Bev, actually I agree.  And I have waited in cues as well and not had a problem.  Not even once.  Same with waiting in line to buy bras and panties.  I have had some great conversations with other women, who had not the slightest funny glance.  However, for those who are not confident about their passing abilities, acting suspicious amongst a herd of women under pressure is probably not a good thing.  But it is certainly a great confidence builder the first time you do it.

Kristi

...Both Beverly and Kristi...you nailed it.....and I couldn't have put it across any better myself.....thanks for that..

Quote from: Kristi on February 19, 2008, 11:41:49 PM
Bev, actually I agree.  And I have waited in cues as well and not had a problem.  Not even once.  Same with waiting in line to buy bras and panties.  I have had some great conversations with other women, who had not the slightest funny glance.  However, for those who are not confident about their passing abilities, acting suspicious amongst a herd of women under pressure is probably not a good thing.  But it is certainly a great confidence builder the first time you do it.

Kristi

good advice...

Quote from: Beverly on February 19, 2008, 10:27:49 PM
Usually, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck......well you know the metaphor.

Hey maybe you have a easy time looking and acting like a duck, but not all do. So I guess just pity the non-passable and tell to just act confident huh?

Mara,
I don't know what you look like but I always thought I wasn't passable. I will bet I have a lot more going against me than you do. No more competition. I  have tried to imitate the female gestures and with the use of cosmetics and of course the good old estrogen pill (patch for me), I became passable. I really don't understand it but I'm passable. I never get the second look or even a wierd first look. I have been asked out for a date, a couple of times. I'm married so that is a no brainer there. I dress accordingly and I just don't know. I know that I have said that everyone in town knows me, this is true, but know one knows me in Hawaii where I took a 2 week vacation. Down to Disneyworld in Florida, no one knows me there. Not to mention all the little road trips I take all over the state and adjoining states. It can happen and it is hard, believe me. You are the hardest critic of your self.
Sheila

Quote from: mara on February 20, 2008, 06:50:27 PM

Hey maybe you have a easy time looking and acting like a duck, but not all do. So I guess just pity the non-passable and tell to just act confident huh?

Each of us has our own personality.  Some shy, some bold, some bodacious.  You have to have the audacity to claim BEING YOU.  I know a few gg's who are very, very manish looking, but are accepted as female without question, by total strangers.  Yes, I used to worry about "passing"  (*ugh!  I hate that word*)  also, but as Sheila says, estrogen does wonders.  You could BE the bestest looking, most feminine looking genetic duck, and if you did not behave like a duck, all in the pond would look upon you with suspicion.  You need to learn how to quack dear, and swim with the ducks.

Except for extensive voice training (self taught) I didn't have to, because for some reason or other, once I transitioned, my brain told my body what to do.    Marcy smiles every time I step over the doggies on the floor, or just walk.  I can't explain it, but somehow, my "girl-walk" , "girl dance", and "girl gesture" genes all kicked in with the steady diet of estrogen.  If this doesn't/didn't happen for you, then study quackers in their natural habitat..........
and practice quacking!


Bev

Quote from: mara on February 20, 2008, 06:50:27 PM

Quote from: Beverly on February 19, 2008, 10:27:49 PM
Usually, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck......well you know the metaphor.

Hey maybe you have a easy time looking and acting like a duck, but not all do. So I guess just pity the non-passable and tell to just act confident huh?

Nope, Mara. Why pity them at all. I think there was a time when all of us 'didn't pass.' Well, 'cept for Berleigh, maybe.  

If you need my pity, then you have problems way bigger than which loo you use. And, as Sheila said, sometimes you can do a lot with confidence and some other times you've gotten to 'passing' a whole lot sooner and more easily than you thought.

It's a process and sometimes the best way to learn can be to struggle a bit.

Look-it, a big brouhaha over bathrooms is not my idea of progressive social change. In fact this entire line-of-reasoning sounds a lot like the worst arguments of the WBT crew and the Religious Wrong. The energy can be better put toward working for acceptance of gender-variant people. But, I am not about to think that acceptance is going to come initially from a frontal assault against the norm of men's and women's loos!

In point-of-fact that battle is gonna lose all of us much more than anyone might gain from it.

Just wait for hormones to do their work and until one's own confidence IS sufficient that he/she feels like they belong WHEREVER they happen to be. Then the battle's won anyway and it doesn't require some 'revolutionary' action.

Nichole

Quote from: Hypatia on February 19, 2008, 09:40:27 PM
Not shower?  I posted a way that would allow Rach to shower, I've used it myself in women's showers. It doesn't have to be scary.

your right Hypatia it does work

hi all,

I asked the question about what bathroom to use many months ago and all the ladies said back then for God sake use the women's. I have been ever since and have had no problems, not even a backward glance. I also use female changing rooms when buying new clothes and not a word is said. Last time I went shopping for a swimming cosy and had to go out and look again for a SLIGHTLY bigger size, lol. No problem and when I got to the check out the same person was serving and started a conversation about holidays and am i going anywhere special. Confidence is the key I think.

I do however carry a letter from my clinic that says I am M/f transexual just in case, lol.

This has been a real confidence builder for me.

hugs

Nigella

Quote from: Beverly on February 20, 2008, 09:00:01 PMfor some reason or other, once I transitioned, my brain told my body what to do.    Marcy smiles every time I step over the doggies on the floor, or just walk.  I can't explain it, but somehow, my "girl-walk" , "girl dance", and "girl gesture" genes all kicked in with the steady diet of estrogen.

I've found this to be true too. Well said, Bev. It's like magick. No... It is magick, literally.

Posted on: February 22, 2008, 08:29:22 AM

---

Quote from: Nichole on February 20, 2008, 09:10:55 PMIn fact this entire line-of-reasoning sounds a lot like the worst arguments of the WBT crew and the Religious Wrong.

I understand the "Religious Wrong" all too well--apt phrase, that-- but what does the "WBT crew" refer to?

QuoteJust wait for hormones to do their work and until one's own confidence IS sufficient that he/she feels like they belong WHEREVER they happen to be. Then the battle's won anyway and it doesn't require some 'revolutionary' action.

Good point, Nichole. For TS people, we face a difficult early-transitional stage, but once we get over that hump, we're pretty much home free. We don't need a movement, really, as long as we get our 'mones and surgery.

Women Born Transsexual, a 'political' term used by some of the more persistently '->-bleeped-<-r than thou' HBS proponents. A distinction without much of a difference. A way I might feel better, temporarily, about myself by claiming that you are not me. Yet, what could be more obvious than that anyway?

If confidence can be instilled that way imagine what the result would be should all those 'different' ones be disappeared? Where would I get my confidence then?



N~

Dutch courage always worked for me.

And to all who said that this is pretty much a silly fight, with no real gain, and much possible loss - your right.

Quote from: Nichole on February 22, 2008, 08:59:59 AM
Women Born Transsexual, a 'political' term used by some of the more persistently '->-bleeped-<-r than thou' HBS proponents.

Sounds like a deliberate takeoff on the "womyn born womyn" definition that was formulated to exclude transsexual women from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.

Quote from: Hypatia on February 23, 2008, 03:47:44 AM

Quote from: Nichole on February 22, 2008, 08:59:59 AM
Women Born Transsexual, a 'political' term used by some of the more persistently '->-bleeped-<-r than thou' HBS proponents.

Sounds like a deliberate takeoff on the "womyn born womyn" definition that was formulated to exclude transsexual women from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.

MWMF boards is the only place I've seen WBT used. Also it's not tied to HBS over there.

mwmf?

we work on radio frequencies now?
R >

Quote from: Rachael on February 25, 2008, 01:30:30 PM
mwmf?

we work on radio frequencies now?
R >

Michigan's Womyn Music Festival forums

The most flaming vitriolic anti-trans forum on the net, that isn't religious-based.

i might go to that festival one year for lols.
see what all the fuss is.
R >

Quote from: Beverly on February 20, 2008, 09:00:01 PM

Quote from: mara on February 20, 2008, 06:50:27 PM

Hey maybe you have a easy time looking and acting like a duck, but not all do. So I guess just pity the non-passable and tell to just act confident huh?

Each of us has our own personality.  Some shy, some bold, some bodacious.  You have to have the audacity to claim BEING YOU.  I know a few gg's who are very, very manish looking, but are accepted as female without question, by total strangers.  Yes, I used to worry about "passing"  (*ugh!  I hate that word*)  also, but as Sheila says, estrogen does wonders.  You could BE the bestest looking, most feminine looking genetic duck, and if you did not behave like a duck, all in the pond would look upon you with suspicion.  You need to learn how to quack dear, and swim with the ducks.

Except for extensive voice training (self taught) I didn't have to, because for some reason or other, once I transitioned, my brain told my body what to do.    Marcy smiles every time I step over the doggies on the floor, or just walk.  I can't explain it, but somehow, my "girl-walk" , "girl dance", and "girl gesture" genes all kicked in with the steady diet of estrogen.  If this doesn't/didn't happen for you, then study quackers in their natural habitat..........
and practice quacking!


Bev

The girl walk, girl gesture stuff I had before hormones...it probably gave me issues and made people doubt if I was a boy or a girl, even when dressed in baggy men's clothes.

I know a FtM 'spotted me' a while pre-transition, walking on the street, in men's clothes. He mentioned later when we talked, that he was pretty sure I was MtF.

Posted on: February 25, 2008, 02:01:08 PM

---

Quote from: Rachael on February 25, 2008, 02:00:40 PM
i might go to that festival one year for lols.
see what all the fuss is.
R >

Try the forums.

There is AmazonHeart (aka Heart, from The Margins / Womensspace), AmazonTrader,  wildwomyn, dwb amongst others who are anti-trans. They say they are radfems, but hopefully they only represent a small faction of it. They have others who post sometimes one-time posting or who post a while and don't stay.

On 'our side', there is me (Schala), Brenda, bintalshamsa, cicely and a handful of others.

I mostly enter discussions that are there to other us as non-persons. Many posters speak of trans*people not being women, not being men, being third-gender, not deserving to be called women except as a way to be polite - in other words if they were 'honest' they'd call a MtF a man.

i dont care for joining some anti trans, trans slanging match, ive seen similar forum invasions go horridly wrong. and dont want any part thanks.
R >

Quote from: Schala on February 25, 2008, 01:59:29 PMMichigan's Womyn Music Festival forums

The most flaming vitriolic anti-trans forum on the net, that isn't religious-based.

The odd thing about that is: The worst flaming vitriol by far over there is perpetrated by a trans woman, someone who clearly has some serious self-hatred projection issues. She has gone by several names there (e.g. Rainsong), having been banned several times by the transphobic Festies for whom even she is way too extreme in her insane ->-bleeped-<--hatred. She of course denies that she's trans. She just was raised male and used to have a male body... It's a sad case, really. She needs help.