All kids stare at me. They look into my eyes. Perhaps this is the reason - I have dark eye brows naturally arched (and now trimmed since I live as a girl) and lots of long eye lashes. My mom tells me that I look the same now as I did when I was a baby, just a little grown up that's all, and that kids are somehow relating to me better than they relate to other adults.
I see kids in the stollers on the sidewalk straining to look at me even after I have passed them. Kids with their moms or dads at grocery stores turn and bend and strain to look at me until they can no longer see me. At doctors' waiting rooms, I see kids looking at me all the time until one of us is called in.
When I lived as male, some parents used to become very self-conscious with their kids staring at me like this. They would try to talk with their kids to make them do something else.
However, when parents see me as female, they seem to feel a lot more free. One woman waiting at a doctor's office asked me if I am a mom, and she pointed out that her kid and two other kids in the waiting room were staring at me. When I was at a grocery store several months ago, one woman who was standing nearby came up to me to tell me that her little kid standing in the grocery cart was trying to say hi to me. The kid screamed and laughed when I looked at him/her. I have no idea what's up with these kids.
The biggest affirmation that I have had as female so far was in a restroom of my office building -
One woman (never seen her before ... could be the wife of someone working there) was there with her baby. After changing her baby's diapers, she asked me if I could look after her baby for a few minutes while she went into one of the stalls. It was not much work as all the baby did was to stare at me and talk some gibberish. However, it felt good to know that people trust me around their kids to leave one with me even if for only a minute. This is something I doubt they would have done if they saw me as male.
About how much it sucks to be a white guy, I would agree there are positives and negatives, with the negatives increasing by the day but still significantly more positive than being certain other demographic groups.
It also depends on what you value. For example, when I was seen as a guy at work, my opinions were respected, but I was made to do an unimaginable amount of work. Now that I am seen as a pretty woman at work, most people do not give any significance to what I have to say, but people do not dump their work on to me and they let me go home before it gets dark (and I get paid more than I used to when I worked as male, but that's probably just because I am more experienced in my field now). Well, I wish I could have had both - more respect for my opinions and more leniency with workload.
Now about stereotyping ... I notice that Asian, East Indian, Hispanic and African men treat me worse as a woman than they used to as male. As male, none of them ever bothered me. As female, Asian and East Indian men seem to be intimidated by me. When I get assertive about something at work, they feel threatened. I notice that Hispanic and African men seem to objectify me. That is utterly disrespectful and degrading. There are exceptions ... so please pardon my generalization here.
