Beyond "clocked"

[zirconia]

I like what Viktor said.

I also think that any other term used in a similar context will pick up more and more of the same nuances and connotations.

Where I live certain pressure groups have made it practically forbidden for the media to use many words because of "their discriminatory connotations". However, as the substitute expressions get picked up by ordinary people they come to be used exactly the same, and must be replaced again. Each new substitute becomes increasingly long, cumbersome, descriptive and crushing.

In elementary school, confronted by a bully I myself would prefer to be called "crazy" rather than "a mental healthier."

Similarly, rather than thinking:

I'm pretty sure that attendant didn't clock me. No. It was somewhere between "identify" and "recognize..."

I myself would prefer:

I'm pretty sure that attendant read me but didn't bat an eye. That was polite... I still need to work on my voice.

[Complete]

This has to assume that those of us that did go through the gatekeeping of the era have kept up on all the current vernacular. What is called stealth today was called woodworking, as in blending into the woodwork and being invisible.
ĺ

I am new here, but every time l read something from Lisa
I it feels like l am reading something written by my cosmic twin. Our experience was so different and get so much the same.
In my case l sought what was then considered a highly experimental and essentially last ditch effort to ameliorate a poorly understood condition. The prognosis was it would either succeed or it would not. I knew l had no other choice as l had tried everything imaginable and nothing had worked. For me, this was my last and only hope.
This whole concept or narrative of transgender did not exist.
What my doctors were attempting to do was to change my body to match my brain since the brain could not  be changed. (Believe me), they tried, l tried, we all tried. So clocking or being read, was just not an option. It was not even on the radar.

[rmaddy]

"Clocked" doesn't have to be a negative term, one can be clocked at 5 minutes 32 seconds in a race. In both situations, it means correctly measured.

So when you say that you've been clocked as transgender you mean that you have been correctly measured?  I'm pretty sure we usually mean exactly the opposite.

Someone recognizing you are trans isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Exactly!

[judithlynn]

I have only been "clocked" or outed three times so far in some 20 years (I have transitioned twice). I also hate it when it happens. Mind you as the HRT has worked its magic and the more I live as a woman the less it happens. I am quite lucky in some ways as I have very small hands, small feet (UK size 41), average height 5'6" and no Adam's Apple at all.
I also have had my Colours Done  which has helped me blend in incredibly well, with clothes and make-up that naturally show off my skin tones. However the three times I have been clocked (all before I invested in getting my colours done) were all  nerve racking for me. Twice was from young children and once a group of men:
The first happened in Oxford Street outside Selfridges. I had just had my eyebrows threaded and came out of the store and waited for a bus to take me back to my hotel, when a young boy (Eastern European I think), started shouting its a man in a dress). I went bright red and walked away towards the tube  losing myself as quickly as I could in the crowd of people. The second time it happened when I was with a CIS girlfriend in Marks & Spencer in Bournemouth looking at some bras. There was a group of young teenage girls all looking at the push up bras and one pointed at me and started s->-bleeped-<-ing. I beat a hasty retreat into the lift. The last was the most frightening. I was crossing  the road in Exeter (actually heading to my beauty therapist) in front of two young men in a car stopped at the crossing when a big gust of wind literally blew my dress up in billions and then to make matters much worse lifted my wig up off my head making me chase it across the road. Its sounds almost laughable now, but at the time is was terrifying with the guys leaning out both sides of the cars screaming "its a ->-bleeped-<-". The girls in the beauty therapist were very kind though, calming me down  and ended up giving me a free facial.
JudithLynn

[Lady Sarah]

Back in the day, we called it "getting read", which meant the same thing as "clocked". I have always hated it, due to the negative reactions people that read me had. People were cruel enough, that a lesser person would have given up and gone back into the closet, never to come back out.

[VeronicaLynn]

So when you say that you've been clocked as transgender you mean that you have been correctly measured?  I'm pretty sure we usually mean exactly the opposite.

Exactly!

If someone recognizes that I am transgender, they are correct. If they afterwards treat me badly because I am trans, then they are not correct.

I do come at this from the perspective of someone that is usually not passing, and generally read as a feminine gay guy rather than a trans woman. I appreciate it when someone reads me correctly as a trans woman. I'm not sure there's really that much more hate towards trans women than feminine gay guys anyway. Those that hate don't usually don't see much of a difference.