I find it very confusing to be honest the notion of passing. I am probably wrong here but to me you can never really pass fully until you can't pass as the opposite gender. I could still pass very easily as a man, despite a year on hormones, I look good as a female but there are quite obviously male traits still there. You can't reverse 20 years of male hormones flooding your body that easily. I read the thread on passing and yeh I do believe confidence counts for a lot, I am never quite sure about deportment skills because a lot of males and females carry both traits.
I am full time at work a lot of people come into the office and I do wonder if they clock me, but if they do no one has made it obvious, then again I have been stood in a cue waiting to get into a nightclub, and a gf, has automatically referred to me as him, without even looking at me properly, god knows 12 months on hormones and you would think I would be giving out female signals to people, some people just seem to have this inbuilt radar, they can just tell instantly.
I recently went to see my doctor and I asked them straight 'how do I look' they said you look very feminine I would take you as a woman. I walked back to mine a 5 min walk and some woman stopped and shouted at me 'lady boy' I have no idea what gave her that impression of me, but yeh it was a knock back to my confidence at the time.
I can explain the stress element quite easily from my own point of view, when you first start going out or particularly when you go full time, you need to gain confidence really quickly to survive. If you can't pass well you need the next best thing and that's acceptance. Either will do, but you are desperate for a period of no comments of people, because early on too many negative comments of people just make RLE all the harder. That's where the stress comes from, your almost relying on the the public to dictate whether or not transitioning is gonna be easy or hard for you.
Then there is the problem of what it is thats gets some people read more easily than others, I get sirred a lot still and yet I have been told I have quite a feminine face, so there is conflict there as to what it is that gets me read so easily, you can't always pin it down, people's perceptions of us are out of our own control, and it can be very frustrating sometimes, god knows I know of trans girls that claim they hardly ever get read, and yet I feel and so do they that I look more feminine than they do. Its not easy to begin with, some have it easier or harder than others do, but its true you ask someone for advice on how you look and all you ever get is 'you look fine, like a girl in my case' are they being honest, do they not want to hurt your feelings, or do people really see people differently ? You just don't know when you pass to people, you only know when you don't when people make comments loud enough for you to hear, you could pass 95% of the time but comments could amount to 2% of that time but the perception you could get is that 2% is worth the remaining 98%.
An easy start to transitioning is to say 3 months and not get any negativity and then maybe get read,and then you would think ok but thats the first time in 3 months. A bad start is being read knowingly a lot for the first few weeks/months and then thinking is this ever gonna get any better. Its getting off the ground and being allowed to gain confidence, the public don't realise this, they don't know how hurtful they are being to someone just by even asking the question 'are you a boy or girl ?' that's the problem as I see it, if everyone knew just how hard it was and understood they wouldn't question well not to you at least, at least wait until you can't hear what they are saying, ignorance is all around us.
And then there's the issue of some cross dressing and those transitioning, can some tell the difference, I don't think that they can always, and that's a harsh reality that some of us have to live with certainly in the early stages of transition.
