I was rereading one of my favorite stories -- Princess for Hire -- and was struck by how Daniel/Becky says that he had no intention of changing his behavior based on whether he was presenting male or female. He was just going to be himself in both cases.
It reminded me of something that has struck me about my own transition. Aside from the clothes and the name, and some of the medical stuff, I'm living pretty much the way I did before.
There's all this stuff about "Girl 101," and having a "female voice" and such. I even took a class on sounding more feminine. But at some point, I couldn't take it seriously. They said I had to develop a girly sneeze, which just struck me as absurd: my sneezes are entirely involuntary, and they come out however they come out. And they claimed that men and women swung their arms differently when they walked, but when I looked at people on my way to work (NYC has lots of opportunities to see people walking), I couldn't see any difference, aside from the fact that women who were carrying purses generally had one arm around the purse, so that arm didn't swing. So my voice is pretty much the same as before.
So, basically, I don't bother with any of the stuff people say you have to do to "pass" as female. Or rather, I only do the stuff I wanted to anyway, like wearing dresses and earrings. At some point during my transition, before I was full-time, I realized: I wasn't transitioning to "become a woman," whatever that's supposed to mean. I was transitioning to become myself.
Part of what made my growing up Hell was that the people around me were insisting that who I was by nature was unacceptable and I had to turn myself into someone else. And what made living as a man so painful was the way society kept trying to push me into acting "masculine." So why would I want to transition if it just meant having to turn myself into a different someone else?
The funny thing is, a lot of cis women rebel against having to do all this "acting female" stuff. So by refusing to follow all the "rules" that women are supposed to follow, I'm actually more like the cis women I know than the trans women who spend their energy trying to follow "the rules."
Comments
Be yourself
Well that is rule number one and you have every right to present yourself as you see fit.
But keep in mind even genetic females used to go through their own version of training called 'charm school'. They've also socialized growing up with a huge head start.
And I beg to disagree that there are no differences in speech and body kinetics, the latter part is in the angle of the hip structure makes a significant difference.
I can read a transwoman pretty readily without even having been on the lookout for one if they have not practiced 'the art' so to speak.
Again, I am not saying not be yourself but the reality is if one has lived decades of life in the male gender, the majority of us will have tells. If one does not care well that is your privilege as long as one is okay with people reading you.
Of course there is the final possibility of one being already so instinctively (and physically) female that you already pass amazingly well.
Learning disabled when it comes to "tells"?
Maybe that was why I got so much c*** when I was young. I failed to pick up those masculine "tells," or at least didn't pick them up enough to not get harassed for it. I don't recall getting any "boy training" from my family, and a number of people in my family seem to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum, so I might have had enough to be somewhat unreceptive to the pressures from the wider society. FWIW, my therapist says I seem to be naturally feminine, even though I've made no effort in that direction.
I've always assumed that people can tell that I'm trans -- transitioning as a "senior citizen" will do that. But nobody says anything one way or another, and I've had experiences when it was clear that someone took me for cis, such as when the mammography tech asked me the date of my first period. So maybe I "pass" better than I think. Also, I live in what is probably one of the safest parts of the USA to be LGBT in. (It helps that I'm white.)
As for "girl training" -- the people I hang out with are pretty feminist in their thinking, and a lot of them reject a lot of the girl training. There's a certain amount they have to learn just for their own safety, but from what I can see, women and men aren't, on the average, as different as society tries to brainwashing us into seeing them as. It would be useful to provide training for new trans girls in all the things cis women have to learn to protect themselves, mostly from male violence (cf.: the web article Schrödinger's Rapist), but if the "Girl 101" courses teach that, I haven't seen it or heard of it. In practice, "Girl 101" seems to me to be more about teaching someone to act more "feminine" than many (maybe even most) women actually act.
Finally, I think there's also a generational difference. Trans people in my children's generation are much more out-and-proud about who they are and less willing to be told who and how they have to be. (The large number of openly non-binary people is one aspect of this.) There's a charming scene in the National Geographic video program (The Gender Revolution) where Renée Richards is sitting next to Hari Nef, and she's going on about all the ways that trans women should be ladylike, and Hari Nef is rather obviously biting her tongue. A marvelous illustration of the gender divide in the trans world.
Out a long time.
I'm blessed that where I live no one seems to bother T folk if you are cautious. For me, no going out at night, no sleeping with males, and so on.
Think this through. Blessings to T folk
Gwen
Passing is overrated
I've said for years, possibly decades, that passing is overrated. People who see you make up their mind in about ten seconds as to your gender. Once that happens, it takes something pretty drastic to make them change their mind. Whether they see you as a cis woman or transgender or just a guy wearing women's clothes is immaterial. What's important is do they accept the way you are? I'd rather be accepted as transgender than pass as a woman.
When you do pass, you run the risk that somehow, they will twig to the fact that you're not a cis woman. When they do it becomes possibly dangerous if it's a male who thought you were cis. This is magnified if they found you attractive. We've all read or heard the horror stories about trans girls who received male attention, which is a great boost for your feminine ego, and then the male in question figures out their real status and reacts badly, beating them up and or killing them.
I'd rather not be in that number. I'd rather take the disgusted looks and endure the "homo" slurs from the beginning than to be the recipient of their ire when they do figure it out. However, at 76 years old, I'm probably immune to being thought off as "attractive". However not entirely, but only by those young enough to not have matured to a point of controlling their reactions to distasteful stimuli.
Twice in my life I've been flirted with by older men. Once was in the grocery store check out line. I was presenting full feminine (note that I say feminine, not female) what I mean by that is that what I was wearing was without a doubt women's clothes and I had minimal makeup on. Mascara and lipstick. An older generation man was in the store with two of his friends. As they walked behind the checkout line where I was loading my groceries on the belt they pause and looked at me. I figured they had read me, so I ignored them and kept at what I was doing. I had three containers of ice cream on the belt. The man in question took a couple of steps toward me and said, "You don't have any chocolate ice cream." I told him that I did and turned a container so he could read the "fudge ripple" label. I didn't do anything to disguise my voice. He commented on how much ice cream I had. I told him the our oldest daughter lived with us and we couldn't agree on just what flavor we wanted. Just then the checker started checking my groceries and I walked up to put my card in the machine to pay and he left.
More recently: After I retired we moved to a small town in NW Oregon. When I got bored with no reason to get out of bed, I got a part time job driving school bus. One of the things we do is rinse off the buses after each run. We have two stations to do this. One is near the highway and the other is back by the fuel station. I usually take the latter, but this day I opted use the one near the highway. Mind you for work, I dress out of the butch side of my wardrobe. They're all women's clothes (I don't own any men's clothes and haven't for nearly twenty years). I was wearing sneakers, jeans, a polo shirt and a company issued vest. My hair is more than shoulder length and I pull it back with a barrette at the crown of my head. That is the only truly feminine marker in my presentation other than my light pink glasses.
Anyway, as I was rinsing the back of the bus with my back toward the highway, a car pulled behind me and a little to my left. I didn't think too much about it, as we have two minivans that are used for some areas where their aren't many students and I assumed it was one of them. Then I heard "Excuse me young lady." I turned and there was a gentleman about my age in a car with the passenger window down. He asked if I knew where there was a feed store near by, explaining he'd heard there was on along this highway. and there was one about a half a mile north. I gave him directions and told him he couldn't miss it because it was at the first intersection and was in the first curve in the road. I expected him to thank me and go on to the feed store, but instead he struck up a conversation. Sometimes, in certain situations, I will modulate my voice into the higher range and make it a bit breathy so that people who've decided I was cis can continue in their assumption undeterred. This was not one of those times. I just talked to him in my normal voice (I'm told I have a true base singing voice, to spite the fact that I can't carry a tune in a bucket). He carried on talking to me as if I were a cis woman he was enjoying talking to. He finally left apparently unaware of my true status.
While both of those time stroked ego, I'd rather trade them for the times when women who for sure knew I was trans and happily shared the public restroom and chatted with me as we washed our hands. In the instances with the men, there was a risk, in the restroom with the women (two of them) there was no risk and I was accepted as who I was rather than who the thought I was.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Girl 101 etc
Girl training shows up so often because it’s part of the fantasy. As is shopping and skirts and the BRA. Training also is intended to help the trans person to pass undetected. (The reasons for hide may vary.)
In many areas safety is in being hidden.
I also believe disphoria motivates many. The closer to the feminine ideal the less disphoria.
The fact that modern girls and women are behaviorally much closer to modern men just doesn’t quite fit the literary trope. (Firstly this is culture bound, secondly note Sean Penn.)
BAK 0.25tspgirl
I think
'girl 101' might be helpful to some people but a lot of it is bull.
If i answered my mothers phone i'd always be mistaken for her - so that tells me my voice already sounds like a womans - my mother. Walk one foot in front of the other - well i sort of do but looking at women on the street most walk like dockers! I'm not great at makeup, my mother was worse. I prefer skirts/dresses - well i have big muscled legs so finding any trousers that fit my thighs/calves is nigh on impossible, bring back flares i say. I've never seen any woman do the limp wrist thing - need i go on?
Do this, do that, have you tried getting in and out of a car with a skirt on - you have to do it that way! Thing is, i'm not trying to be a woman, i'm being me, if i need to i can pass as male and whilst no model i've only rarely been called out and then mostly by kids (what do they see that their elders don't?).
Use of the whole 'girl 101' trope in stories gets old very quickly and should be used sparingly! Indeed a much better skill to teach would be self confidence, if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, most people will take it at face value, show any weakness in any area and they'll zoom right in! Its for that reason i don't wear a bikini - my girls are a little lacking in volume but they're all mine!
Madeline Anafrid Bell
What Do Kids See?
Not sure whether it's relevant here, but I read an article by a professional magician a long time back that said that kids caught him out much more often than adults did. I think the assumption was that lacking an adult's long experience, they take less for granted and aren't as susceptible to misdirection.
Eric