Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A curious question I was just thinking about that might be unanswerable due to the culture war effect:
Is there any hard data on what percentage of trans people "pass" as their new gender?
I feel inclined to think that the percentage is pretty low. But that may be mostly due to poorly passing trans people being more obvious, while the passing ones don't draw much notice. Most of the pictures of MtFs going around look pretty obviously like a dude in a dress. The FtMs tend to look kind of androgynous. But then you can't deny that Blair White and Buck Angel exist. And those are people who've chosen to be openly trans public figures. How many others are out there who you couldn't tell they weren't what they appeared to be, but don't care to advertise it for whatever reason? I honestly have no clue, and I'm wondering if anybody does.
I don't watch YouTube videos but I was vaguely aware of Contrapoints. I've seen people online say she passes so well and that really colors her views.
I later saw a photo of an obvious man that didn't look much like a woman. The caption explained that was Contrapoints. I also heard her on the witch trials of JK Rowling podcast and it sounded like a man doing a bad impression. If that's a good one then the median must be obviously non-passing.
More options
Context Copy link
I have to agree with "what is passing?". I personally differentiate between "picture passing", "video passing without voice" "video passing with voice (impossible)" and "real life passing". And it obviously depends on the person how much you notice. For some people, I even get the distinct impression that they don't want to notice. Especially with women you often hear them mentioning "that girl is weirding me out/making me feel uncomfortable" but are surprised when you point out it's an MtF. But they could also try to avoid accusations of bigotry, which is probably smart I guess.
Picture passing is relatively easy. You have to put in a little work to choose a specific angle and a grainy theme/style and try around, but it isn't even a large time investment. This is the great majority of allegedly passing MtFs.
Video passing is considerably harder. Gait and mannerisms are quite strongly biologically primed and often need to be deliberately re-learned. It's harder to rely on specific angles. But for a dedicated person it is doable. This is most FtMs and a few MtF celebrities that are specifically known for how passing they are.
I already half-jokingly added (impossible) to passing with voice. It may not be literally impossible, but in general MtFs voices are just to hoarse for a cis woman and FtMs are too squeaky. Very specific and recognisable once you've heard it a few times.
With real life passing I mean that you directly talk and interact with a person; If you only see them from a distance and don't talk with them, passing is kinda equivalent to video passing. Seeing a person up close and talking with them just exacerbates all queues. Even if you don't consciously notice it, MtFs tend to really weird you out and make you feel uncomfortable IRL. They tend to stand a little too close, their bigger and broader build is more noticeable in person, etc. . FtMs on the other hand are much better at passing IRL. I think it's because our threat assessment doesn't kick in with them, they're just kind of tiny and squeaky. But in general even they are implausibly small, implausibly delicate, etc. for a cis man and become much more noticeable once you're aware of these differences.
Also, Buck Angel: He totally isn't all that passing. Super small, very squeaky voice, actually quite feminine personality. Blair White I haven't heard or seen yet so don't know, but none of the "passing" trans MtFs celebrity are really all that convincing once you've seen more than pictures or short videos.
And as a last aside, extremely early HRT a la Jazz Jennings might change things, but it is still quite rare.
All interesting points. It may be culturally impossible, but I think it'd be interesting to see someone make all those levels as formal definitions and do an actual experiment somehow on what percentage meets each one.
I haven't spent a ton of time around trans people in person. The ones I have seen have been pretty obvious, though I can't be sure there are others I haven't noticed.
Funny you should say - Buck Angel was the first thing that came to mind as the best-passing FtM I was aware of. But when I found his (?) Instagram, I actually noticed that most of the pictures were pretty close-up and didn't show much but face and some upper body. And in several of the ones that were further out and showed full body, the pose just looked kind of feminine somehow. And if I listen to a video, the voice sounds kind of feminine too. I watched a few minutes of video of Blair White too, and haven't gotten quite the same sense. She (?) seems maybe a bit more masculine than I'd expect, but that seems to be a bit more accepted in women and somewhat more common in women who do things like become a full-time podcaster/influencer about politics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Related question: what percentage of cis people "pass" as their gender, using whichever standard you choose?
I don't think I could get better than 99.9% correct, but I'm quite confident about reaching 98% given reasonable amounts of data.
That's an interesting question as well. Particularly if you include some of the other things pointed out in this thread - if you're more primed to think about trans-ness for whatever reason, it's probably more likely to identify actual trans people, but you would think that also corresponds to a higher chance of perceiving cis people who happen to be somewhat marginal as trans when they aren't.
I think it's also affected a lot by the evident desire of most people to clearly and obviously be the gender they were born as. If you got a bunch of candidates to all wear the same shapeless coveralls, get the same short haircut and shave any other body hair, and avoid any makeup, presumably it would be rather harder to tell. Probably a number of people who are on the spectrum of trans-ness but don't want to get actual medical procedures already voluntarily do things like that, or try hard to dress as the opposite gender.
There also seem to be a lot of differences in how people move. I've observed a few times that I can usually identify somebody's gender from a great distance, much too far to see any facial features or details of clothing, just based on how they move. It's hard to explain what the actual difference is, but it seems to be real.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, this is also really important. I use "this person is weirding me out" as an important cue, but on it's own that would probably be a 10% false-positive rate. A lot of left/progressives seem to take a super strict line where a person is only counted as not-passing if they're so obvious that you would be like 99% confident that they're trans, while for me there are several gradients.
This is also related to how non-sex-conforming people are kind of the biggest losers of the current trans wave. There is a decent number of both men and women that already lost the genetic lottery with their looks, and in the past might have been insulted with "you look like a dude/girl". Nowadays, people will not say anything, but might think that you're actually the other sex.
You mean "cue," btw. Unless this is one of those British-versus-American English things and I'm unaware.
Thanks. No, this is one of those foreigner-guessing-the-written-from-the-sound things that always seems to go wrong in english.
More options
Context Copy link
No. In BrE, "queue" is a waiting line. "cue" can either be a small signal that activates stored information in the brain, or the stick used to propel a ball in billiards family games.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's no good definition of passing. If numbers pop up, you have to look at the methods skeptically. It all depends on context.
If a middle aged woman, dressed and styled like a middle aged woman, at mass today looked kind of masculine I would probably not notice it, maybe notice it think "oh, she has an unfortunate face/build," and think nothing more of it.
If a young person walks into the gym I managed on PRIDE Meetup* day, I was very aware of the possibility that any person might be any gender, I can't go off general dress or styling cues. I'm constantly examining people to know how to address them without putting my foot down my throat.
So Pass might mean anything from "Successfully signal in most contexts that they would like to be treated as [Chosen Gender] such that most people will politely do so even if they know there's something going on" to "Zero Percent of people will ever experience a hint of doubt or uncanny discomfort when talking to this person; potential sexual partners would be surprised by what they found in the bedroom." And every person is going to have different perceptions there anyway.
As an example, Amy Schneider** was on Jeopardy every night, and I watched it with my parents and grandmother and wife almost every night. It took my wife and I about a week to clock her, primarily because of subtle LGBT cultural cues, and I just prayed that they never talked about it on the show because my parents and grandmother had no idea whatsoever. It took them actively announcing it on the show, and my parents were fucking STUNNED by this revelation, floored, never would have thought of it. I don't think she does a perfect job of passing by any means, but going back to my examples above: if I saw a woman looking like her in church I would assume she was just unfortunately designed; if I saw her at the gym in leggings on Pride night I'd clock her in a heartbeat.
And that's where the question becomes unanswerable due to the culture war effect. Trans advocates confused the former condition for the latter, though there is an obvious difference between politely playing along or being deeply uncomfortable but not sure why and actually passing. While anti-trans types will claim that no one ever passes because when they look at a picture of a trans person they have been told is trans they can point to cues in the photo that give it away, even though their trans radar is typically set to off and they couldn't pick up on any of that in a normal interaction.
*That they always chose to come on "Ladies Half Price Night" will never not piss me off. Why pick the one time when gender matters to our minimum wage high school student staffers? I had to constantly lecture new hires: Don't be a hero, the extra $9 on a day pass will not matter to the owner, having a controversy on social media will.
**I will brook no slander on Amy, purely because I hated the other big champion that year so fucking much
The most queer-friendly people I know will call anyone our age a "beautiful person." It is so jarring to me that it distracts me. But, it lets me know -- without looking -- that the subject is a cute emo girl. (The phrasing is so awkward to me because I've been exposed to so much CW preaching about how to talk: "beautiful" is preferred over "cute" "hot" "sexy" etc. to avoid objectifying women and of course "person" is preferred to avoid assuming gender).
Imagine my shock (not really) when they call the average middle aged lady at Walmart a she without any issue.
It seems parsimoniously explainable if pronouns & gender is a game of people-pleasing. This fits your first definition of passing involving signaling.
With that in mind, when I see an obviously-transgender person, the signaling theory of pronouns & passing dictates that this person obviously wants to be called she. In this sense, the obviously-male transgender woman passes as a woman, evident by her dress and makeup.
I wrote a post about this awhile back, but I didnt feel that many people grokked it. It seems everyone uses the phrase "pass [as a woman]", but based on how its used in context, it's more accurate to call it "pass [as cisgender]"
More options
Context Copy link
I played against Amy on Jeopardy! before anyone knew who she was (I thought I was going to play against Amodio). Seeing her in the makeup chair from behind, I thought she was an old woman, with the strand of pearls and cardigan and wiry hair. Once I heard her voice, I thought it was pretty obvious that she was trans.
Even dumber than the Ladies Nights at your gym, Jeopardy! hails Schneider as their best-ever female contestant.
Dudes continuing to rock.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's a really good point. It's harder to pass now!
In a society where 0.01% of people are trans, pretty much everyone will pass! The odds of a person being trans are so low no one would suspect it unless the person in question had a beard or giant breasts or something.
In a society where trans identity is common, people will be constantly wondering whether that woman with broad masculine features is actually a biological man.
Bayes' theorem rears its head again.
What? A guy transitioning at 40 is going to have a hell of a time passing, no matter how common transitioning is. In fact, they'd be standing out even more.
I'm making about conditional probabilities.
Let's take it a step further. Let's say we live in a society where you know there is only 1 trans woman in the entire world. You see a very masculine looking person dressed in female clothing. Have you found the unicorn? Have you seen the 1 trans woman in the entire world? Or do you shrug and say, "wow that woman looks very masculine".
More options
Context Copy link
If he's <5'9", fat, and styles himself like an appropriately aged Matron, no one will notice him, because nobody pays much attention to ugly middle aged women who don't get too uppity.
/images/16824050034534857.webp
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ok you can't just say that and not elaborate
Matt Immodio had a massive streak of wins, where he was on every night and basically dominated the board. Like I said, at the time especially I watched Jeopardy basically every night with my parents and grandmother.
As you may know one of the gimmicks of Jeopardy is that your response must be in the form of a question. So the clue in category "Famous Interviewers" would be something like "This famous interview at Weehawken left Alexander Hamilton dead, and ended his interviewers' political career" and the answer would be "Who is Aaron Burr?"
Immodio figured out that while you had to have every detail in the answer correct to get points, they would accept any interrogative. So he'd answer everything with "what's..." "What's Aaron Burr" "What's Liechtenstein" "What's Princess Diana." Strategically, probably a good move, but I found it highly grating, and then he just kept winning. He was dominant, tabbed as the near certain winner of the Tournament of Champions that year, so naturally when another major winner rose up I was rooting for Amy to win the ToC, which she ultimately did.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're right that there's no clear and objective definition of passing to use. And that passing probably depends at least some on how predisposed the person is to consider the possibility. Still, it'd be interesting to see somebody attempt to study it, which would involve them picking some arbitrary specific definition of passing.
Trying to be as unbiased as possible, I would think that the percentage at "Zero Percent of people will ever experience a hint of doubt or uncanny discomfort when talking to this person" would be relatively small just because it seems to take a lot of money and effort plus some genetic luck to reach that point, and most likely few people will do so.
Oh that was an intentional strawman, I don't think anyone ever reaches that point. Hell, our success at gender identification isn't 100% on a normal basis absent trans people as @ulyssesword points out, worse once you mix in cross-racial identification. If the average 16-25 year old male grows his hair out long enough and shaves, he will get addressed as a woman every now and then by a stranger seeing him out of the corner of their eye. If a young woman cuts her hair short and wears baggie (enough) clothes and a backwards ballcap she'll look like a teenage boy in the right circumstances.
That strawman is frequently presented by anti-trans people as "Trans can't be real unless you hit this absurd standard." Which makes no sense to most trans people or most people who know trans people, because they're able to maneuver through life quite well "as" the opposite sex while clearly not passing 100% of the time to 100% of the people.
The flipside of that is trans people who hang out only in mega pro-trans online spaces, where everyone affirms them because that's the thing you do, confuse "signaling you would like to be treated as X" with "passing subconsciously as X" and then going out in the wider world and finding that something is missing. People are uncomfortable or short with them, people don't want to date them. A lot of trans people were sold a bill of goods by trans advocates, and their rage is misdirected at the rest of the world.
NB: I think all conversations about detecting Liars/Frauds online suffer from genre bias as a general trend. People on Reddit or TheMotte will perpetually claim "I would never fall for somebody lying about going to Harvard!" or "How were these people so dumb that they thought that guy was special forces?" Most of the time people aren't looking for clues because they don't know they're in a detective story yet, when they do figure out something is going on the clues become obvious but until they're searching they aren't important.
Interesting, especially alongside @RenOS's points above. Possibly nobody ever really does. I've seen things like your examples, though that's a pretty momentary thing, and easily fixed once the person moves around a little or faces you. Kind of close to RenOS's picture passing.
I mostly agree with your points on pro- and anti-trans people, though it seems to me that people that pro-trans are very common, and people that anti-trans are pretty rare. Maybe I'm seeing a biased picture, but if there are that many super-anti-trans people around, how come I never see them? I mostly hang out in pretty right/red places, and the most I see is complaints about how they all seem to be kiddie diddlers, not that they aren't "real" because they don't pass to a very high standard.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m curious and maybe you can answer better than I can, but I suspect that at times behavioral things, a manner of walking or word choice when talking or ways of behaving play a bigger part in “passing” than even looks do.
The times I’ve been able to “clock” someone it was because some of their mannerisms seemed a bit …. uncanny valley. Just slightly too forced, too over thought, or slightly unnatural to the person.
I'd agree that can play into it, Voice is also a huge one, and that demonstrates how tough a question defining passing can be.
Mannerisms take time and interaction to observe. So right away, if you're saying that by appearance they more or less pass but that by long interaction they don't, that means that person will have lots of interactions every day where they pass. The teller at the bank, the checkout clerk at the grocery store, people passing in the street, will all treat such a person as their chosen gender. While at the same time, people they get close to or have long conversations with won't unless they choose to be polite about it. That's a really tough place to be.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link