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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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If you check my post history, you'll find my tale of attending a cabaret show, one run by ladyboys. And I genuinely couldn't tell that they weren't real women, despite straining my eyes trying. Is there something about the Asian physiognomy that makes it easier for them to pass? The closest thing I found to a tell was the waists, but even then they were well within the range for natal women. The railway community in the West take note, that's how you pass with flying colors.

In addition to selection effects (non-passing ladyboys wouldn't attract much clientele), you've probably been less exposed to Thai faces and so have less practice distinguishing males and females. Funnily enough, it goes both ways; I'm a trans woman and when I visited Asian countries (e.g. Malaysia, not known for its wokeness) I got called ma'am a lot more than back home in the West.

I already speculated about selection effects in a previous comment, but I still find the notion dubious.

Firstly, I'm not aware of any similar performance in the West (or India for the matter) where a large number of trans performers pass so convincingly. Even the transwomen touted as passing do so largely in posed photos, with the number that can get away with video dropping precipitously, and the number passing up close in person vanishingly low.

Certainly I wouldn't expect to be fooled if I was in boob-grabbing distance, as was the case when these performers lined up outside for photoshoots if you were willing to pay.

Also, the issue with claims that I'm simply not astute enough to spot trans people outside ethnicities I'm familiar with is that I think I can still convincingly distinguish European, African and Indian transwomen with ease. It's only the Thai that give me serious pause.

I think it's just that there are substantial numbers of Asians who are less sexually dimorphic or appear feminine, if Korean boy bands are anything to go by. Not the majority of course, but still enough that with enough pruning and picking you can get a few to pass even under scrutiny. I'm not 100% sold on that hypothesis, but it's the best I can come up with.

I grew up in a majority-Asian city so I'm not sure I'd agree with the "Asians are more naturally feminine" hypothesis, as opposed to other factors such as estrogen being available without a prescription, and Thai trans women DIY'ing from a young age (the younger you start HRT, the easier it is to pass). I think it's more to do with the fact that there's no similar visible "kathoey culture" in the West so trans women are much more dispersed; you won't find a high concentration of them in any one location as easily as you would in Thailand. But there's plenty of passing trans women, e.g. famous actresses like Indya Moore, Hunter Schafer, Valentina Sampaio (a number of Euphoria viewers didn't even cop on to the fact that she was trans, despite playing a trans character in the show), and a number of models, sex workers, and OnlyFans performers that anyone who's sufficiently terminally online can discover.

I looked up the people you specifically mentioned (I've already watched Euphoria, courtesy of my girlfriend!) and I will concede that Valentina wasn't obvious, she has that overly sharp look that's common enough in natal women that I wouldn't think twice, while the other two are clearly trans.

I honestly don't know much about the availability of estrogen etc in Thailand, but it is possible that very early starts combined with strong selection effects could explain what I've seen!

It’s also possible your “trans detector” has high sensitivity but low specificity, giving you a high false positive rate. One could correctly identify most trans women as trans due to their masculine traits, but could also identify many cis women as trans.

Nowadays with the growing trans hysteria you have many masculine cis women being harassed or even assaulted when using the women’s bathroom, due to getting “clocked” by their wide shoulders or being over 6’ or just having the wrong shape. You also have “transvestigators” who take it to an extreme and think a huge amount of celebrities or random people in the street are secretly trans - they think that Elon Musk is a trans man because of the curvature of his spine, or that some female celebrity is a trans woman because she has straight clavicles and a prominent jaw.

India doesn't really have any substantial number of trans folk, at least not in the Western sense. The closest we've got in any numbers are hijras, and they have a vested interest in being obvious, since their primary means of subsistence is being so fucking creepy and insistent that you're willing to slip them a few bucks to fuck off. They'll insult your manhood, grope you, spit on you or threaten to lay curses upon you and yours if you don't comply.

So it's hard for me to evaluate the accuracy of my trans detector when the base rate for people even attempting to pass is so low around these parts.