Do any of us really pass? Ever?

[Jess42]

See that nail? You just hit it on the head.

I said to my wife, we bring our children up to be tolerant and free of prejudice, so why doesn't that apply to me? How come everyone else has to be treated with respect for who and what they are, but when it's a member of the family, suddenly that all goes out the window?

I have two grown-up daughters, age 23 and 25. the younger one is training to be a doctor, so she's used to dealing with all kinds of physical and psychological conditions. I'd love to be able to discuss my gender issues with them because I think they should know who their father really is, and also it would explain an awful lot of stuff that's gone on in our family that they have misunderstood, simply because they never knew the truth. My wife says that's just being selfish on my part and burdening them with my problems. I can see her point: they've both got plenty to deal with in their own lives without having to cope with my ->-bleeped-<-.But at what point can I stop lying and pretending? At what point does it actually become better just to tell the truth??

I don't think it would be selfish at all Carlita. On your wife's part though, I think it maybe kind of selfish for her to force you to supress yourself. You'll know when the point comes that you can't supress it anymore. Sometimes when someone loves us, they fall in love with an image no matter what that image is at the time. People get awfully protective of those images, no matter who we really are, and do not want to give them up.

[kathyk]

But at what point can I stop lying and pretending? At what point does it actually become better just to tell the truth??

I think you know and your wife both know the answer.  The time is now.  Trust me, it doesn't help to wait, and all you get for it is older.

[Jess42]

I think you know and your wife both know the answer.  The time is now.  Trust me, it doesn't help to wait, and all you get for it is older.

And don't forget wrinklier, lazier, fatter and so on. Not to mention those feelings definately get stronger with time or they do with me anyway.

[suzifrommd]

I'm late to this discussion, but maybe my experiences will help, Carlita.

I'm giving up my wife, and my close relationship with my kids (though I will make sure I stay in their lives if it's the last thing I do...) I've risked my job and many of my friendships.

And I was pretty sure I wouldn't pass. I'm a clumsy oaf with the kinesthetic talents of a quadriplegic hippopotamus. I have a huge receding forehead, a thin area at the top of my head that screams "old man" and body hair everywhere.

I was willing to chuck it all, even if it meant I was going to live as a non-passing trans woman. Of course at that point I had met probably a half-dozen non-passing transwomen, most of whom were very pleased with their transitions.

Well I'm not a blackbelt in blending by any means, but I have notched three posts already in the "you know you really pass when..." thread and I haven't even been fulltime for two months.

Don't know if this helps, but despite what I'm losing and risking, I don't regret any of it.

Good luck, Carlita.

[MadeleineG]

I said to my wife, we bring our children up to be tolerant and free of prejudice, so why doesn't that apply to me? How come everyone else has to be treated with respect for who and what they are, but when it's a member of the family, suddenly that all goes out the window?

Really separates out the "NIMBY liberals", doesn't it?

Maddy

[Violet Bloom]

I've found so far that the only people I've revealed my intentions to who weren't fully positive and understanding were my immediate family.  It seems that they believe everyone else will be uncomfortable with it and make them feel embarrassed about it.  I've only told my mother about it but the others are sensing what's going on by way of my slowly shifting appearance and mannerisms and displaying exactly the same behaviour that she has.  What's more interesting is that they ask her what's going on instead of raising the issue to my face.  The other day I took a risk on an evening out with my brothers and my dad and wore what I thought was my least-feminine and least feminine-flattering piece of wardrobe, a pair of very plain, square denim capri pants.  There was no mention at any point about it and they acted completely normal as did everyone else we knew who was there.  The next day my mother reported to her dismay that they had later confronted her asking why I had been wearing 'her' pants and that they were extremely displeased about it.  (The pants were my own and wouldn't have fit her.)

Be certain of whether what your wife is saying is true concern for your well-being or is based on some sort of personal shame she thinks will be pressed onto her by others.  Obviously you should be somewhat sympathetic to her own feelings but she needs to understand and be aware of the difference.  I think you know how this is going to go if she won't allow you to do what is best for your own health.  It may end badly but you can't put off tackling the issue head-on.

I went into my situation prepared to lose absolutely everyone over the issue.  Instead I am finding some surprisingly strong allies.  If my family situation blows up over this then I will find a way to move on and not stress too much about it.

To address your original question, yes, many people do pass (although I think it can depend a lot on location).  I haven't caught a single strange glance in all the times I've been out fully en femme, even using my horribly untrained voice to order coffee.  If anyone figured it out they didn't say anything.  Maybe everyone knows - I don't know, and I don't particularly care so long as I'm not being treated rudely.  Maybe I'm lucky and I'll do just fine.  But passing isn't really your question - the issue is with what your family thinks about it.  Once that is out of the way, the outcome good or bad, I think you will find that a lot of your anxiety around passing will pass.  Accepting that you will have to face some conflict and gaining to courage to handle it is critical.

[mrs izzy]

I have been around a long time and have heard this "do i pass" all the time. I now understand "who cares?" I sure do not and what is to pass?  Pass as Barbie? Pass as Fabio (for our ftm brothers)? Me i worked on me inside. I am who i am and no more or less and do not care a dang what others might think.

Also on your married side. Trust me i have been there. Heard all the good and nasty of what a spouse can bring. Looking back now i can say the most devestating bagage i was carring in my life was my wife. She was the most supportive (i thought) when i was just allowed to be Izzy part time and on 4 years HRT, but soon as i decided to go full time and she cared more what others will think she turned into my worst enemy. The said part i fell under her spell that everyone was and will be all good. If we only had hind sight. I tell anyone now who is married make a solid excape plan if everything goes south and enjoy your marriage with you are the exception more then the rule.  Do not wait till it ends to know what your next move is, thats what happend to me i belived in love is stronger then this, but in my case it was for me but not her.

Wish you luck and if you have to walk away it will all be good. Will hurt like ell inside but trust me if you keep yourself on the path you need to walk things are always possible.  Just a fyi i personaly was married for 25 yrs when all went to ell. And today i am married to the most wonderful man in the work and see now what my X really wanted for me to give up. My inner peace and happiness.

Hugs
Izzy

[Silvermist]

My wife says that's just being selfish on my part and burdening them with my problems. I can see her point: they've both got plenty to deal with in their own lives without having to cope with my ->-bleeped-<-.

I've found that in many cases, selfishness is relative and depends on perspective. And in those cases, accusations of selfishness are just emotional manipulations (i.e., guilt trips) when, in reality, all parties involved are being selfish. The expectation is that the weakest party will be the one to completely give into the other(s) because compromise is not considered to be acceptable.

Your wife is not wrong: You have needs and desires that are diametrically opposed to hers, and by wanting her to deal with them while you fulfill them is fundamentally selfish. But isn't your wife selfish for wanting you to live a lie and live in misery in order to respect her wishes? So two of you are more or less equally selfish.

I don't know if you're willing to compromise, but if she isn't, then your marriage has no future, I'm sorry to say. Marriage is founded on compromise, and allowing one partner to get his/her way without compromise is morally wrong.

[Jennygirl]

Yes of course we pass!! A lot!

I agree that some do get lucky in terms of passing, but I realized early on that if I want to pass visually I will have to be extremely dedicated to my presentation.  It's not something I can entirely be proud of... because it requires paying so much attention to the way I look and at some point I know that turns unhealthy. But that is another topic.

My endo brought up an interesting point to me... He thinks most mtf's have some level of obsessive compulsiveness in their personality. Almost like obsessive gender compulsiveness. Maybe it has some merit, I dunno. I know I am definitely partly OCD.... I inherited it from my mother.

Carlita- I agree w/ the others and think you should tell your daughters. They are old enough to really understand. And while it's true they probably have a lot on their own plates, I just don't feel like at this point in their life your gender presentation is going to make that much of a difference.. Unless you are living with them or seeing them every day!

Anyway that is just my $0.02... take it worth a grain of salt!

[StellaB]

Not wishing to upset anyone but passing is so overrated.

Yes, for sure, you avoid the stigma of being trans on some superficial level, but on a deeper level? Internally?

I'm just shy of 6ft and considerably heavier (fatter) than the OP. I can pass, I often do pass but then again I don't always make the effort and it doesn't make that much difference anyway. I get much less stick for being trans than I do for being overweight, and even then it's still a minority against those who accept me for me the complete human being.

I didn't always pass. In fact when I first started coming out I resembled someone close to a gender confused member of the Goombay Dance Band.

Women have thicker skins than men, both physically and figuratively and if you're obsessing over what other people are going to think about you it might be worth taking a step back and asking yourself 'Am I ready for all this?'

The path to womanhood is a path on which you will be judged on your appearance, on the way you dress and present yourself, and on the way you behave. It's not going to be honey and roses all the way. That thicker skin will very quickly become a necessity.

My not bothering doesn't necessarily mean I don't make the effort with my appearance and dress like a chavette. It just means I dress to suit the occasion, for comfort, and when i go out into the wide world I'm not looking round at everyone and trying to figure out if they can clock me or figure out that I'm trans.

That's way too much drama. If people clock me they clock me. What they say and do is a reflection of who they are, it doesn't say anything about who I am. I'm responsible for my own issues. I don't have time or the inclination to accept responsibility for other people's issues as well. I am not Mother Theresa.

Transitioning means being prepared to step outside your comfort zone. Why are you transitioning anyway? If not to be yourself, to be accepted for yourself, for reasons of fulfillment and happiness right?

Comfort is easy, but happiness requires effort and commitment. The path to happiness is beset by challenges, unpleasant conversations, facing up to issues, and overcoming obstacles.

[Tessa James]

Great question and I might ask it a bit differently; does anyone pass 100%?  As many posts indicate, those friends, family, and acquaintances who knew us before transition are certainly going to be able to clock or read most of us during and after transition.  Being less passable does not resign us to living in fear or not transitioning but it sure can make it a greater challenge.  That fear of being unpassable and the typical shame and self loathing held me back for decades.  Not starting transition earlier is one of my only regrets.  Unless we are fortunate to start early. before puberty say, we will have a life before transition that we may have as baggage for the rest of our lives.  I simply chose to live in the sunlight and accept who I was and who I may become.  Our prior lives do not go away do they?  We know that some of us may be troubled by old photos or memories but a healthy integration or at least recognition of our journey is important to many of us.

Tessa James

[Carlita]

Thank you so, so much, ladies. There's so much compassion here, and also common sense. I wish I could reply to every single post individually - because every one of them has made me think, or comforted me, or just forced me to be more honest about myself and my position - but right now there isn't time.

So, once again, THANK YOU ... reading these posts has merely made me even more aware than I already was of what a special resource's Susan's is and how lost I would be without it.

[vegie271]

See that nail? You just hit it on the head.

I said to my wife, we bring our children up to be tolerant and free of prejudice, so why doesn't that apply to me? How come everyone else has to be treated with respect for who and what they are, but when it's a member of the family, suddenly that all goes out the window?

I have two grown-up daughters, age 23 and 25. the younger one is training to be a doctor, so she's used to dealing with all kinds of physical and psychological conditions. I'd love to be able to discuss my gender issues with them because I think they should know who their father really is, and also it would explain an awful lot of stuff that's gone on in our family that they have misunderstood, simply because they never knew the truth. My wife says that's just being selfish on my part and burdening them with my problems. I can see her point: they've both got plenty to deal with in their own lives without having to cope with my ->-bleeped-<-.

But at what point can I stop lying and pretending? At what point does it actually become better just to tell the truth??

If they were 3 AND 5 I could see her point

at 23 and 25 no way - they are adults and should be mature enough to take it, if not, you did not do the job you say you did in bringing them up to be tolerant. they should be able to take it.honesty should work.

[pebbles]

I can't speak for others, but I'd say No, We don't... I'm pretty passable and I can tell you even I don't pass all the time My avatar is a far approximation of what I look like on an everyday basis, It's not just voice smell and appearance tho Some people pick up the oddest hints or read you via the weirdest tells,  I've told people who knew me for several months but I didn't tell them. I've asked them what clues gave me away after I revealed my past. one or two I knew about and I wondered if I'd given myself away and it wasn't any great surprise others were more surprising.

A woman I work with called Jo suspected after I accidentally inhaled a tiny tiny amount of Sodium Azide (a Toxic chemical as dangerous as cyanide) That caused a severe choking fit followed by me vomiting onto the floor.
My voice is passable and is also pretty stable, I cough sneeze and even yelp in a way that doesn't sound at all masculine, however super extreme physical acts do cause me to loose control briefly and make deep indisputably male sounding "Hurk! Urgk!" sounds, Vomiting, Coughing my lungs out, begin strangled and punched in the gut all made me make said noise.

Another friend of mine Sarah who is also the most observant person I know, apparently picked up on a few things that made her suspect, The fact I wore Boy boxers despite confessing that I had no boyfriend, Combined with what she described as a Series of peculiar Idiosyncrasies in my body language that seemed at odds with my personality. She said my gestures were very "Tom-Boyish" Yet while despite not begin a girly girl. These traits seemed at odds with my personality. Implying to her that perhaps even if I wasn't trans then I might have been raised as a boy for some obscure reason.
This combined with the scars she saw on my body, And what finally clinched it was when I admitted that I didn't have periods because I didn't have ovaries and didn't want to explain what happened to them.

Everyone else apparently had no clue, which made up 95% of people in addition both Jo and Sarah admitted to me that when they first met me they had no clue it was only after begin around me for a significant length of time they noted anomalies.

I imagine it's the same for most of us, You have cursory readings of your gender then those more in-depth understandings and presumptions about a person.

[Just Shelly]

My wife's convinced that the only possible 'after' would be a humiliating disaster. As far as she is concerned, no one born male who has a sex-change ever looks, or sounds, or acts remotely like a 'real' woman. If they think they do, they're conning themselves. If anyone else tells then they do, they're simply telling a white lie to be polite.

So I come back to the question ... based on your personal experiences of yourselves and others, are we kidding ourselves, or can we really just transition, find our true selves, be accepted as women and get on with our lives?

I think this myself sometimes!! Where I work I am stealth and I am stealth for most of my life outside of work as well....just with people who need to know.

I wonder often if this is the day I go into work and everyone knows!! I wonder do they already know!! but are just being nice!! Then I hear a comment that makes me realize...there is no way anyone knows. There is one guy in particular that is fairly blunt, some of the comments from him aren't to flattening but have nothing to do with being trans....just more because I am a woman! It's still frustrating none the less!

Most times I don't wonder what people think or see....it's only days I'm not liking myself too much....is when I am more sensitive to what people may say or how they look at me.

I can say in my almost 3 years of being full time I have never had anyone say anything to me referring to the fact they thought I was a man....but I have had many people tell others or myself that they couldn't believe I was born a man....I don't say this arrogantly...in fact when told this my insecurity leaves me for a couple of hours and then I go back to thinking I'm this ugly woman...but at least its a woman!!! There are still some days though I still see a man in the mirror...

[Lesley_Roberta]

Will I pass ever? Hmmm I will need to actually try first.

Have I ever accidentally gotten horny looking at a girl that was a guy made up just for the silliness of it? Actually, yes, I have seen Japanese men, that have been made over, and all just for the laughs in this case, the guys were totally not transgender or crossdressers even, they were just being ok with having some fun.

And yes, I can see guys accidentally being typical guys until they find out they were looking at a guy, and it is OMG!!

I have a friend on my Facebook page, hey as I see it, I would love to be that pretty. I have seen her before face and it's like holy crap you were that successful already?

But we all have some challenges, voice being a real nuisance. I doubt my voice will ever be anything feminine sounding. That's ok though, I want to walk past a person, in a reasonable boring no account outfit and smell of a faint hint of perfume, and them just not notice me as being anything more than a not overly great looking woman. If I don't talk to most of the people I will be within view of, they won't hear the voice.

I can't picture seriously passing until the facial hair is beaten down with a stick.
But I can solve male pattern hair loss if I can do a wig properly potentially.
I have the neck of a football linebacker but on my height which is only 5'7 No small length necklaces for me.
But I have seen and I have to be horribly honest hear, some reeeeeeeeally not cosmetically pretty cis females in my day.
I am sure these women can be perfectly fine women, hey I'm a nice person too (just not about to be mistaken as beeeeeeautiful any time soon hehe).

I have seen a fair range of persons. Persons that simply like to cross dress and they couldn't care less as it is just cross dressing.
I have seen persons that are transgender like me, and they just don't if they pass, not important them.
I have seen some total knock outs and they were just born with that power eh.

In a million people, you will get a good mix of the entirely ugly and the awesomely beautiful. But most will be boring and average, and forgettable looking Some of us can even look like we can dress ourselves and not look like a fashion disaster cis or otherwise.

You won't look attractive if you don't try.
Hey, my sister is stunning when she tries, and she can look dreadful if she doesn't.
My wife is nice and round shaped. And I have told her more than enough times, I don't want any of the other 3+ billion women on the planet, I picked her.
I can probably make myself more attractive than her cosmetically speaking, but there is little reason for a 6 to be looking down on a 5 eh

[vegie271]

Look I I walk into stores, I go down the street - no one suspects anything -  I had trouble today with my bicycle and people helped me as if I were any other womyn. a guy stopped and put my bike in the back of his truck just talked to did not ask any questions.  My ID reads normally  my debit card reads the same as my DL I live life normally. - no one suspects. If you present right it works just act the part and you are fine. - it is when you have self doubt that there is problems. 

[Kaelin]

By any objective standard, there are many transwomen who pass for women better (dare I say much better) than many ciswomen do.  Some transwomen have genetics/age/nutrition/money/effort/etc going in their favor, and many ciswomen simply won't look the average, stereotype, or "ideal" by a longshot.  I think we would be "kidding ourselves" to say transwomen on average "look just as female" as ciswomen on average, but deviation within each group makes it possible to "overtake" many ciswomen in the process.  Think of the picture below with blue representing MtFs and red representing ciswomen (although in practice, I'd expect blue MtF bell to spread out wider -- there is probably more upside and downside for them, because their hormone and environmental circumstances will probably vary much more for MtFs than for ciswomen).  The odds are against you for reaching the middle of the ciswoman pack, but you can probably crawl past at least some women with a personal investment.



But even if only look more like a woman than 1% of ciswomen, at least you're a woman, right?

[Jennygirl]

I hope I never have to go stealth.

I love being trans and I want the people in my life to love that about me as well. It's a huge part of who I am and I do not wish to repress it.

[vegie271]

I hope I never have to go stealth.

I love being trans and I want the people in my life to love that about me as well. It's a huge part of who I am and I do not wish to repress it.

I just don't consider it a BIG part of me,   it just happens to be  the way I was born, a minor defet in my body, I AM a womon this is the major fact of my existence

To be fair - I have an advantage over quite a few - I look exactly like my mother - I am 4 inches taller - smaller breasts - that is all other than that I have her same figure and all, same exact face and all, really the only difference is her hair went grey much earlier, this must be the influence of my genetic father whoever the heck  he was.

and I have had years of practice in tuning my behavior  in the presence of cis womyn - I have been attending groups with them instead of trans groups  - I have preferred  to go to lesbian  game night rather trans  encounter meetings  (much more social and better learning on how to behave)