Why is it so hard to "pass"?

[LeannS]

I dated a trans gal once she had srs and from looking at her she was female 100 percent UNTIL she walked and that is what tipped me off she walked like a guy.
Wish I had her number right now I could use some pointers lol

Leann

[Pat]

How many women have u seen that don't pass? I've read many threads here about how GG women, "----come in all shapes and sizes". So, why is it that masculinely dressed and/or appearing women still pass?

I totally love the question, but it's semantically flawed. Those (natal) women in your example don't "pass" the "are." Any standard you come up with that fails to include them as women is automatically invalid because they are women.

[leannejacobs]

Lots of good points here but tbh at the end of the day we are male by birth, unless you're Asian and have lots of money for surgery your maleness will never disappear completely, we can try very hard with make up and nice fitting clothes but you'll always find that even a woman in sweat pants and a baggy tshirt will almost always look more feminine than you.
I'm cursed with excessive height, my biggest give away by far, I like how feminine I can appear in the mirror and I feel I have the correct moves while walking in heels, I've been out lots of times and usually get clocked by a few, thankfully I've not had any bad reactions.
My advice is work with what you have and be happy, watch other women and work on your mannerisms, it takes time.
Don't ever expect to fool everyone, there's that old cliche "you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time" it's very true.

[Robertacd]

I would turn many of the posters here around and ask them this:

How many women have u seen that don't pass?

Sure but any GG on their worst day, still looks more feminine than me on my best day.

Go to the picture gallery and take an HONEST look. There's lot of us that would pass at first glance. But look closely and you can see the "man face" coming through.

Now if you were to see them in person you also may notice the man hands, shoulders wider than their hips. Sure there are GG's that are "top heavy" but it is usually one size difference. You don't see many GG's that wear a size 14 jacket and a size 10 skirt.

[Sarasometimes]

One I did not see is the wider space between your hips gives cis females that natural hip sway. Behavior wise, the expressiveness of the face when talking and smiling.

Ultimate test of passing, able to walk right past 6 to 8 teenage girls at the mall and have none of them read you! They are so tuned into appearances, they're brutal!

[carolyn todd]

Go to your local mall or shopping centre and sit on a bench look at all the women that pass you (DON'T STARE AT THEM)what they are wearing most of the time they are wearing jeans or trouser, how they walk, what they look like, does the women look like MIAD, you just need to look at women in what they do!.
take some pictures of yourself dress or do a video of yourself, look at make up tip on youtube have a go at doing your make up.
and if you can do all the things the girls have said you have to have the confidence to have a go to do what you want to do.
if you want to ask a question ask one or all of us will answer the question ?.
GOOD LUCK
Carolyn

[Beverley Sims]

As you have read a whole range of variables come into the equation and if you can improve on about fifty percent of them you will make it.

You have heard the saying.... If it walks like a duck.........

Well you get what I mean.

Lots of luck with your practice and all the good advice you have been given here.

[Teresa]

AttentiveH,
Many have jumped in with useful answers but I feel we are answering in the dark, point one age makes a difference and we don't know that also you don't say why you wish to pass , are you still in the closet and gazing in the mirror and hoping or have you been out and mingled to find what reaction you get.

OK none of us will ever pass 100% , so I'm afraid you can forget that one, we have too many signals that portray our maleness . The point is forget about passing , dress as you choose but remember the convincing benchmark is not to stand out, choose the right clothes for the right situation, even a GG in heels and mini skirt will stand out when pushing a trolley round the supermarket or collecting the kids from school.

The nicest compliment I've received was from some very good friends in a bridal shop , they said I made a convincing woman which is more than I ever expected when I started CDing .

[Ressie]

"You can fool some of the people some of the time" - people that aren't paying attention for example. But we can attract a lot of attention depending on our presentation. Blending well partly means dressing in a way that doesn't draw attention. Drawing very little attention decreases other people noticing those give away details. As a result, one blending well will pass to more people.

Those of us that strive to pass have to use tricks to cover or camouflage those details the best we can. Women are softer in general. Mens' arms and legs have muscle that can be seen easily when bare. Some men are born with more fem features which gives them a better chance of passing than other men. Those that are most passable have probably had surgeries and/or hormone treatments.

The easiest way to pass is to go out at night, away from lights, and never within 50 feet of other people!

[Tracii G]

I agree Ressie well said.
I really don't care all that much about passing because once people get to know me if I go in a place a lot passing doesn't make any difference.
I'm not trying to prove anything just trying to blend and be myself.

[Jodie_Lynn]

" Why is it so hard to "pass"? "

Because the football gets slippery in the snow?

[Judy-Somthing]

Even at my best 40 years ago, I could only pass at night and from a distant of least 30 ft.
If you get to the point of fully passing you'll get a cut in pay! LOL

[AttentiveHusband]

First off thank you for all the answers. Very enlightening.

Second, as to the questions about me, all I'm interested in at present is under dressing. But reading here it was a common thread that it's so difficult to pass and I was curious. I saw a person at workout the other day - and I don't know if the were male or female. Which lead me to thinking if someone is dressing in a way that it's not clear, and I can't tell from glancing at them from a couple of feet away, then I assumed passing wouldn't be that hard.

Also, read an article recently that if a man and woman are approaching each other and there's limited space, the woman always moves out of the way. These women as an experiment didn't and would stop when the approaching man was three feet away and... Some of the men would walk right in to them. Others would stop at the last second very confused. So I do get that there's a lot of innate behavior that has to be learned.

[Teresa]

Jayne,
According to your list I'm more on the pass side than fail.

I'm 37" bust , 31" waist and 37" hips, and weigh 147 lbs, height 5' 7", good legs , shoe size 8 UK . Facial shape would pass, my daughter thinks I look like my sister . I don't use lower padding but need a little assistance on the bust to give me my shape.

OK my fails are voice , and large hands but I've noticed some women have shovels for hands like mine and I'm not too concerned about the voice .

I accept that's as good as it gets and for my age I'm happy and comfortable to be out and about , if I had full transition I'm not sure how different I would look or feel inside .

Do I pass as a woman NO not entirely , do I pass as Teresa , I guess I do and that will do fine for me .

[Aunt Kelly]

I'm very very new to this (just experimenting a little with underdressing). A consistent thread here is that it is very hard to pass as a woman.

Why?

In a word? Evolution. 200,000 years of it has resulted in certain things being hard-wired in our brains, like picking up on gender markers, some obvious and some so subtle that most of us couldn't name them. With enough skill, practice and composure, some of us will escape notice, but as soon as one of those markers doesn't fit in with the rest of the picture, the game is up. Our brain starts analyzing all those other markers and the TG person has been made. With enough scrutiny, almost any of us can be made. Yes, even a post-op TS, though I'd hazard to say that for many TS's "passing" is not the "accomplishment" it is for CD's. I should probably let someone with more cred speak to that, so I will say, again, that "passing" is a myth. The best you can hope for is to blend.

For me, blending has two parts: appearance and bearing. An appearance which blends, that is to say one which avoids drawing undue attention by observing conventions of style, is certainly important ...and as a topic here has been done to death. Bearing and deportment however, seem to be overlooked often. You can nail the appearance but if you don't carry yourself in a manner consistent with the rest of the presentation, you've activated that automatic scrutiny in the observers. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not one who even blends well, but I am a keen observer of people and behavior. Seeing that "OMG, that's a man" look is a common occurrence for me, but if I maintain my composure and don't act like the male they've just spotted (or worse, like some panicked, guilty weirdo), far more often than not, people will "play along"; will treat me as the lady I am presenting.

I don't know why that truth is so hard to believe, but from endless accounts here, it clearly is. Now, that's not to say that there are not places where being made is not a risk. There are, but you can be a victim in most of those places, regardless of your gender presentation. Those places don't include most well-lit gas stations and convenience stores, with security cameras on every corner. They don't include most stores, restaurants, movie theaters or <insert business here>. Sure, you might get the occasional smirk or gape-mouthed stare, but if you're afraid of that, this going out thing is probably not for you.

Hugs,


Kelly

[Becky Blue]

Great question, I am going to take a slightly different view to most of this thread. Firstly I don't believe it is that difficult to pass, depending on what your definition of passing is. If passing means fooling everyone so that no matter what you do or wherever you go no one would ever realise you are a guy, well yes I agree thats almost impossible, voice is the most obvious giveaway as is the Adam's Apple. BUT if you call passing going about your business mostly being unnoticed, well that can be pretty easy. I call that blending.

Careful dressing in the right clothes to match our shape etc.. , possibly some good shape wear, great makeup and a really good wig enable many of us to cover up and present a mostly female outlook, enough to blend in and 'pass'.

Last year I went shopping at a large mall in Melbourne, in two shops I saw the slight look of surprise from the SA when i spoke, up to that point they thought i was a woman, did I pass? IMO yes I did until i spoke... clearly a lot of practice of my female voice is needed...

[Tracii G]

Take a look at Caitlyn Jenner all the money and surgeries she has had done she still has a male voice and gender markers that look male.
I can look at her and to me she doesn't pass.

[docrobbysherry]

Saying that blending and passing r the same is like saying an eagle and flying United r the same-----

[faltenrock]

I really don't care anymore whether I pass or not. I think I pass in 80-90% on the street or elsewhere. As soon as I start talking to people I won't pass anymore - do I care? NO. We are who we are, it's only about us, not about the others. As long as you feel great, beautiful and well dressed, that's what counts for me.

[Charlotte7]

Actually, I think that we don't pass because we have a binary gender system. In western culture, at birth we are all assigned as boy or girl, and this largely is done on the examination of external sex organs. In reality, gender preference, and by that I mean the behaviour we start to exhibit when we first become aware of gender differences (and even before this) plays no part in how this society, as a whole, views gender. In their eyes we remain boy or we remain girl. If we cross that boundary then we are considered an oddity. The acceptability of that (to the world at large) is slowly improving but we are still regarded as odd. As has been said before in this thread, even very convincing, even very wealthy and high profile TS (and TG) don't fully pass, sometimes on very close inspection. So, maybe, and I don't propose this as a one size fits all solution, (the TG umbrella is very large), maybe what some of us need is not to attempt to fully pass, as we know that we never can. Maybe, instead of passing, we should more "present" and by that I mean accept that we are who we are and we look as we do, but that this is how we wish to be seen and known. I suppose that I'm sort of advocating and step beyond being a pure MIAD, but instead being a (made up word warning) "girlman". Now, ths idea isn't as far fetched as it may seem, as there are a number of cultures around the world that are not purely binary and most cultures have had a more than two gender system at some point in their history - remember, up until not very long ago (150 - 200 years ago) it was not uncommon for boys in England to wear a dress until they were 'breeched' at any age between say 5 and 8. Yes, it's true, to some extent, that there were practical sanitary reasons for this, but it goes to show that there is room for an additional way of looking at the gender system we have and extending it beyond the two gender system that we have in the west. Examples of this third gender which still exist (and there are others) are the Muxes in parts of Mexico and the Fa'afafine in Samoa. But, do I expect wester culture to change and for a third gender to become accpeted anytime soon? Not really there are too many millennia of tradition to overturn. So, at the end of the day many of us are stuck in a limbo land, too masculine ever to pass and not fully accepted by a two gender society. I suppose it's something that we just have to bear and make the best of it was we can. For those of you who can pass, fair play to you, good luck and all the best.

[ellbee]

I don't believe anyone has mentioned this yet...?


But, ummm... Hormones & chromosomes??

[GretchenM]

In support groups I have met a lot of trans people of all types from barely trans to fully transitioned. I can recall only one that really did pass. She transitioned quite young and also had about $150,000 worth of surgeries. Heather was quite good looking, a knockout when dressed to the hilt. The last remaining tiny hints of that Y chromosome were only visible if you got to know her, but even then the hints were very, very subtle and I doubt anybody would notice in a more casual setting. But there was another that transitioned 55 years ago and she still does not pass the ideal. The maleness is subtle but it is still far more evident than Heather who transitioned 15 years ago. Everybody else failed the pass test, but many passed the blend test. Point is, everybody is different and nobody is perfect and few are close to perfect. Passing is just an idealistic concept that even most GGs can't achieve. I have seen plenty of GG's that have a lot of masculine features and I am sure it has been a problem for them sometimes and they get clocked as male. In fact I know a couple and it is a problem for them at times. Do your best, learn, but forget about the ideal and just be who you are.

[Sara Jessica]

Did you really mean what you wrote, "passing is just an idealistic concept that even most GGs can't achieve"??? Read above, even the most masculine presenting woman is more often than not clocked as what she is, a woman. To suggest that most women can't pass as women is so wrong on every level.

Please see the incomplete list of "tells" that have been posted by myself and others above. I dare to say that the typical MTF TG person has challenges in enough of those areas to make it difficult, if not impossible to be read by others as anything but trans (assuming the person is presenting as a female). If a natal female is challenged by anything on the list, it is likely absolutely minimal. For example, having slightly larger hands than the average female alone will not get a woman clocked as a male. I know a woman with such a prominent brow that would make a Neanderthal blush, yet she is absolutely unmistakably female based on pretty much every other trait she possesses. The overwhelming feminine nature of achieving a majority of the list is likely to guarantee that the world will see any woman for what she is, a woman unless of course she is trying to present as a male.

I don't know what you see in the wild to conclude that most women cannot pass for women. Perhaps you are viewing the world through such a skewed trans lens that you want to see them in this way in order to bring yourself up. Regardless, it doesn't make it right in any way.

[Ressie]

Is that a man or a woman? That's pretty much the best we can hope for. Truly passing would mean there's no question about it with thoughts and comments like, "she looks great" etc.

[Jackie7]

How to blend more easily: keep on truckin’ as you get older. Everybody looks twice at a hot young chick struttin’ her stuff. Nobody looks once at an appropriately-dressed middle-aged lady quietly minding her own business.