I'm accidentally stealth.

For those of you who don't know, "stealth" is when you live as your target gender (in my case, male) without disclosing that you are trans.  I've never been stealth before.  I'm not on testosterone so I assume that I don't pass.  And in most cases, I don't.  So recently I spent a lot of time arguing that trans women make too many assumptions about how well trans men pass.  One of the comments recently was something like "short hair, binding, and swagger and trans men pass, even pre-T."  I still stand by my assertion that this isn't necessarily true.

Transsexual differences in brain structure...

Found this article today through my feed reader... they've done yet more studies on trans brains to see if the structure more closely resembles brains of cis males or cis females.  We already know that in the brains of dead trans women, there is a difference in the area of the brain called the stria terminalis compared with cis males.  In other words, it's closer to perceived sex.  Interestingly I've seen this study quoted a lot by gay men to justify homosexuality, which is weird because there was no difference between the stria terminalis when it came to sexuality.  This is a relatively old and well-known study, and if I recall right they did do the same on trans men and found similar results.  The brain differences were there regardless of whether or not the trans person in question was on hormones.

But I digress.  They have a new study, two new studies actually, based on four particular areas of the white matter of the human brain in which males and females differ significantly, and in fact it can be done while one is still alive.  One study dealt with trans men, the other with trans women.  In each study, roughly 20 cis men, cis women, and trans people had their brains scanned to look at these four particular areas.

A list of things I hate being told by non-FTMs...

Because sometimes I just need to write a list and sometimes when the holiday season is over I am forced to mull over the massive list of things people have said to me that are what-the-fuckery at its finest.  Some of them, of course, aren't that obviously obnoxious, so maybe this will help for the SOFFAs out there.

(Or not.  I'm only one guy, after all, and it's inevitable a lot of people don't consider this stuff irritating as I do.  Say them to me, though, and you have a problem.)

• Personal questions when you don't know me.  Hell, even if you do.  Stuff like what medicine I'm on (if any) what surgeries I'm having (if any) and how I have sex are none of your business.  In fact, in most of these cases it wouldn't even occur to people that they were any of their business if I weren't trans.