Jacey, look, sorry, I don’t want to start a big fight here. You're not someone I want to quarrel with, but, sorry, I think you’re judging some things here that you’re not in a position to judge. You’re commenting on a situation that you’re not actually in yourself.
When I wrote my original comment, I was only thinking of transfolk who "pass" 100% as female or male, in that people won't know they are transgender on first glance and assume they are cis.
Well, then, you’re talking about me. But you don’t know what my life is like.
My experiences with people have convinced me that absolutely nobody who doesn’t know me personally cops on that I’m trans. So I pass 100%, right? Nope. I might pass 2 or 3%.
It’s like this: some time ago I went to a city some distance away for a job interview, a place where nobody knows me. I was walking around town during the afternoon, when all of a sudden I flew into a panic: it was 4 PM and the kids were out of school, and I have good reason to worry about schoolkids. Then I remembered: these kids don’t know me, so I’m OK. So I relaxed. I pass.
But why was I worried to begin with? Because in my home town, the kids do know me, and I’ve had some harassment from them, and I do my best to stay away from them. It doesn’t matter what you look like. If people know you, you’re not passing.
And how much of your time do you spend among people who don’t know you and among whom you pass? For me, it might be 2 or 3% of my time. Perhaps for other transpeople, that amount of time might vary. But did you come out at your job? In that case, you’re not passing at your job. Or maybe you got booted out of your job when you came out. If the boss doesn’t like transpeople, it doesn’t matter how “pretty” you are. Wherever you’re known as trans, and more than likely that will be most places, you’re not passing, regardless of what you look like.
The situation you are talking about, a T-girl getting beaten up by a couple of hooligans, do you think that situation would carry out the same way if said T-girl was "passable" as a cis-woman?
No—although it could perhaps turn out worse. Consider: not long ago, here in my town, as I was doing my errands one morning, I happened to run into four young lads in an isolated spot. As soon as they saw me, the verbal harassment started. One thing to know about passing T-girls: they may escape some harassment as T-girls, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get it as women. And that harassment they’re getting as women could escalate, if somehow their harassers realize that they’re trans.
My feeling after this incident was that these lads didn’t realize I was trans. Although I’m out in the open in this town, not everybody knows me. So these lads probably took me for a ciswoman. But if they’re the sort who will harass a woman that’s past sixty, half their size and who they’ve got outnumbered four to one, what do you think they’d do to a T-girl?
Which is why I have to be careful in this town. E.g., I avoid the center of town at times when the soccer’s on in the pubs and the young lads are taking in the drink. Certainly not all of them know me, but some of them would. Passing 100% doesn’t free you from having to worry about your safety—mainly because you’re not passing 100%. You still have to be smart: do your business in town at times that the schoolkids and the young lads are occupied elsewhere--because I have had harassment, verbal and physical, from young males.
Regarding the North Carolina law, if transwomen "passed" as cis using the ladies' room, would there be any outrage about "men" dressing up as women and rampant fears running amok of "male" predators in the ladies' room?
Would she still be seen as a perverted "man" who's a danger to womenfolk while using the ladies' room if she passed as cis? . . .
Yes. She might even be seen as a greater danger, given that she’s not readily identifiable. She passes. She can sneak in and nobody’s any the wiser until she’s created all sorts of mayhem.
Isn’t that what the most paranoid of our enemies think? They think that trans rights allow any man to put on a dress and some lipstick and sneak into the ladies’ room. Now we all know how ludicrous that is: your average guy isn’t going to come close to looking like a woman by putting on a dress and some lipstick.
But that’s how idiotic and paranoid are worst enemies are. And if they had the idea that all over the country there’s thousands, even millions of “men” getting away with going into the ladies’ room, they’d be even more paranoid.
And consider my situation in my little town: I’m at a play. It’s the intermission. I need to pee. And so do scores of other women. So I take my place in the queue. But it’s a small town and I’m not in hiding. Chances are there’s somebody in that queue who knows me, and suppose she objects to my being there. And suppose she lets everybody else know what she objects to. It doesn’t matter what I look like. I can pass 100% and still have trouble in the loo—because I’m not actually passing. Which means that’s the sort of situation I might consider trying to avoid, and I do in fact try to avoid it. Passing 100% doesn’t mean you have all the freedom a ciswoman has.
There’s a word for T-girls who pass: we’re called “traps”. And when you’re a “trap”, you need to be careful, although not all are. Men don’t like being fooled. If they come on to you and later on find out you’re not what you appear to be, they can get mad. A T-girl can end up dead that way.
I don’t socialize a whole lot myself, I’m not the type for pubs and dances, etc. But when I am out, if I find a man hitting on me, I know I need to be careful. I don’t flirt with men and I don’t lead them on. If a T-girl’s obviously a T-girl, a man can decide whether or not he wants to flirt with her. If she’s not obviously a T-girl, she needs to look ahead and consider the consequences. She may look like a ciswoman, but that doesn’t give her a ciswoman’s freedom.
And sometimes I wonder, too: in my town I’ve had men open doors for me, carry stuff for me, stop their car to let me across the road, etc., and I wonder, if they later find out I’m a T-girl, how are they going to react?
What exactly am I supposed to do? If a guy’s holding a door for me, should I say, “Oh, no, you don’t want to hold the door for me. I’m a tranny.”? If I’m being accused of “supporting the binary system”, am I under an obligation to always keep people aware that I’m trans?
Because if I am, probably just about everybody will be guilty of that offense often enough. One of the first things I learned: how easy it is to pass in certain circumstances. In my early days, I was with a friend of mine (although perhaps I shouldn’t say “friend”, since she recently told me we’re no longer friends, but that’s another story) who doesn’t pass well at all—although oddly enough, she thinks she does.
But she taught me a valuable lesson: if you’re out and about, you walk through the streets with confidence. The people around you aren’t always on the lookout for transpeople in their midst. They’ve got their minds on their own business, and they’re not paying any attention to you. So if you just go about your business, don’t draw any attention to yourself, you’ll be OK. We were walking right through the fat middle of Dublin and not a soul was paying any attention to us.
Which means that even if you’re only 10% passable, you can pass sometimes. Somebody might catch a glimpse of you out of the corner of their eye, but if they see long hair and a dress, if they think anything at all, they’ll think, “Woman”. So my friend was passing. Was she supporting the binary system? Was she under some obligation to shout out in the street to all and sundry, “Hey, people, I’m trans!”?
It is this very perception people have, judging people by their outward appearance, accepting them as male or female, is what I believe, supports the binary system in that people believe there is only "male" or "female", that's it.
First of all, it’s not my fault if people judge others by their outward appearance. I’ll grant you that they do. Not my fault. But Jacey, as I pointed out in my earlier post, I think you’re misinterpreting the situation here. The binary system is not simply “male-female”. It is actually, “Male is male, and female is female, and the one is the one and the other is the other, and the one can never be the other”.
You’re simplifying things here: just because a binary person sticks with male-female doesn’t mean they’re supporting the binary system. As I said earlier, we’re turning it on its head. The one can be the other. That’s why the haters hate us. Because we don’t in fact support their cherished system. We constitute a denial of the system in our own way, just as NB people constitute a denial of it in their own way.
Here’s one: in the days before I came out I was talking to some people around town just to give them advance warning of what I was planning to do. One man I was talking to was OK with that. He’d already met a transperson. He said something like, “You’d see him dressed one day as a man and the next day as a woman.” Clearly somebody NB, right?
But this man was OK with transpeople. I doubt he’s even aware of the difference between binary and non-binary. In his eyes, it’s the same thing: it’s something different from his system. He doesn’t understand the fine points. But he doesn’t care. He’s open-minded enough not to be bothered by a challenge to his system, whatever that challenge might be.
And yes, of course cisgender people will react differently, will refuse to accept transgender people as one of them, that's only if they find out that the person is transgender. If they never knew or had any suspicion the person was trans, they would not doubt their standing in society as a cis-woman/man.
And here we’re touching on the crux of that matter—when they find out that somebody is trans. We talk about “stealth”. Is that even possible today with all the electronic trail that you’re going to leave behind you? How many transpeople are actually successfully living stealth?
I’m not. I’m out in the open. This town knows me. Being known as trans doesn’t have to have anything to do with what you look like. Outside my little town I can go stealth. But probably 97-98% of my time is spent in this town. No such thing as stealth here.
The sobering reality is that not every transperson has the privilege or lucky genes to be able to "pass" 100% consistently as cis and because people don't "pass" consistently as cis, this goes against the binary system, cis-people feel threatened by their existence and the wild, outrageous fears start spiralling out of control.
It has nothing to do with whether you’re passing or not because virtually no one is. It has to do with the people around you. There are lots of good people out there. There are lots of them in this little town of mine. Not all cispeople feel threatened and their fears don’t spiral out of control. Not everybody in the Western world is dumb, ignorant, narrow-minded redneck.
But when dumb, ignorant, narrow-minded rednecks harass people in whatever way, I'm not "supporting their system". I'm not responsible for what they do, and I find it odd that I'm being accused of supporting a system that's cost me as much as anybody.
We remember Leelah Alcorn. I had parents just like hers, and if they had found out I was trans, knowing them as I do and knowing myself as I do, I think the chances are at least 90% that I would have ended up like Leelah. And yet some people see me as supporting that system.
What kind of visibility is there out there for transgender folks? What is the common theme running through most of them? They are all white, skinny, some of them rich, beautiful/handsome and they are "passable".
What are you talking about, Jacey? Are you talking about our exposure in the media? Well, yes, you’re certainly right. But that’s not all the visibility we have. Lots of transpeople are coming out now, and not all of them by any means look like Janet Mock. The media will certainly promote one view, but that’s not the reality for most of us and that’s not the reality that most cispeople see.
I heard a transguy rant on YouTube, that transmen pass more quickly the longer they are on HRT. E.g. many will look like a cisgender male on X years of T. While, yes, a vast majority of transmen will pass as cis-male, what's problematic is the assumption that all transmen want to look like cisgender male. . .
Transmen who say problematic things like this, it means the younger generation of FTMs will believe they will pass when they are on T, that it will magically happen. When they don't, fear, anxiety and insecurity reach new highs. . .
It is my strong opinion that there is this invisible expectation that transgender folks must strive towards this "cisgender" ideal of presentation is damaging and harmful, to expect others to become "passable" and eventually go stealth. Not everyone's goal is to strive towards that ideal of being "passable" or to go stealth, most, if not all, strive to be happy and comfortable in their own skin.
And here I would agree with you all the way. It’s like this, Jacey, there are lots of A-holes in this world, and a fair few of them are TS. I’ve run into them myself. And I get the impression that lots of you on this forum have caught a lot of grief from TS A-holes. I’ll make this pledge to you: if one of them ever shows up on this forum, you folks can just step back out of the way and let me deal with them. And I think you’ll agree that once I’ve finished with them, there won’t be anything left for you to say.
Sometimes I think I’m washed up, Jacey. I’m old and tired and past my sell-by date, and I am sick to death of the unhappiness that we humans cause each other. I think probably 90% of the unhappiness we have in this world is totally unnecessary. It’s stuff we inflict on each other for no good reason. And I’m tired of that. People need to learn to deal with their own inadequacies and not inflict them on other people.
We shouldn’t judge other people. One thing I’ve discovered is that I’ve fallen into a bit of a trap and I don’t know how to get out of it. What’s it like being NB? Can you accept that you’re not male or female, that you’re somewhere in between or somewhere outside, and be happy enough with what you are—assuming that people will leave you alone to be what you are?
That’s not possible for me. What I needed to be was cis female, no if’s, and’s or but’s about it. I didn’t get that, and I can’t accept it. I pass 2%/100%. Great. So what does that mean? It means that on rare occasion I get to experience life just as a “real woman” would. And though on the one hand, it makes me deliriously happy, on the other hand it’s immensely sad because it shows me what I’ve missed out on.
I’m not like a lot of other binary people. Some will insist, “I’m a man” or “I’m a woman”. I find I’m unable to kid myself. I’m not what I should have been. That’s all there is to it. And on those rare occasions when I manage to get a taste of the life I needed to have, it just makes me feel phony, like a “pretend woman”. You might on rare occasion fool somebody into thinking you’re 100% woman, but you’ll never fool yourself.