Why do FTM transgender pass better than MTF transgender?
This is a spin off of another existing thread "FTM Transgender" - http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/...TM-transgender
The question is, why do FTM transgender pass better than MTF transgender?
Conventional wisdom is that T is more powerful hormone than estrogen, and that FTM can pass simply after a year on T, while MTF often need 2-3 years, electrolysis/laser, FFS, and may never pass. While I believe that hormones are a part of why FTM's pass better than MTF's, I feel that there are other things at play to, mostly as a consequence of male privilege and male responsibility.
So I will state some of my ideas, and I would like to hear from the rest of the forum their ideas.
1. Hormones: T is stronger than E. See above.
2. Male privilege: Male is the default gender in our society. Whenever any literature is written to society or large groups of people, the male pronouns are always used. A woman in my AA group once complained that the AA Big Book is sexist because it uses male pronouns. So in a sense, all women are automatically mis-gendered by the Big Book.
3. Male privilege: If there is a doubt about how to gender somebody, gender them as male. If someone calls a woman "he" or "sir" a woman will generally not react with violence. Women are less physically strong, and are conditioned not to respond with violence. So although her feelings may be hurt, she won't respond back with violence. If someone calls a man "she" or "ma'am", he may react with violence. Even if he doesn't physically beat you, he will still let you know how you made a fool out of yourself or try to get you into trouble for calling him a girl.
4. Male privilege: If on initial glance someone genders you as male, it is usually the end of story. He's a male, congratulations, welcome to the brotherhood. If on initial glance someone genders you as female, you now are subject to inspection by men and sometimes women. Men being interested in you for sex, women being interested in what you're wearing. While on initial glance you were seen as female, the further inspection and scrutiny may reveal that you are actually male bodied. Now, you no longer pass. Sorry, you're just an "other." Accepting, polite, and politically correct people may still call you "she" or "ma'am" and treat you as such, but others will call you "he and "sir" or "buddy", treat you as a dude, mock you, insult you, give you a dirty look, or physically beat you. If he treats you as a dude, he isn't giving you male privilege, but is being sarcastic. Yes, sadly the female body is scrutinized WAY more than the male body, and often transwomen get clocked during this "inspection" which comes after the initial glance. All of this happens in less than 7 seconds.
5. Tall people or things stand out. We all know New York city for it's famous skyline. The miles long row of endlessly tall buildings that give NYC it's iconic look and many people who have never been to the USA often think the USA is all tall buildings. What people forget is the other four boroughs: The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. The other four boroughs are WAY shorter than Manhattan. Most buildings in the other four boroughs are 3-4 stories tall, sometimes shorter. Manhattan consists of plenty of 40+ story buildings and buildings that are over 100 stories tall. People even think that Manhattan is all about the skyscrapers. What about the 2-3 story brownstones in the Upper East Side? We often forget about the shorter buildings.
How does this pertain to transgender people and passing. FTM's are generally shorter than MTF's. No one really pays attention to short men. Tall women, on the other hand, stand out, just like the Manhattan skyline. Consequently tall women are going to get more attention, and more scrutiny. Couple this with the fact that people generally don't scrutinize male bodies and love to scrutinize female bodies, the odds of getting read increase dramatically.
Remember this the next time you go to NYC and stare at, admire, and scrutinize, the Empire State building, but forget that the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island even exist.
6. Male responsibility and male ego: Because of male privilege and the male ego, it is much more acceptable for women to act or dress masculine than it is for men to act or dress feminine. Consequently, FTM's often start dressing like men and acting like men much earlier in life, giving them the advantage of learning male behavior and integrating in society as men at younger ages. MTF's often have much more pressure to hide our true natures, and we often do so by overcompensating and acting like very manly men. We have much more male behavior to unlearn, later on in life, when our brains aren't as sharp as they used to be. We get a late start on learning how to socialize as female, and it takes us much longer to unlearn male behavior and learn female behavior. Or maybe the female behavior is largely natural and inherent in us, but simply unlearning male behavior is a tough task.
7. Fashion rules: Men have far fewer fashion rules. Male wardrobes are generally simpler. Women have more fashion rules and more diversity in wardrobes. This means we MTF's have much more work at learning how to dress appropriately than FTM's do. FTM's just need to pick out any old guy t-shirt and jeans and sneakers and they're good to go. We have to learn about dressing age appropriately, body type appropriately, selecting the right hairstyle, heels, dressing for the season. Men simply need to dress for hot or cold. Women not only need to dress for hot or cold, but need to worry about four distinct seasons. We need to learn to dress appropriately for each season and the weather variances within each season. How you dress on a cool July day is different from how you would dress on a warm March day, even though both may be 70 degree days. Inappropriate, age inappropriate, out of season clothes, or anything else abnormal, increases your risk of scrutiny and therefore getting read. On, and we MTF's have to learn these complex rules much later in life than GG's do.
So while there may be some truth to the T is stronger than E argument, I believe there are many more things at play causing transmen to pass better than transwomen. 6 out of 7 reasons I have stated have absolutely nothing to do with hormones. Much of it is societal bias and has to do with learning and unlearning behavioral cues.
