Does passing cause you anxiety??

[barbie]

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

~~Abraham Lincoln

The fact is that you can not completely hide your status forever for everybody. Temporarily passing for some people is always possible. I am always ready to reveal my biological status together with my background. Workers at restaurants and some students here know me very well, and I wear heels and miniskirt. Nobody comments on it in front of me. They just accept it. To pass to them, I should sacrifice some of my freedom. I do wear skirts when travelling by airplane, showing my ID to the security person at the airport. In Facebook, everybody knows my background.

barbie~~

[Megumi]

I'm quite confused as to how after 8 years of transitioning you never gained confidence in yourself to feel comfortable when being out in public.  Just looking at your profile pic you should have absolutely none, zero, nada issues of ever being clocked!

Maybe the reason why you feel that way is related to not having the same typical journey that most of us have had where we started out not ever coming close to passing, or sometimes passing, to being lucky to pass rather well but still have the typical "I'm just starting out and have no confidence in myself" or that lots of people knew us before and after we started transitioning.

For me I fall into the latter category as I was blessed at 30 years old once I started transitioning that even though I was a 5'11" tall amazon woman in the deep south I passed very early on with little trouble going out in public. Now that DID take time as I was starting from scratch with virtually NO support network to help me, a family that clearly did NOT support my transition and me being a total utter wreck in my mental state of being and facing the reality that I had absolutely zero confidence in myself at all to be myself even though that was what I wanted more than anything in this world.

Month after month of going out by myself into the world gave me a little tiny piece of confidence with every step I took. Every time I was gendered correctly it was like I just won the noble peace prize or a trillion dollars. When I came out at work and started going though the phase of everyone knew my past and suddenly the majority of folks treated me differently was a real blow to my confidence. I lost friends but oddly little by little each day I went to work more and more people started warming up to me and I started gaining more friends. I actually have more friends now than ever before and each one of them help me build up confidence in myself.

Even though I'm still in my early/mid stages of my transition I feel 100% confidence in myself. Even if people do question my gender or can tell it honestly does not bother me one bit as I still get treated with respect and gendered correctly even after I out myself to people as I had to go through the lengthy process of changing all of my legal information. Those were moments of self confidence building scenarios as they all didn't know/didn't believe it until I showed them my court order showing my old legal name and my new one. I'm me and I'm dang proud to be where I'm at in my life as I really never thought I could be at this place in my life.

[Felix]

I'm not sure it's possible to eliminate all anxiety around transition stuff. My situation is different, though; I'm naturally high strung and I transitioned later in life. Still, sometimes I have more uneasiness when I'm stealth and read as totally male than I do when I'm surrounded by people who know that I'm trans. I worry about violence or rejection, and the stakes are so much higher when you don't have any way to gauge people's opinions about gender and sexuality. There's that tiny chance that life could go from fine to horrible really quickly. I think it's normal to be a little stressed about that.

That's awesome that you were able to transition young, of course. It's hard not to assume you probably pass better than you realize.

[Staci]

I transitioned at 35, been living full-time for 3 years, I hardly ever wear makeup not even to work. Just be proud of who you are as a person, and quit fretting over whether you pass or not.

[Ashey]

I don't have 'passing anxiety' out in public anymore. I think I've pretty much gotten used to passing all the time now. Only thing that gets me occasionally is when I'm not paying too much attention and someone tries to get my attention with something like 'excuse me, ma'am?'... Yeeeah doesn't always register right away, but I'm getting better at it.

However, I now have different issues... I used to think I'd never be stealth, but now I'm starting to lean that way. It started when I met a really good friend who is stealth and she recommended I remove my trans-related info from public profiles. I feel it's probably a good move since now I can pick and choose whom I reveal that information to. And since I pass so well, I now have the luxury of doing so, which is something I guess I didn't think I'd ever have.

But more to the point, I'm also living with my boyfriend and we have two other housemates. Obviously my boyfriend knows since I'm pre-op, but the other two guys don't know. I've thought about telling them but then they'd not only look at me differently, but also my boyfriend. So I'm stealth to them... It brings with it some anxiety because I can't not pass around them. I have to make sure my voice doesn't slip around them or that I don't have a lil something poking out down there. But passing and being stealth around them, I'm just female... which brings with it a certain balance and peace. And in a way, I get to just be myself without my transness being a thing. I think I'm handling it well enough, but it's certainly an odd position to be in...