Why is passing so important to us?

[rmaddy]

I'm obviously trying to pass, with the hair, makeup, and wardrobe.

Not to me.  I dress the same way you do every day without ever "trying to pass". 

[Michelle_P]

Not to me.  I dress the same way you do every day without ever "trying to pass".

Kind of you, but I suspect that without doing the hair, makeup, and wardrobe I don't pass as a woman.




My point here is that I specifically alter my appearance from this to something like my avatar every day, as a deliberate action to more closely look like what Western culture deems acceptable as it's binary "woman".  This serves to improve my social acceptance as a woman within the current dominant culture, and so acts to relieve a certain amount of anxiety and dysphoria related to social non acceptance.

This form of social acceptance as my identified gender by others i encounter within this culture is what I am referring to as 'passing'.

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[Devlyn]

I try to let people know I'm a boygirl, am I "passing" at it?

Hugs, Devlyn

[rmaddy]

Kind of you, but I suspect that without doing the hair, makeup, and wardrobe I don't pass as a woman.

For whom do you get dressed?

[Michelle_P]

For whom do you get dressed?

I specifically alter my appearance from this to something like my avatar every day, as a deliberate action to more closely look like what Western culture deems acceptable as it's binary "woman".  This serves to improve my social acceptance as a woman within the current dominant culture, and so acts to relieve a certain amount of anxiety and dysphoria related to social non acceptance.

This also reduces the odds that I will be assaulted, in my opinion.

Besides, the local gendarmes become annoyed if I walk down the street unclothed.


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[Devlyn]

For whom do you get dressed?

I specifically alter my appearance from this to something like my avatar every day, as a deliberate action to more closely look like what Western culture deems acceptable as it's binary "woman".  This serves to improve my social acceptance as a woman within the current dominant culture, and so acts to relieve a certain amount of anxiety and dysphoria related to social non acceptance.

Besides, the local gendarmes become annoyed if I walk down the street unclothed.


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Last time I walked down the street naked 42 cruisers from 3 towns slow chased me for 45 minutes. 

[Michelle_P]

Last time I walked down the street naked 42 cruisers from 3 towns slow chased me for 45 minutes. 

Yeah, it can be an attention-getter.

Now, picture that face I posted on top of a 36-28-37 figure, B cup breasts. Howzat for an attention getter?  🤪


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[TonyaW]

I specifically alter my appearance from this to something like my avatar every day, as a deliberate action to more closely look like what Western culture deems acceptable as it's binary "woman".  This serves to improve my social acceptance as a woman within the current dominant culture, and so acts to relieve a certain amount of anxiety and dysphoria related to social non acceptance.


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Yes, this. 

My wife asks why I need to dress as I do and wear the make up that I do, that most women don't.

I told her that no one calls her sir when she doesn't. 

 

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[Michelle_P]

Yes, this. 

My wife asks why I need to dress as I do and wear the make up that I do, that most women don't.

I told her that no one calls her sir when she doesn't. 

Yes.  In order to be accepted as women in this culture, we need to provide sufficient gender cues to be read as "likely female" by the neural networks in a viewers preoptic cortex. Failing to do this will result in being read as "likely male"

Note that cultural conditioning doesn't retrain this part of the brain. A more "accepting" person has learned to try and disregard the gender signals from the primitive visual systems in favor of what their conscious mind sees, a person attempting to present a certain gender appearance.

They may still slip when distracted, resulting in accidental misgendering.

"Passing" involves altering our appearance so as to improve the odds the primitive visual centers will signal "likely female", when in a culture where people do not have the learned behaviors in being more accepting, or cultures lacking the "third gender"/gender continuum concepts.

Alas, altering a culture so significantly as to shift its gender model takes time, enough time for several generations to be born and die. Wishful thinking aside, we have to deal with the culture pretty much as it stands.


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[Devlyn]

Of course, non-binaries scoff at all these primitive notions.   

[rmaddy]

It's entirely possible to want to look nice, according to whatever you imagine nice to be, without giving a rat's ass to what others think or feeling like you owe them something in your presentation.

[TonyaW]

It's entirely possible to want to look nice, according to whatever you imagine nice to be, without giving a rat's ass to what others think or feeling like you owe them something in your presentation.

There is a lot of this in there for me also.

But the why I do it every day is what Michelle said

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[Sophia Sage]

I don't know how you do it Sophia.  I have found that the energy required to maintain a closed narrative 100% of the time is more that I am capable of.  When I tell stories, I am always slipping up.  e.g.  "That was when I used to work as a busboy."  oops.  "I went to ______ High School (what was then an all boys High School)." oops.

My past just has this persistent habit of creeping into all my stories.

And there's my history of living as a man and being socialized as a boy.  I just have no female stories to tell.

"That was when I bussed tables." 

If you're someone who likes telling stories, take some time to practice telling them in a way that reflects your present truth.  More, actively "remember" yourself correctly when digging into those memories.  If you like playing sports and climbing trees when you were a little girl, you say you were a tomboy growing up.  You have female stories to tell, you have always been female.

[Sophia Sage]

I try to let people know I'm a boygirl, am I "passing" at it?

There's no such thing as "passing" for non-binary.  We don't have a single "image" or "prototype" for what non-binary looks like. 

So I imagine the most effective way to create and reinforce the social category that reflects your inner truth is through the ritual of coming out.

[Sophia Sage]

I specifically alter my appearance from this to something like my avatar every day, as a deliberate action to more closely look like what Western culture deems acceptable as it's binary "woman".  This serves to improve my social acceptance as a woman within the current dominant culture, and so acts to relieve a certain amount of anxiety and dysphoria related to social non acceptance.

You do this to elicit female gendering.  Proper gendering alleviates your dysphoria.

[rmaddy]

I wonder to what extent.  Self-love/self-acceptance alleviates it completely.

[Mariah]

I know from personal experience that this isn't true. We would like to think or feel that it is, however it isn't. I can certainly how one can b believe that is the magic cure to dysphoria but it isn't. Hugs
Mariah

You do this to elicit female gendering.  Proper gendering alleviates your dysphoria.

[Sophia Sage]

I wonder to what extent.  Self-love/self-acceptance alleviates it completely.

Accepting and loving the fact that I'm female through-and-through made a huge difference in my happiness, absolutely!  It's just that it's made me even happier that everyone else recognizes that I'm female, too.

So no, self-acceptance did not completely alleviate my dysphoria.  That was only the beginning.  And even that depended on finally realizing who I actually am, something each of us can only determine for ourselves.

It really depends on what actually triggers dysphoria in the first place.  Not everyone reports the same experience.  Some transitioners get dysphoric only with respect to certain aspects of their bodies, others get dysphoria with respect to their social identity, and many face it on all fronts.  I don't think we get to choose.  Just like we don't really get to choose our inner truth; rather, it is something for each of us to discover.

The thing is, emotional responses happen subconsciously.  And we don't have direct access to our subconscious processes.  We can't just change our emotions by will alone; we can only address how to deal with emotions as they surface, and even then there's a lot of stuff the body will do automatically, before one is even consciously aware of the emotion. 

How to proceed, then, depends on self-conception and lived experience, including feedback from our subconscious processes.  And that's always going to differ from person to person.  Each of us can only really know what "works" through trial and error, not to mention a lot of self-reflection.  I know women who rue their public transitions, and those who rued non-disclosure; I know people happy on both paths; I know people who changed their minds about this, in both directions.  I suspect one's emotional response to various kinds of gendering depends on one's self-conception as well as one's sensitivity to other people, none of which we actually control.

What we can control, to some extent, is whether we put ourselves in whatever position it takes to maximize our happiness. 

Mind you, early on in transition the ritual of coming out was crucial to my happiness.  This had the effect of changing how people related to me, specifically with regard to the gendering (including a whole slew of social expectations) I'd receive.  It was effective, because at the time my embodiment wasn't particularly good at eliciting female gendering, hence why I'd been misgendered all my life.  Eventually, though, I got to the point where my embodiment was so good at eliciting female gendering that I soon learned that the "acceptance" of "indulged" gendering that I'd previously requested wasn't the same. 

The truth is that I'm not an island.  I respond, automatically and subconsciously, to other people.  I'm happiest when my inner truth is reflected by everyone else.  I'm lucky that I could actually come to know this, first hand. 

[Sophia Sage]

I know from personal experience that this isn't true. We would like to think or feel that it is, however it isn't. I can certainly how one can b believe that is the magic cure to dysphoria but it isn't.

Michelle said that her gendered presentation will "relieve a certain amount of anxiety and dysphoria related to social non acceptance."  That sounds like she's trying to elicit female gendering from other people, and that being accepted as female relieves at least some of her dysphoria.

You, Mariah, may obviously have a different experience.  What triggers (or triggered) your dysphoria? 

[Michelle_P]

You do this to elicit female gendering.  Proper gendering alleviates your dysphoria.

This turns out not to be the case, and is  part of why I generally use "I" statements when dealing with experience. "You" statements are often judgmental or proscriptive.

Feminine presentation serves me both to elicit female gendering by others, and to affirm my internal femininity, through engaging in presentation and related rituals deemed feminine by this culture.

Being gendered correctly does relieve one aspect of my social dysphoria. Prior to gender confirmation surgery (GCS), certain aspects of this actually raised my social anxiety at times, particularly at points where I feared detection as a trans person.  Some social groups, in some environments, react violently to pre-op transsexual women. Gwen Arujio comes to mind as one example of this.



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