Yeah, I kind of think I should give off a female vibe, but I must give off a male one based on real life experiences.  Another thing I wonder is if anybody has these experiences among the cissexual.  I'm sure people do, at least subsciously, but it's expressed a bit differently I do believe.

Quote from: Mr. Fox on November 06, 2009, 08:47:58 PM
Yeah, I kind of think I should give off a female vibe, but I must give off a male one based on real life experiences.  Another thing I wonder is if anybody has these experiences among the cissexual.  I'm sure people do, at least subsciously, but it's expressed a bit differently I do believe.

Well I can say both my bio male mates tell me i'm very male acting, so it's easy for them to see me as male. They slip up on the pronouns now and again but 97% of the time they do it right.  I guess it's more those who take the time to get to know me see me as masculine, while the general public seems me as female due to my voice and DD lumps.

Yeah some guys at the FTM meetings I go to have a definite female vibe, lots of "metro" ppl in the area the meetings are in.

It isn't even necessarily a masculine/feminine thing.  I know at least one FtM who has been on T for years, and looks completely male, yet has a very butch-lesbian vibe.  Could be because he was a butch lesbian for 30-odd years before transitioning, and so has picked up the mannerisms.  I don't know.  I also know FtMs who are screaming queens, but they still feel like gay men, not like women at all.  It's hard to put a finger on what the difference is. 

Hey, Kvall asked what I did, except when he said it it was a lot clearer what he meant!  Thanks!

Quote from: Kvall on November 07, 2009, 05:42:21 AM
Arch, I'm kinda wondering whether you get these same incorrect vibes off of cis people. Do you read any/many cis people as the opposite gender? Whether you do or not might give some insight into what it is, specifically, that triggers this for you.

Good question. Unfortunately, I used to attribute a lot of genderbending cues to queerness in general. So I felt that something about a person would set off my gaydar because I just lumped everything queer together. I was in the closet then.

But a number of times after I came out, I've had a feeling about people I didn't know were trans. For example, I had a student last year who set off my ping big time--but it was sort of an androgyne/ambiguous ping. I never did find out anything about him that confirmed or denied my internal reaction. I had another student who was in the same class for a few weeks till he dropped. I didn't have much interaction with him, but my initial reaction was that he was definitely queer in some way and might be gay or trans. Right before he dropped, he gave me a paper proposal about a trans issue.

And I forgot--I've had the not-female reaction to two supposed transwomen, not one. Here's a data point or two. The first gal was in late middle age and so steeped in male privilege that I'm sure that had something to do with my perceptions. The last I heard, she was still pre-op and pre-ho but was dressing full time en femme. That was months and months ago. I don't know how she is living her life now, but I have no real reason (other than my feelings) to suppose that she isn't trans.

The second person, it turned out, wasn't MTF at all. I thought he might be a cross dresser, not a transsexual. It turned out that he was neither. He was just a lonely guy looking for a friendly group of people to hang out with.

When I was twenty-one or twenty-two, I saw a woman who seemed pretty obviously male-bodied but who sported a wig, carried a purse, and wore women's pants, shirt, and shoes. I honestly don't remember whether I was thinking of this person with female pronouns--I don't think so--to me he was just a guy in women's clothing, or maybe a guy who identified as a woman and dressed the part. I pretty much read him as male, but I got that from visual cues, not some nebulous energy he was exuding.

But my ex at the time was all agog and not very subtle about it. He kept nudging me and whispering to me, and I gave him a hard look and said something like, "So? Who cares? Leave him alone." I was extremely irritated with my ex about the way HE was acting. I was wondering why people can't just be whoever they are without other people staring at them or messing with them. If the person was a man, who cared? At that time, I didn't have much, if any, real awareness of trans people, and I was deep in my own girl phase, feeling queer as hell but not being honest with myself about it.

How long ago all of that was.

Interesting that you mentioned this... because it's something I truly fear.

The thought of there being something that will give me away no matter what I do - such as this "vibe" thing - is part of what has made me so afraid of beginning my transition. I have avoided, until quite recently, asking even my closest of friends to use male pronouns, because I've been afraid that there's something about me which is beyond my control which will negate all my efforts. I've kept telling myself that even if I were to fully transition physically, somehow people would still know. It's been very discouraging, and I've never really realized before that this is the primary force behind my hesitation regarding transitioning or asserting my identiy.

... I can only hope that, whatever this "vibe" thing entails, I don't have an "F" written in invisible ink on my forehead...

Quote from: AndrewMarten on November 18, 2009, 02:32:00 PM
I've kept telling myself that even if I were to fully transition physically, somehow people would still know.

I really don't think it's on most people's radar. I started going to a gay men's group a few months after I started T (and right before my top surgery). My first encounter with one of the facilitators was kind of weird--he did think I was a dyke, but I told him I was a guy, and that was that. The men in the group don't treat me any differently from anyone else. And yet I keep thinking that they MUST at least suspect. Well, I don't think they do. That's just my paranoia talking.

I started attending another group a few months after that, and the T had really worked its magic. Nobody ever questioned me or treated me differently. I look in the mirror and think how female I still look, but nobody else seems to see it. I suppose they might think I'm a fairly androgynous-looking gay guy, but the operative word here is GUY.

I keep thinking that this one fellow in my trans group is just super femmy and will stop rubbing me the wrong way when his voice drops and he starts getting facial hair. T has a way of changing things...it could be that he has really high female hormone levels and my keen nose is picking up on it. If that's the case, T will solve the problem pretty quickly.

I guess what I'm saying is that at some point you will probably realize that you would rather take the plunge and take the very SMALL chance that you won't transition as well as you would like. But in person I only know of one guy who has really transitioned badly, and I'm not sure that he's been consistent with his hormones. It's still early yet, too. Two or three years more could make a big difference to him.

If you feel that T is right for you, don't let the androgynous phase scare you. Almost everyone goes through that phase. For some it lasts longer than for others. And try not to worry about other people's perceptions of your gender. If you're confident that you're male and on the right juice, that will go a long way toward persuading others.

Oh, and a beard always helps!