to give less of a shit about you being trans if you pass and even less so if you're pretty. I am pretty open about being trans, but as I started passing, women started treating me like any other woman and men started treating me like a woman, even people who knew me before transition and people to whom I'm openly trans. There is a difference between the sort of initial tentative acceptance people grant a visibly trans person and the unthinking acceptance people grant others they consider to be of a certain gender. The people with whom I get this most uncritically that I'm out to are people who I've met recently, which complicates the read a bit, but I think the point still stands.

I think we need to talk about this more because being stealth comes with some significant downsides - you have to work hard to keep your past secret and the fall of being outed is vertiginous. I am coming to think the best sort of transition is "need to know" - there's no need to tell your boss or co-workers, for instance, but I think letting others in your personal life know - without being outed by your body - is a true luxury.

The one caveat I'd like to carve out here is that I'm not straight and it is probably different for straight girls in particular. Men who are dating are a whole different beast and it's probably worth considering whether you want to narrow your pool to people who are cool with you having been AMAB.

Hi! This is super goofy and niche, but I was curious if anyone had any experience with this. My Lord and Savior Josh Allen is visiting Lambeau for the second time in his career and my brother and I were considering going. Do any other trans folks have experience going to Lambeau (or staying in Green Bay?) Does it matter that I'll be rooting for the Bills and not the Pack?

For context, I am a mostly-passing white trans woman in my 30s, though I would assume that some small percentage of people (5-10%) will eventually clock me, particularly if I'm sloppy with my voice. The game is in December, so I will presumably be wearing some sort of gender-obscuring parka and hat anyways.

eta: also I know I know but I am talking about american football, not transmasc night at the queer bar

My ear can no longer distinguish masculine from feminine voices so I have no idea. I'm pretty large so I don't want to go with a super high/forward voice but I'm not sure if this is too much of the lower/masc part of the blend.

I posted a cute posed photo and a handful of other photos where I looked like shit. I posted the photos when I looked like shit because it is important to know if you pass when you look like shit, and not just when you're wearing makeup and anglefrauding. It got downvoted to hell, but I got 10 comments saying I clearly passed. I reposted the cute posed photo alone, and it got hella upvotes and I am, at this moment, getting chaser DMs.

The incentives of transpassing are bad and warped by the sheer volume of chasers who are, let's be real, just jerking off to our photos. If you post a perfect, airbrushed photo with heavy makeup when you're already in the realm of passing, of course you're going to pass in a still image. The chasers will downvote the types of photos you actually need to see to evaluate if you're passing enough to go stealth, in which we look like real women - which is to say, images of women that are not catered to the male fantasy of women.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Hi! I am a not-fully-passing trans woman and I chose to dress down (jeans and a t-shirt, very minimal makeup) when flying home from Atlanta yesterday. A flight attendant referred to me as "sir", which threw me off a bit, and I said so, though not to make him feel guilty - I just dissociated for a few seconds and wanted to explain why that happened. I generally either get referred to using feminine honorifics or not gendered at all - I have very, very rarely gotten masculine honorifics this year, so I was just a little thrown. He seemed extremely apologetic, though I don't actually think it's a really big deal - it sucks for a second to be misrecognized, but I got over it pretty quickly. It does, unfortunately, happen. He apologized a bunch, though, and gave me a free snack cart item I didn't ask for as an apology. At this point I felt pretty embarrassed by the overkill and mostly just tried to avoid him for the rest of the flight.

How could I have corrected him in a way that wouldn't have made him feel like he done something *really* wrong? I didn't want to keep being gendered in a masculine way, but the world is the world, I get it.

Also, for other flight attendants, if you're not 100% sure about someone's gender, pleaaaaaaaaase just don't gender the person. Another attendant used "friend" for me after this interaction, and even if I personally find that mildly goofy, it feels much better than being misgendered.