Reverse Stealth

[RedFox]

I just had a totally weird feeling/realization:  I feel like I'm trying to "pass" as a guy and worried about fitting in with the "other men".

The backstory is this:  I'm a 39 yo soldier currently in an all male sleeping bay (for the week) in the middle east.  This is the first time since I've acknowledged my trans state that I've been surrounded by so many men 24/7.  I know it's not realistic but I keep feeling like a wolf amongst the sheep (or is that the other way around?).

Has anyone else ever had the feeling that others would see that they were really a girl (or a guy for ftm) when they were trying to pass as their birth gender?  And yes, i'm still pre-transition obviously (unfortunately).  But I was never overly masculine and I know more and more of my mannerisms are sliding to the other side of the male/female spectrum.

Yes, I know it's not a realistic fear or thought, but it does feel weird.

[JoanneB]

If feeling like you are "faking being a guy" is the same, then yes. Also a fairly common feeling.

[Shantel]

Been in your boots SageFox, it gets really strange when one of your fellow grunts tells you that you have pretty lips!

[Padma]

Yup, I spent most of my life feeling like I was trying to "pass" as a man - and just barely with a C- at that. That's why I've given up on "passing" now .

[RedFox]

I've always felt like I was different from other guys, like I never quite fit in.  But this is the first time I've actually known I wasn't a guy and why - and being surrounded by them and being forced to consciously try to blend in is strange.

Funny thing happened today after I posted this.  I was walking to the PX and passing by the local vendors and the mini bazaar they had setup.  I was glancing around looking for possible gifts to take home, and yes discreetly checking out the dresses and jewelry for myself .  I was trying to be quick and sneak past them but of course they saw me looking and it was "Sir Sir!!" - when that didn't work they switched to "Ma'am, Ma'am!".  I think the shaved legs and androgynous look threw them off (wearing nondescript gym wear and sunglasses).  First time I've been ma'amed!  Shame it was only because they were desperate and can't tell us apart.  I wonder if I've already changed some of those subconscious gender markers though.  I know its silly, but it gave me hope that I may actually pass someday when I finally present as Sage, and not as ****.

[Phoeniks]

Has anyone else ever had the feeling that others would see that they were really a girl (or a guy for ftm) when they were trying to pass as their birth gender?  And yes, i'm still pre-transition obviously (unfortunately).  But I was never overly masculine and I know more and more of my mannerisms are sliding to the other side of the male/female spectrum.

Yeah, I have that. Or more accurately, I feel so strange that women think I'm like them, and men don't. And with women I've always had this "I just don't fit" -feeling. So many discussions are so gender-specific, and while I don't want to talk about cars or sport, I'm even less okay with talking about shopping or whatever else girls usually talk about. It's hard to fit into either groups and being socialized as a girl, I always had that nagging "do I fit into this gender with these clothes" -thought in the back of my head. I've felt so very awkward most of my life because of that.

[MadelineB]

I just had a totally weird feeling/realization:  I feel like I'm trying to "pass" as a guy and worried about fitting in with the "other men".
....
Has anyone else ever had the feeling that others would see that they were really a girl (or a guy for ftm) when they were trying to pass as their birth gender?  And yes, i'm still pre-transition obviously (unfortunately).  But I was never overly masculine and I know more and more of my mannerisms are sliding to the other side of the male/female spectrum.

Yes, I know it's not a realistic fear or thought, but it does feel weird.

I totally remember that feeling, SageFox. I was 44 when I recovered the awareness of myself that I had as a teen, and suddenly the awkward/not comfortable in my skin feeling mutated into an awareness that I was a woman pretending to be a man. I was ok with me, but it felt kind of 'Mission Impossible' going to work every day and pretending I was the role I had always presented as. Eventually (in my case, only 9 months after I acknowledge who I was) I couldn't keep containment on my inner female - people were seeing me as a woman as often as a man - and I had to come out the rest of the way, even at work.

Stay safe, love yourself, complete your mission, and look forward to when you can stop being stealth and just be the woman you are. Thank you for your service.

[ChaoticTribe]

Before I even accepted myself and began the coming out process, I was always very masculine. My parents would become upset when people took me for a male, but I liked it. The one thing I didn't like was when people tried to use it as an insult because I figure, "You wouldn't try to insult any average Joe by saying he looks masculine, so either I do or I don't, and if I do then don't play like it's a bad thing". Basically, I always wanted to be seen as a normal dude and a lot of people saw through it.

Unfortunately some of my behaviors came across as just wrong, for example I did get into trouble for things any other guy would have been less, well, hassled about. Plus when I came out to friends they mostly all just said, "yeah, I'm not surprised", or "I expected that". Which actually was a major relief and it pleased me that they'd seen the male me all along.



As long as no one is giving you trouble, I guess it doesn't matter. There are a lot of people who are quirky in some way. Some of us due to having differently gendered mannerisms, and others just for being 'too chatty', 'too quiet', 'artsy', or an infinite number of other things. So long as you're not in any sort of trouble, I would try to relax about it a little.

[Tristan]

i use to have that feeling before and i did get busted quite a bit. girls saying thinks like you seem like one of the girls. but only busted by girls. none of the guys ever figured it out. at best some thought i was gay,. unless your bunk maes are in the lbgt comunity or friends/related to someone in it, i think your in the clear. even more so with your bunk mates. as a medic contracter i never had issues with service members. even an LTC

[peky]

Been in your boots SageFox, it gets really strange when one of your fellow grunts tells you that you have pretty lips!

Wow, you really stir some old memories. Like, once we were by the river bathing, and one of the beasts commented: "you are are the onlyguy I ever seen with dimples in your ass, just like my gf!"

Talking about feeling vulnerable and un-stealthy and angry, while the rest of the baboons laughed their asses off

[big kim]

I thought I made a pretty good job of it  being a hard drinking bad ass biker,in reality very few people  were fooled.

[Michelle G]

I feel like I'm trying to "pass" as a guy and worried about fitting in with the "other men".

Yep, thats me!

I always have had way more female friends than male, and usually get the "yer not like the other guys" comments all the time from the girls I know, its been that way from preteen years till now.

Even though my customer base is male its still awkward for me to feel like I can fit in with the crowd...most guys see me as the "temperamental artist" so I quess I get a pass for being a bit different with smooth girly legs and cute bum

And now that my hair is getting longer I am starting to get all sorts of looks I never got before.

[Taka]

i still remember learning to cross my legs when sitting in order to pass better as a girly girl. it was difficult and didn't feel natural at all, but since all other girls did it, i thought i had to do it too. now i have all kinds of stupidly learnt girly mannerisms that come automatically when i talk to strangers, since i learned that people don't like girls who don't act like girls.

now that i'm trying to pluck off these layers of fake, i find that i switch all too easily between female, neuter/angrogyne, and male. i don't make sense at all some times, but i don't think it's such a bad thing. it's more me than overly feminine was, so i don't even care to smooth things over if i make an obvious mistake when trying to pass as a woman.

[badtranny]

That pretty much describes my life from the age of 9 till 42.

I went full-time in April of this year so the era of pretending is OVER!

[michelle]

Most of my life I just felt for some reason, I didn't fit in.   I didn't know the rules.   Before I could figure them out,  I moved to a totally different place,  and I had to try and figure life out all over again.   I sort of sleep walked through life, trying out this male activity and that male activity.   No matter how much I tried, I sat the bench on sports teams made up of farm and small town boys.  At five foot six in the fifties and sixties that was not really short, I wonder some how the girl in me didn't show through.  Of course I was no better at the girl's activities of jumping rope and hop scotch than I was at the guy sports,   but I wonder if i wasn't seen as more of a female that needed protection,  then a rough neck boy who threw himself into reckless abandon.    I wasn't really that breakable as others thought I was.

I wish that I would have been able to follow my own path as a youth and I would have been free to flourish as a girl and a woman.

[Carbon]

i use to have that feeling before and i did get busted quite a bit. girls saying thinks like you seem like one of the girls. but only busted by girls. none of the guys ever figured it out. at best some thought i was gay,. unless your bunk maes are in the lbgt comunity or friends/related to someone in it, i think your in the clear. even more so with your bunk mates. as a medic contracter i never had issues with service members. even an LTC

It's funny, some people thought I was gay when I was younger and I never really knew why beyond that I wasn't interested in dating, which always seemed like terrible reasoning to me. And I got called slurs aimed at gay people before too, including once by an adult who was supposed to be a caretaker. I was never that girly, I didn't identify with disney princesses (I didn't espicially not identify with them, either, but I was a kid who identified with Mr. Spock), or any of the other stereotypical stuff trans women are supposed to have done as children so I wonder what people were noticing and responding to. I guess bigots will find something.

i still remember learning to cross my legs when sitting in order to pass better as a girly girl. it was difficult and didn't feel natural at all, but since all other girls did it, i thought i had to do it too. now i have all kinds of stupidly learnt girly mannerisms that come automatically when i talk to strangers, since i learned that people don't like girls who don't act like girls.

oh my gosh same thing in reverse here
/chronic leg crosser