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I totally agree that wording/phrasing is important. :)
And I'll take it even one step further...
Many people notice; some of those don't care; and some of those actually *do* care, but weighed the risks & rewards and decided not to directly respond to the CD'er due to potential various consequences directly affecting themselves, in doing so.
(Furthermore, yes, sometimes people actually do respond, and in a variety of ways, whether positive or negative -- consequences be damned.)
Great point, and I fully accept that correction! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Jenniferathome
Great question. I don't think I really look for a CD but I am sure that I have seen them and have on occasion, if the circumstances are right, spoken to them.
While out an about today I did notice someone I passed in Walmart gave me a long look and I'm sure I was read but as is usually the case nothing said
No I can't say I have ever seen a CD'er out in the general public before. I go out in the general public en femme, when I get the chance to. I don't get it. seeing that the Chicagoland area is very accepting of Transgender Community.
I once saw a gal at my local grocery store. She looked good. I am very observant but that was the only time.
Perhaps most of the people we see in the streets are crossdressing, but they are so good in their presentation that almost nobody notices that they are crossdressers. In that case, we are like a subset of crossdressers that is not good enough for this D:
I should say, I think I have seen many of them. However I did not notice they were crossdressers, since they are incredibly talented.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jenniferathome
Valery, you're young. :)
And I agree, I think it is easier for younger males to pass, although I think that only the super good-looking males can do this ... you know, the guys who have the classic baby-face like Justin Beiber's face. I have sons about your age and even though they don't crossdress (believe me I would have noticed if they had when they were teenagers), you could put my youngest son in a wig and makeup and there's no way that people would know he was a male (except for his height). He really is that gorgeous. I know, I'm his mom and biased, but he really is.
Anyway, the average age of members in this forum is middle-aged. By that time, the male body has matured to the extent that it's really hard to not look like a male, despite the wigs, makeup, breast forms, pads, etc. This is simply the reality.
The good thing about having a baby-face as an adult is that there's a good chance of keeping that throughout your entire life, at least in some form or another.
My father's father had one his whole life, even when he was in his mid-80's. :confused3:
Also, the greater the number of older family members who also have baby-faces, the better your odds of following in their footsteps. My mom, her siblings, and their mom all have/had one even much later in life. And fortunately for me, I definitely take more after that side of the family. :battingeyelashes:
But yeah, everything still gets tougher as you age. If I had kept my weight steady/gradual, instead of yo-yo'ing a few times, which I believe had a bit of a negative impact of male aging, I think I would have been that much better off in terms of staying "pretty," longer. But, can't change the past! Consistently taking care of one's self as much as possible in all kinds of ways definitely helps. Let all that be some advice for those here under 40. ;)
Oh, and it's certainly never too late, either.
Anyway, there's definitely some young & pretty 20-something CD/trans out there. Easier for them, of course. But they're also making them generally taller these days (then again, the same applies to the GG's, too).
But I still think I could pick most of them out of a crowd. Only once was I ever "fooled" (confirmed, anyway) -- and probably would have stayed that way had my friend who knew her not told me. She looked *good*! :o
I see CDs regularly during the daytime in vanilla places but the reason I know they're CD is because there's something off and don't present all that well, some use a coloured wig for instance or might be very large so on a closer look they do seem to be CDs. There's probably lots of passable CD or trans girls that I see out everyday that don't even register in my mind as being anything other than female though.
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I am really stunned by and quite curious about this seemingly, widely held notion.Quote:
Originally Posted by irene9999
Why would anyone assume there are so many "passing" cross dressers? The evidence provided here is, "because I don't notice them." This is the equivalent of saying that there are Bigfoot everywhere in the forest but we just don't see them. This is the classic, unsupported reply. Uh, yeah, that's one idea. But of course the rational answer in both cases is that we do not see them because they are not there.
Is it that as a cross dresser you want this to be true? That the Holy Grail does exist? Does it change your world if there is no Grail? So odd to me.
Well, when you put it that way... :laughing: :clap:
Not going to speak for those you quoted, since that's not really my view, anyway. But I'm also not discounting the very real possibility that some can, at the very least, "blend" sometimes -- meaning, they don't personally catch my attention at a certain time in a certain environment (while others might read them just moments later). I'm pretty darn observant, but even with that I realize I can't or don't always get a good look at every single person among a crowd. Or, perhaps it's not fully-lit. Or, maybe I'm just in a big rush or I'm preoccupied with something, and only catch a split-second glimpse from the corner of my eye. Or whatever.
So, do I miss them sometimes? Perhaps. Who knows. Obviously they're not easily & instantly catching my attention in those situations, anyway.
But this definition of "blending" can be quite different than actually "passing."
As mentioned above, the only one in the real-world who has *passed* with me, as far as I'm concerned? I didn't speak to her, which may or may not have tipped me off, but I was checking her out pretty hard & for quite a while, LOL. Never once did I suspect it was actually a CD'er -- I honestly thought it was a hot GG. She did a great job; she looked awesome. And for the record, it was at a fairly-lit hetero club on Halloween, and she was sitting at the bar talking to some guy, so I wasn't really expecting that there, anyway. And no, I didn't have my beer-goggles on. Finally, I didn't believe my friend at first when he told me... but I knew him well enough to know he wasn't BS'ing after I kept pressing.
I bet she "fooled" a lot of guys that night. And probably lots of other nights, too.
I forgot to add that I have seen CDs/Trans girls around here who I assumed were genetic females but once I heard them speak I could tell they were trans or CD, so at least visually they were passable. I also see many women who might be CD/trans but there was not enough to say definitively that they were so who knows. I guess what I'm saying is there could be CDs so convincing that you wouldn't even noticeQuote:
Originally Posted by Jenniferathome
Jennifer,
The operative phrase in your statement might be "so many". Certainly there are some members of this board who I think would pass unquestionably. Even more who would pass circumstantially. I've personally seen two pre-op TS who, to me, passed unquestionably, one teenage (crossdressed) boy, and one girl at a local Halloween costume contest (I don't know how she self-identified) who were completely undetectable to me. That's out of a VERY small sample size. Maybe someone else would have known, but I don't see how it'd be possible. If someone hadn't told me, I would have never guessed. I have no problem believing that passable crossdressers exist in numbers greater than you expect. From what I've heard, on Bourbon Street in New Orleans there are a lot of them. In fact, that reminds me of another one at a drag show on Bourbon Street.
IMHO there are several CD's on this site who would "pass" to me anyway, at first glance at least from a distance, because they look/dress like nicely dressed middle aged women. Now in closer interaction they might not...but someone just walking by might not notice them...even the folks here who know the "Tells".
That said....I've seen more non-binary folks than CD's...and I think that's because the vast majority of CD's have no desire to go out amongst the Muggles...I mean No-Maj... the people who are NOT-trans.
Anecdote. I was once a member of a support group up near Chicago....oh okay it was Chi Chapter when it was still a Tri-Ess group....CGS had their meetings on TUESDAY at that time, or I'd have joined THEM.
Anyway, I got a rep for...well....being levelheaded and mostly self accepting (I still have issues but compared to the average CD back then....it was nothing) I was talking with another member who was suggesting I run for a leadership spot and was talking about the trials and travails of running a CD support group. Basically Herding cats.
Now the meeting place was near a large shopping emporium....oh okay the meeting place is the Double Tree in Oak Brook (don't worry Chi Chapter openly publicizes the location...NOW....they didn't back when I was a member....I think that was one of the changes that caused the rift between Chi and Tri-Ess national), right across the road from Oak Brook Centre, which has a MAC, Sephora, Lord & Taylor, etc etc. Now this member was saying that she'd been trying to encourage members to engage more in public because the world outside the group wasn't all that scary....but nobody was interested.
I said I would be interested, but she said to me: "But Veronica, you don't NEED outings like this, you go out on your own shopping for girl stuff en femme or en boy mode whenever you want to. I've SEEN those little MAC and Sephora bags sticking out of the side pocket of your purse....don't tell me you haven't been over there on your own before meetings" And of course, I had. And then she talked about the various demographics basically stating something like:
"Fetish/few item CD's outnumber the rest, in general they don't go out and have no desire to.
then there's the everything CD's...but plenty have no desire to go out at all.
Then there's the subset of THAT who do go out, but only to GLBT clubs/support groups.
Then there's the subset of That group who go wherever they want...which are a small group, but THEY are the ones that run the support groups and take the most pictures and do most of the talking on the websites.
And about a 1/3rd of THEM are really TS's that haven't figured it out yet or are in the process of figuring it out like you Veronica, so they aren't really crossdressers."
Then she made the common joke that becoming an officer of a support group for crossdressers was a signifier of an eventual transition...and then admitted that she wanted to transition but had made a commitment to her wife as a male and felt obligated to continue that commitment even if she'd rather be female.
And THAT is why you won't see many CD's in public and if you DO see one, there's a goodly chance that the CD in question might not be as strongly male identified as most CD's here.
Veronica