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Thursday, February 3, 2011

Do I Pass?

I've noted a trend that isn't recent but it is common among trans people online, and that's the habit of posting a picture of yourself online and asking the fatal question "Do I Pass?"  Recently a part of it included the tendency to get pissed off when people actually answered the question honestly, which I can only partially condemn because a lot of that advice really was pretty shitty.

But anyway, there's my basic opinion on the whole issue:  Most advice you get from people looking at your picture will be neither necessary nor accurate.  And there is a very good reason for that.

Side story.  I was I guess feeling masochistic one day and was reading up on the transphobic lesbian Internet.  Not that lesbians are by nature transphobic, of course, but there is a pretty large subsection of lesbians who have nothing good to say about trans people, whether trans men or trans women, and they can get pretty mean spirited and vicious.  You know, the kind of people who get angry when they are called "cis women" because somehow that constitutes denying them the right to self-label.  That type.

One was explaining why it is that trans men never, ever pass.  "Even after testosterone," she said, "they still look like women.  They always look like either women or adolescent boys."

Is it true?  No.  But it's also not surprising that she would think that.  Especially if you've met a lot of trans people, it's pretty easy to pick out vestigial traits from our assigned sex, certain facial features and body styles for instance.  If you were to line up a group of post-hormonal trans men and cis men, I would probably be able to point out with reasonable accuracy which ones were assigned female.

If you put those same men in a supermarket I happened to be at, though, I would be unlikely to notice.  It just plain wouldn't occur to me to pick these things out if I weren't looking for them.  So the lesbian blogger in question could have in theory walked past many a trans guy in her day without noticing, but she thinks she can always tell because she sees pictures of out trans men and notices their hips.  Actually, there is a trans woman I know who passes extremely well... most would go as far as to say she is a very attractive woman.  But if she were to for some reason ask me to point out masculine attributes left over from her assigned-male history, I could point some out.

In a round-about way, what I'm saying is this:  If you post a picture of yourself somewhere and ask if you pass, you're probably going to be told "no" regardless of how well you pass in reality, and people are probably going to point out a bunch of stuff you either can't or shouldn't change.  It isn't going to be accurate.  It may be useful if you are trying to polish your image a bit or if you really don't understand why you're not passing, but if you pass or are living as male and nobody is questioning that, there is no reason you need to ask the Internet for confirmation.

To use a personal example, remember that I am currently stealth in several aspects of my life.  I can't grow a lot of facial hair, I'm overweight (in other words, I have curves), I don't bind most of the time, I commit the cardinal sin of wearing jewelry, I smile a lot, I have alert eyes, and I have a babyface.  If I give you my picture there would be no way in Hell you would think I could possibly be stealth, but I am.

So don't rely on the Internet to tell you if you pass.  That's a statistical thing, it's largely based on attitude and, hell, dumb luck.  All the online judges in the world aren't going to help you with that.  What's important is how you are presenting yourself and how you feel about yourself.