Jennifer,

Great question, which highlights a very important point. You're as much of a "face value" person as there is on this forum. I'd contend that even you are rarely taken at face value in public. Given your location, it's likely that it happens with you more than some of us, but still. I think when people meet you (or me) their mind goes immediately to some preconceived notion of transgender, as your pictures illustrate. I suspect they rarely see you just for you. It seems that it's easier for them to jump immediately to some caricature than to take you (us) st face value.

Even at face value, though, we're hard for the general public to wrap their head around. We can lull ourselves into a sense of security and well being in no small part because of this community, and in your case an encouraging spouse. A lot of us, you included, live in our own little world where it's perfectly normal and without much thought or fanfare to get up in the morning and shave all over, go to your dresser and choose a bra (and boobs), do your makeup as if everybody does it, choose a dress from you closet that makes you happy that day, and heels that speak to you in some way. Each of those things that feel so comfortable and normal to you are so incredibly and incomprehensibly weird to those outside this community that it causes their mind to go all kinds of places that all totally wrong, resulting in unfounded fear and hate.

Not picking on you at all here, but it's your thread and you're the perfect one for this illustration. You absolutely obsess over the length of your dresses and skirts and obsess over other details of how you dress. I love you for that, and I do the same thing (though maybe not as intensely as you!). You are as thoughtfully and carefully put together as anybody on here. Jewelry, hair, clothes, shoes... the whole deal. Still, some people upon reading you will immediately default to one of those caricatures that aren't you at all!

I feel this more now than I ever have, and I've been at this for a LONG time. Up until recently people had much less knowledge (however misguided) of the trans community. They were much more likely to form an opinion of me (and of the trans community in general) based on me. I was likely the only trans person they'd ever met/seen. Now almost everybody's opinion is solidly pre-formed. It's much harder to undo those pre-formed opinions than it is to make a good first impression.