Quote from: lemons on January 21, 2015, 09:33:43 AM
You mentioned passing with short hair...yeah I am growing it out. But it's funny, at work I've been gendered correctly maybe a few dozen times with short hair by customers here and there, so maybe I'm not so screwed.
People seem to think I'll be ok but the fact that I'm gendered male 100% of the time when I'm dressed andro isn't very encouraging. I wish my body was as feminine as it might look in pictures...it's a matter of wearing the right clothes and even then I have small hips and square shoulders and a wide chest. It's good to know that that is very rare, as I have seen most people who have transitioned seem to pass after a while or after certain surgeries. What would multiple glaringly masculine features be? I feel like I have all of them with a wide ribcage, my shoulders, hands, feet, big head, etc.
Join the club. Passing in androgynous clothes is also not often a luxury that a lot of us have. (Trust me, I wish it was, because being forced to conform to gender stereotypes just to be gendered female sucks, but it's just something that a lot of us have to do in order to pass consistently, due to the circumstances of our bodies.) I still get stared at when I wear androgynous clothes, presumably because people can't figure out what sex I am. And passing in a combination of androgynous clothes and short hair? Forget it. Not unless your body and face are both COMPLETELY blatantly female. Hell, there's even a lot of cis-women who get misgendered when they're wearing androgynous clothes and short hair.
And to answer the second question, no, I'm sorry, but no you don't have "glaringly masculine" features. When I say "glaringly masculine," I'm usually talking about people who are very tall, (5'11" and up,) VERY stocky and large-built, with lots of masculine facial features like a big chin and very prominent brow bossing, and who also didn't get very much feminization from HRT to help with skin texture and body shape. And again, I just do not see those things on you. To my eyes, you have a more or less completely-androgynous face, and a more or less completely androgynous body. NOTHING on you is blatantly-masculine in the way that I spoke of, where people would still read it as "male" regardless of anything else.
Having read the following study, "Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach," which actually looked into exactly what it took for certain figures to be perceived as male or female, the only consistent way for a figure to be perceived as female is to have almost a complete absence of "male" cues. Basically this study took the same non-gender-specific face and body, and then added "male" or "female" cues to it. It took FOUR female cues on average to overcome any single "male" cue and reach a female gendering 95% of the time. It's kind of depressing for trans women, but it's just something that we have to deal with.
In this study, the base rate for gendering the figures in their androgynous clothed state was 69% male, 31% female. That's pretty much a good baseline right there. When you don't present an observer with any "male" or "female" cues, they're going to guess "male" by default twice as often.
Another telling thing in this study is that the cues that they intended to be "female" cues (long hair, breasts, wide hips, no body hair,) were seen by at least 55% of the participants as "male" cues, where the "male" cues (short hair, body hair, narrow hips, flat chest) were never misinterpereted as "female" more than 36% of the time. Basically, any single "male" cue is going to stand out, while people are much more able to ignore "female" cues. Just adding a penis to any of the figures in the study increased male genderings to a whopping 96%. And it took FOUR "female" cues (long hair, breasts, wide hips, and no body hair,) in order for the figure with that one single "male" gender cue to reach a point where it was gendered male/female 50% of the time. Whereas it took THREE very specific "female" gender cues, a vagina, long hair, and breasts in order to reach that same 95% rate of gendering the figure female.
The point is, "female" gender cues don't have the same power. People by default see androgynous figures as "male" more often, and when "male" cues are added, it takes on average three or four "female" ones to counteract it. And in an absence of gender cues, it took several "female" ones before participants in the study consistently gendered a figure female.
So, well, unfortunately, if you want to be gendered female consistently, you need to have some "female" cues. And since trans women don't generally have blatantly "female" body cues, we have to make up for it with things like hair and clothes. Cis women can pull off the androgynous look because they have more blatantly-female body cues which can counteract their androgynous hair and clothes. Anything completely "androgynous" on its own will tend to be interpreted as male by people about twice as often as female. With you, all I see is androgyny. Your body is androgynous, your face is androgynous, your clothes are androgynous, your haircut is androgynous, so basically the reason you're not getting gendered female is because people have NOTHING to go on, and you aren't really showing any "female" cues, so people just default to male. (And again, cis-women with androgynous bodies, short haircuts, and who wear androgynous clothes are quite often misgendered male. It happens more than you might think.)
And so you know, going back to the not-passing thing, when I say "blatantly masculine" in terms of trans women who probably won't pass, I really do mean "blatantly masculine..." Cues that other people will read as "male" no matter what else is there, and see as being in blatant conflict to the feminine parts of their body, which will therefore immediately make people question "is that a man or a woman?" And again, you don't look masculine... you look androgynous. (A lot of trans women criticize ourselves for not being "feminine," and we perceive our body features to therefore be "masculine" because they're not as feminine as cis-women, when in fact they're not "masculine," they're just androgynous... features that, when combined with other feminine features around it, would not stand out as being "male." I do the same thing with my face. I can see every single little thing in my face that isn't feminine, every feature that I have that cis-women don't. And so it's tempting to freak out about how I can't possibly be passing, people can't possibly not notice how unfeminine I look. Where in reality, they don't notice. Because when I add in my long hair, my breasts and hips, and my smooth skin, my face doesn't stand out as "male," it's just androgynous, which means that it could be viewed as male or female depending on what cues are surrounding it.) And trust me, you look WAY more androgynous than me as a default. Adding "female" cues to you, they would not contrast with any part of your body. Your build is androgynous, your face is androgynous, your body frame is androgynous.
