This is the flip side of trans issues having that much more visibility lately.
Passing gets a pass from some but is met with even more ire from others. Some see it as if you pass then you have "made enough effort" or something, these people are usually more open to the idea of transpeople in society provided they blend in - apparently they have difficulty accepting a non-passing trans person on some visceral level. Others who didn't know you were trans before because you passed 100% might dislike you because you "fooled" them.
There's some strange psychological process in people whereby they seem to believe they own what they've categorized with their eyes. If you can't easily be categorized you're an affront to some of them. Or if you've been successfully categorized and "vetted" in their eyes as passing sufficiently, then you're "ok". For some if they know you are trans it doesn't matter what you look like, you're the enemy. Depends on their views and ideology I guess, but you being there in front of them at all is taken as an entry into their personal lives when it's not.
It may have something to do with a phenomenon I've noticed in people honest enough to broach the topic with me, I don't know if it has a scientific term - but it's the habit of looking at other random people in everyday life and "sizing" them up, sexually. In order to do that they first identify if they are male or female. It's more common in men to do this, I think, but this might be where some of the disgust comes from. They're viewing others subconsciously as potential mate material, even if not actually looking for one; if someone doesn't match up right because they "confuse" them sexually, the result is usually a negative brain response. So if you pass, then that's a positive response subconsciously, but then if they learn you're trans you'll be subject to both the conscious and unconscious responses of their brain thereafter, and the ego-driven one will often override the other.
Beauty and passing earns more respect for this reason I believe - it's hard-wired into people to want to identify a gender in another, and if that person is attractive and/or sexually attractive to them as well, that is hard-wired into them to behave far more positively towards. It's been studied and found that "conventionally attractive" people are more often able to use their looks to get what they want out of others. Advertising uses it relentlessly to fool us into buying things, and attractive people are all over the TV because it gets an overwhelmingly positive response from the audience, not the least of it being sexual attraction. If people look confusing to others that generally gets a negative response at least at first sight, as their brain struggles to categorize them.
Given that we've had drag queens and drag acts for a long time and the understanding is that we "know" what the person is under the look in one sense and then we approve of their ability to transform into the other gender and look attractive as that gender in another, I think it's just a biological response thing. Being trans gets more of a pass from the average person than being a non-passing trans person because human brains are fairly mechanical and subconscious in their approach to gender.
