I’ve talked a little about passing in a previous post. For those of you who haven’t read my previous posts and are unaware of what it actually means, then passing is defined as the ability of somebody who is transgender to be recognised as cisgender, i.e. for somebody to believe that your gender is that which was assigned to you at birth.
Not everybody is familiar with the term cisgender (or cis) so for completeness, the definition is thus
Cis and Trans are antonyms and are latin terms and used commonly in chemistry to talk about molecules (and other branches of science). If you want to understand more about the history and how it entered common parlance, this page explains it well. Despite what some people think, cis is not a slur or a disparaging term in any way, if you’re not trans then you’re cis. It’s really that simple. As an aside, do you know why people think that cis is a slur? It’s because they think that being called trans IS a slur.
However, onto the subject in hand, passing is a hugely emotive subject for many of the trans community, I am very much in two minds about it.
Why do we want to pass?
Passing is genuinely a privilege, relatively few trans people are able to do it consistently, it’s very much a factor of genetics, money, luck and, often, depends when you were able to start your transition. If you were lucky enough to have supportive parents and supportive doctors, live in a country where such a thing is feasible and you were able to get onto puberty blockers before the unwelcome effects of your first puberty really hit your body, it’s relatively easy to do. Relatively… compared to not having any of those things.
In the early days of my transition, I found myself to be supremely envious of the women who seemed to effortlessly transition and especially those who I didn’t recognise to be even trans until they told me. The term clocking is when you recognise somebody to be trans, you “clock” them (the etymology of this phrase is not clear to me, I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader to find out). It’s not a hugely nice thing to discuss for a myriad of reasons, the aim of this post is to discuss this area.
I have had recent moments in my life where people don’t realise that I’m trans which has actually shocked me because I genuinely don’t feel that I pass even slightly, any of the time. One of my close friends, who I’m sure won’t mind me recounting this, upon seeing me for the first time, thought I was a tall french cis woman (until she heard my english accent). I will dine out on this anecdote for a long time and it make me grin when I remember her telling me with a slight tinge of cute embarrassment. Personally I recognise too much of my previous face and body in my current version and dysphoria is a hugely fickle beast which really messes with your self perception. It’s not really possible for me to accurately determine whether or not I do pass at points. I talked about this in my Residual Self Image post, my view of myself is not entirely correct but on the odd moments when people don’t seem to realise, it does genuinely gives me huge levels of euphoria.
Safety
The internal debate I have of whether passing is important to me is somewhat contradictory because, honestly, deep down, I actually do want to pass because I’d be relatively safer in my life. I, obviously, don’t ever want to risk being the subject of abuse or hate crimes from bigots or morons and whilst being seen as a cis woman makes you unsafe in different ways in the world, being visibly trans in the current time brings about increased levels of risk. If you listen to the anti-trans rhetoric from the media and governments it would appear that we are public enemy number one because, well, who knows why actually. I guess they have their reasons…
I know of several friends who have recently been the subject of hate crimes in the UK and whilst I’ve been super lucky in that I’ve never experienced anything substantial as yet, it’s really just a matter of time before I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody takes umbrage at my existence. I am cautious about where and when I go out in the evening and unfortunately this is a necessity for me and my trans sibling’s continued safety.
Why is it beneficial to not pass?
Proud
The other side of this is that I am incredibly proud of being a trans woman and the journey I’ve taken. For reasons I’ve talked about at length, transition is a difficult thing to undertake and I am proud of myself for being able to overcome the hurdles that are thrown into my path on a somewhat regular basis and it gives me joy to recognise how far I’ve come, especially when I stop for a moment to look at old photos and actually think about where I was a few years ago and how unhappy I felt.
Visibility
There’s also the point that being visibly trans means that closeted trans women and trans girls have a chance to see that it is possible to live in the light, authentically. I never want anybody to live closeted because I’ve done it for such a long time and can remember the difference in how I felt then and how I feel now. It’s was a largely unhappy existence filled with self doubt and self disgust and stopped me from being truly happy for most of my life. Like most visibly trans women, I regularly get approached by various women who are somewhat closeted or newly out and I am always happy to act as a “big sister” to support women through their transition. I try to put them in touch with other trans women in my community, try to support them emotionally and try to offer advice based upon what I’ve learnt. Ideally, none of us would have to do this but there genuinely few people outside of the community willing or able to do this.
Visibility is also important because I’m able and hugely willing to speak to people about my experiences to foster understanding outside of the trans community. This is the main reason I write a lot (other than being a great form of catharsis). I want people to understand what it means to transition and actually recognise our humanity and our struggles, we still need really need active (and vocal) allyship. Every single person who I speak to hopefully starts to understand what it actually means to live as a trans woman. These people start to counteract the effects of the fake culture wars and noisy anti-trans rhetoric which we see every single day.
Education
My close friend Sam is a beauty therapist who does a lot of work to foster understanding and inclusion within the beauty industry. I’ve been going to her for around a year now, she’s the creator of my brows. Sam has been an amazing source of advice, support and love which has been so helpful to me during my transition. I genuinely regard her as my younger non-biological sister. I, and several other people, regularly act as wax models for her as she trains people how to wax. Personally, I find it to be a really beneficial thing to spend my free time doing. I get to meet lots of lovely new people, I get a free wax and it also helps her out. It’s actually really important for me to be there with my trans body so people understand what we look like in real life. The trainees are taught how to refer to us correctly, understand the correct usage of pronouns and also learn how to accommodate our somewhat specific needs. A trans body is a little different to a cis body in several regards and it’s important to normalise our bodies outside of the trans-dating community. I genuinely have some really interesting conversations with the trainees as body hair is somewhat painfully removed from my body (though in the scheme of things, waxing is relatively painless.. go-on, ask me about electrolysis on the top lip...)
Once trained, educating these newly qualified waxers also has the benefit of expanding the number of places where it’s safe for us to go. Unless you have passing privilege, it’s rare for trans women to go into the first beauty place we see as we never quite know how people will react. It’s still quite intimidating going into these spaces even though I’ve done it a lot now over the course of my transition. Trans women will always ask our friends for recommendations and places to avoid and we will always try to scope out a place before even walking through the door.
I realise I’m playing into the patriarchy by trying to adhere to the heteronormative beauty standards of being as hairless as possible but I find that these interactions are incredibly nourishing. I’m also still a part of the gender binary (though not all trans folk are) and as such I want my body to look a certain way, as close to cis female as I can get, ideally. My overall wish from attending these sessions is that cis people come away, likely after having interacted with a trans woman for the first time, with some more understanding of what trans means.
Trans Pretty Privilege
You might be aware of the so-called pretty privilege which is a concept which has been floating around for several years now. The idea is that the people who are considered to be pretty by our society (typically white, young, thin and able-bodied people) are treated better than those who fall outside of these “ideals”, succinctly put, pretty people can tend to get away with a little more than people who aren’t considered to be so.
This paradigm also, obviously, applies to trans women and those trans women who loosely fall into these categories seem to have an easier time during transition than those who don’t. Trans women of colour, for example, are disproportionally subjected to increased levels of violence and trans misogyny compared to their white siblings and also have a harder time accessing the same levels of medical care.
For a community who spends a lot of time breaking out of the pigeon holes in which society has placed us, by nature of our assigned gender at birth, we do seem to fall into quite a few of the same old traps as we try to hard to assimilate into society. This is hugely unfortunate and it’s something we should really discuss more within the community and try to tackle or at least reduce. I think it’s something that people do subconsciously rather than directly discriminating against people based on their perceived value ascribed by a narrow set of aesthetic standards. Marketeers have a lot to answer for with regards to what is deemed to be acceptable or not and it’s really time that we try to evolve past this.
Diet Culture
As with our cis sisters before us, trans women also tend to be overtly body focused and can easily fall into the trap with unhealthy eating habits. Outside of the pretty privilege I discussed a little earlier, there’s also an understanding that to move more towards the cis-normative bodies that lots of us crave, you tend to need to lose weight from the masculine places that was stored when you ran on testosterone. The effects of oestrogen will encourage future fat deposits to be stored in much more feminine places (such as breasts, hips and bum) but unfortunately, oestrogen will not shift the fat around on it’s own, it merely determines where fat will be stored and essentially, you need to apply the phrase “lose it to move it”.
I also hugely understand why we in the community DO fall into this trap, probably more so than our cis counterparts. We have had a lifetime of growing up wanting to be recognised as our authentic gender instead of the one that we were assigned at birth. It’s really hard to NOT want to be affirmed as being thin and pretty and I often tell my trans siblings that they look cute or pretty when I see that in them and it does tend to reinforce this behaviour in us all when we really should strive to move past it.
Cis Passing Privilege
When writing these posts I tend to solicit feedback from various friends, I really like to bounce ideas off people and chat about the subjects make sure that I’m not going down a rabbit hole of my own making. I genuinely want to write about things which are interesting and helpful to others. One of my friends pointed out the fact that it’s not just trans people who are affected by “passability”, cis people are affected as well which is absolutely an interesting and valid point that I’d not considered in earlier drafts of this post.
Please take a second to watch the following post which popped up on my feed recently.
One thing that a lot of people forget is that gender conformity applies equally to trans people and cis people. If you don’t look like a “typical” cis woman or cis man, and who’s to say where the line is drawn and determines which gendered space you can enter? Do you check people’s genitals on the door (which is essentially sexual assault)? Do you need request chromosomal karyotyping before allowing them access to a space? Require to to see birth certificates? It’s actually illegal to ask if somebody has has a Gender Recognition Certificate so it won’t actually help in a lot of cases.
There have been numerous reported cases of cis women being abused for entering women’s spaces both here in the UK and in the US because not everybody can (or wants to) conform to some pre-defined ideal. There are lots of people who class themselves to be butch dykes, femme boys and gender non-conforming folk who are affected by this and despite what the swivel eyed, gender critical people say, you can’t always tell and neither should you want to, it’s actually NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Please, stop imaging what genitals I have, you’re being super weird here babes. Find a fulfilling hobby or spend your energy doing actual good, go work in a shelter, pick up litter, rather than wasting everybody’s time arguing that we don’t belong in a space because of your preconceived ideas of gender.
The entire bathroom panic that is apparently engulfing the globe is nonsense and hugely problematic for all of us, cis and trans folk alike. Are you aware of how much testosterone affects AFAB women (assigned female at birth?). With enough time spent in transition, a trans man is indistinguishable from a cis man, They can be hugely muscular, have deep voices and full beards. If you want people to use the bathrooms based on their assigned gender then what do you think will happen exactly? You’ll get trans men using women’s bathrooms and I wish you the best of luck in the world differentiating between a cis man (who might genuinely be a predator) and a trans man who has been told use this bathroom instead of the men’s where he belongs.
That’s all for now. Live true, be authentic and kind to people. We only have one spin around in life and it’s important to recognise that we’re all just trying to live our lives to the best of our abilities and situations, sometimes we fuck up but we have to try and grow as best as we can
Love
Kat
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