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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3996 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 23, 2023

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?

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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.

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.

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.

Unless this is one of those British-versus-American English things and I'm unaware.

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.

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