I had an interesting experience that I feel kinda validated my 'maleness' the other night. I was with a friend I've known about 10 years (who I'm not out to, and really need to tell soon) and we ended up hanging out with a couple of his friends who are both deaf. It was kind of awkward at first because I don't know sign language at all, but ended up being totally cool.
We were mostly able to communicate with gestures, and one guy can speak a little bit. At one point they seemed confused looking at me, and passed a phone to my friend with "whats his name again?" on the screen. he typed back that I was a girl, and my birth name. The 2 deaf guys then looked at me again and shrugged like 'whatever, ok'. I keep seeing people say that attitude and gestures make more of a difference in passing than clothes sometimes, so i guess thats true.
It was pretty cool to realize that they had perceived me as male without hearing my voice to mark me as female. Then it was dissapointing that I didn't have the balls to correct again and say I was male, and my name is Kyle.
