I have been reading alot of posts over the years about passing and why it is necessary. I also have read so much confusion with passing and looking beautiful. I have learned from this forum that in many places in the Western society that not passing physically can be physically dangerous and subject to verbal abuse and discrimination. It has been difficult to understand as I come from Hong Kong where people are not violent by nature but can be abusive verbally. Even verbal abuse is rare and our police enforce our non discrimination laws strictly. This does not prevent family rejection and wispers of disgust. To live the carefree life as a TG I moved to Bangkok.
When I first transitioned I wanted not only to pass but be beautiful, to not only be female but feminine. I looked at my documentary which part 1 was released for global views and OMG I have changed to much to pass since. Its amazing how you naturally change in a society that does not care about gender preferences.
One big giveaway is the way I walked then, rolling my shoulders too much as I walked and at times poor posture. My makeuo was not well done and my hairline had yet to regrow from surgery. So I worked hard and corrected this and the hairline grew back after a year Then came the facial work after ffs, including botox, fillers and various laser type treatments.Then came the clothes and my evolving style. So I pass easily and look fab for being 69. It was not necessary in Bangkok but my ego and then joining high society here required me to do so. People here dont care if you pass or not but I always dreamed of looking good. So I went beyond passing into the beauty arena out of choice. Then came the realuzation that I am a female TG and like the TGs in Thailand we are proud to be the 3rd gender. I dont know now, how I act and am percieved by others, it no longer matters, its just me.
Because I have the great fortune to live in Thailand as a TG I forget that other countries are not the same, especially Western society. Here no one even cares, I am perceived and accepted as a female or a female tg. It doesn't matter. I should apologise for my lack of empathy and understanding with all the posts about passing.
I now have recognized that in other societies the need to pass could be a life or death situation (mabe too dramatic). Passing is not just looks, its our behavior, movements, speech that are most visible. Being evaluated for passing by other TGs is not realistic, we are way too critical especially on the looks. I find so many cis with male featires that are never misgendered. I think Devlyn hit it right, own the space you occupy, own the room you walk into with confidence as to who you are. No amount of surgery alone can help, but I understand that to own this space you need to feel confident. So have the surgeries but learn to act.. behave and mentally be a female or female tg.
Come to Bangkok and feel this difference in lifestyle. Its not perfect but for now its the best place for me to find myself and be who I am peacefully.
Quote from: warlockmaker on July 21, 2017, 12:45:08 AM
.. own the space you occupy, own the room you walk into with confidence as to who you are. No amount of surgery alone can help, but I understand that to own this space you need to feel confident. So have the surgeries but learn to act.. behave and mentally be a female or female tg.
...
This is it.
I don't pass yet but say I went out dressed and a group of rowdy chavs came across me I would fear for my safety in a massive way.
For me beautiful is a nice pipe dream but Id prefer to just pass enough that nobody gives me a second look
Quote from: warlockmaker on July 21, 2017, 12:45:08 AMI now have recognized that in other societies the need to pass could be a life or death situation (mabe too dramatic). Passing is not just looks, its our behavior, movements, speech that are most visible. Being evaluated for passing by other TGs is not realistic, we are way too critical especially on the looks. I find so many cis with male featires that are never misgendered.
Yes, passing is all of these, and yes it's the gestalt presentation that matters, not any one particular feature. Most women don't have any masculine features, and a whole lot have one or two (including social features), but if even half of your features are masculine you will get clocked.
But in many parts of the US, passing goes beyond even this. Because in the US, with so many parochial people (who really believe the world is only six thousand years old), there is only the gender binary, and it's believed that one's genitals at birth determines "who you are" in a permanent, eternal sort of way. All of which to say is that even the
story of having transitioned can lead to misgendering... and other terrible consequences, besides.
So, there isn't even a way to ask for evaluation, because as soon as you do you're no longer passing. Not that there aren't a lot of very kind people here, who will sincerely do their best to help, but it's still not actually going to elicit the necessary feedback... which for me had to be gleaned over the long term anyway, as my path (not everyone's path) is be gendered female 100% from everyone I know or will know.
QuoteI think Devlyn hit it right, own the space you occupy, own the room you walk into with confidence as to who you are. No amount of surgery alone can help, but I understand that to own this space you need to feel confident. So have the surgeries but learn to act.. behave and mentally be a female or female tg.
Confidence, of course, yes. Absolutely crucial.
Learning to act, behave, and mentally be female is easier said than done, especially if transitioning after one's well into adulthood. A lot we have picked up subconsciously over the years, but there are some situations that we only learn through first-hand experience.
One (the most important, imo) is where we're in female-only space. The social dynamic of women without the presence of any men is different, and to learn this dynamic takes being in female-only spaces
as female (which necessarily, at least in the US, requires narrative non-disclosure). I find these social spaces to be much more relaxed, empathetic, and egalitarian on the whole. Not to say that women don't establish hierarchies among ourselves (because we do), but even these will have their own structures, not the structure of male-dominated spaces.
The other situation is how to "be" in a romantic relationship. A man who is alone with a woman he's romantically involved with is not going to behave as he does otherwise, and sometimes it takes a while to let go of some instincts that were accrued way back in the past. Even more difficult, I think, is being in a lesbian relationship, especially if we're older. Lesbian culture
is its own culture, and one of the trickiest things to absorb is that lesbians grew up in a culture that encouraged them to mate with men, and discouraged mating with women; lesbians tend to grow up repressed, and that's what they've had to overcome. We generally had the opposite experience, and so it can take some time to translate our own experience of repression (from a different vector) into one that makes sense in this social space.
I bring all this up because the admonition to have confidence can have an unintended consequence, namely that if you buy into that confidence completely, you might not have the humility to recognize what you still have to learn.
So very true Sophia. Learning to act and behave as a female takes time. Yet, again in a society like Thailand, I hang out with cis women all the time. I go to Thai language school and have so many girl friends. Their behavior subconciously is incorporated to be part of the new me. I lived 66 years as a male I cannot believe how much I have changed. But I have leant to accept my male side and am proud to be as female tg. I cherish my past experiences and behaving like a female has been suprisingly easy. I dont face your discrimination and it makes the transition much easier.
Passing would be far more important than being beautiful.
I wouldnt want to be ugly..but plain, unnoticed, ordinary would be lovely.
Some people cannot be plain and unnoticed... (try that with 6'3" height, and years of testosterone exposure). We have to settle on being beautiful in our own non-passable way trans-females.
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For a long time I was so depressed that I will never pass never be beautiful but now I realized that's never going to happen unless I have surgery ( that's something I can very afford ) so if I can get help on the make up side, some hair remove I might be happy, as long as I don't stand out like a sore thumb & passable"ish, the problem in western culture we are almost brain washed into thinking We all have to be beautiful in this world together anyway. Sara
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bobbi! I'm happily in 3rd gender territory. I know my beauty lies in the complexity of who I am. Is everyone going to see me as beautiful? No, and that's the magic of art, life, and love.
Hugs, Devlyn
Quote from: Sophia Sage on July 21, 2017, 08:06:27 AM
One (the most important, imo) is where we're in female-only space. The social dynamic of women without the presence of any men is different, and to learn this dynamic takes being in female-only spaces as female (which necessarily, at least in the US, requires narrative non-disclosure). I find these social spaces to be much more relaxed, empathetic, and egalitarian on the whole. Not to say that women don't establish hierarchies among ourselves (because we do), but even these will have their own structures, not the structure of male-dominated spaces.
It is in these female-only spaces that visibly passable trans women will get clocked, especially in the first few years of their transition. I got clocked early on, even after FFS, and it was during a dinner outing of about 10 women, all together at one table. At first, I found my mind dizzied in trying to keep up with the dynamics of the group conversation. I struggled to stay in the conversation without being disruptive. Sadly I spoke out of turn at times, and the confused looks from the other women made me realize my social faux pas. Later I would find out through other women in the group that the 'leader' of the women's group suspected I might be transgender based on my social miscues.
Unfortunately there's really no way to learn how to behave in these spaces until you are in one as a female yourself. I kept practicing though, and now find these to be my favorite spaces. They are exactly as you describe - relaxed, empathetic, and egalitarian - which is wonderful.
Quote from: warlockmaker on July 21, 2017, 08:48:06 AMSo very true Sophia. Learning to act and behave as a female takes time. Yet, again in a society like Thailand, I hang out with cis women all the time. I go to Thai language school and have so many girl friends. Their behavior subconciously is incorporated to be part of the new me. I lived 66 years as a male I cannot believe how much I have changed. But I have leant to accept my male side and am proud to be as female tg. I cherish my past experiences and behaving like a female has been suprisingly easy. I dont face your discrimination and it makes the transition much easier.
There's a part of me that really likes the highly binary aspect of Western culture, insofar as I have passing privilege. But then, the inner truth of who I am is highly binary.
Quote from: warlockmaker on July 21, 2017, 12:45:08 AMWhen I first transitioned I wanted not only to pass but be beautiful, to not only be female but feminine...
...Then came the facial work after ffs, including botox, fillers and various laser type treatments.Then came the clothes and my evolving style. So I pass easily and look fab for being 69. It was not necessary in Bangkok but my ego and then joining high society here required me to do so. People here dont care if you pass or not but I always dreamed of looking good. So I went beyond passing into the beauty arena out of choice.
Speaking of passing privilege...
I wonder how much the desire to be beautiful (a desire I have myself) is rooted in the desire for power and privilege. Because the world really does respond differently to physically beautiful women, and when I've "got it going" I find all sorts of wheels and tracks becomes smoother (if not greased) for my way.
Not to say that people don't respond to
inner beauty (which takes time to be seen), nor that there aren't other forms of power available to women in our patriarchal society... just that it makes sense to me to be attracted to (pun intended) one of the most obvious forms of power available to us in general as women.
Quote from: Sophia Sage on July 21, 2017, 05:02:53 PM
Speaking of passing privilege...
I wonder how much the desire to be beautiful (a desire I have myself) is rooted in the desire for power and privilege. Because the world really does respond differently to physically beautiful women, and when I've "got it going" I find all sorts of wheels and tracks becomes smoother (if not greased) for my way.
...
This may be true in a heavily male dominated society like ours, but this only lasts until beauty and youth fade, and that doesn't take long. At that point, women become invisible to males and even other females. That's when the wheels start falling off, when the males who used to grease the wheels and smooth the tracks have found younger beauties to pay attention to. Case in point. Older male actors actually get more and more powerful roles as they age, while females lose that attraction as they get older.
Beauty fades, inner beauty is for ever.
I'm from Taiwan but living in the States. Thailand may be one of the few countries in Asia that accepts transgender people as who they are and their desired gender. Even though Taiwan (where I grew up and no, it is NOT Thailand lol) is pretty open and accepting for the trans community, I feel like they don't fully accept us as our desired gender (I don't know if this is the same in Hong Kong). They don't "see" us as our desired gender (will still misgender you) but to accept the fact that we are different. I am not sure if this statement is still valid since the society has been shifting towards LGBT friendly.
When I first started my transition, all I wanted was to pass and nothing else (maybe a cup size of full B's but oh well I guess it's not happening). However, along the line of transitioning, I want to become a beautiful woman. I think this is common in either cis or trans, that we all want to be attractive inside out. My theory is if you believe in yourself that you are beautiful then you ARE beautiful because at the end of the day, no matter what other people said to you, you are with yourself and their opinions should not be invalid .
But yeah I agree that "passing" is important in the contemporary society but I hope this will no longer be the issue in the near future because I think we should be able to accept other people's difference and to love each other no matter how different we are (applies to all concurrent issues like discrimination against ethnicity, skin colors, being a women...etc)
I do really want to just at least look like the average female (girl next door) type. I get scared that I will not I do want to look attractive I always hated the little maleness I have in me.
Great question and cis females have to deal with this as well. Most cis females pass, but are they are beautiful? No. MtF trans need to understand that there is no magic pill to make you beautiful. However, you can become female, at least as much as modern science will allow with HRT and surgery. There are many MtF trans that are blessed with basic female attributes, including good looks and slim body features and HRT simply takes them to the next step. Not all MtF have that advantage. Just like many cis females don't have.
To pass is the core question. To be comfortable in your self as you transition. To be able to know that you may not be "beautiful" but pass as female ... that's the bottom line. Just as cis females have to deal with, you have to deal with ... being female is the goal, beauty is a genetic lottery that some have hit, most have not.
I have seen in this forum a little bias that the more beautiful you are the more you pass. I get that, that's natural. But, passing is more complex than that.
Quote from: Dan on July 21, 2017, 01:51:25 AM
This is it.
As I ponder my "retirement", this is now on the list.
Just to live everyday me. What a change from western society.
Thank you warlock and Dan.