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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3602 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

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I'm generally not that interested in trans stuff, and haven't really talked to trans people about their subjective experiences of it, but my wife suggested an idea about it the other day that had never occurred to me: I've never heard of a pre-transition trans person express the fear of not 'passing' in the opposite direction -- e.g., a pre-transition trans man, feeling like a man in a woman's body, finds himself in the women's locker room feeling afraid that the other women will detect that he's actually a man, despite his physically gynecoid appearance. If I were to wake up and find my mind 'trapped in a woman's body', I think it would be hard to escape the 'illusion of transparency' -- I'd be paranoid that I'd be found at as not a real woman, no matter how much I looked and sounded like one, because I'm 'essentially' a man. Is this an experience that trans people report?

The most vocally trans woman I know reports being abused by guys in middle and high school locker rooms specifically due to insufficient masculinity. She also has some serious baggage due to being continuously measured against her younger sister. This led to what could charitably be called “mommy issues,” but seems very compatible with the impostor syndrome you’re describing.

I suspect self-reports of this nature would be a little uncommon, because it feels like giving in to one of the more smug anti-trans talking points. At the same time, there are definitely people who feel paranoid about getting rejected by their fellow men/women.

The most vocally trans woman I know reports being abused by guys in middle and high school locker rooms specifically due to insufficient masculinity.

If this person is over ~35 I'm gonna go ahead and say that (oddly) this was pretty much the universal experience of middle and high-school boy's locker rooms -- somehow even the bullies get bullied. (now they don't even make dudes shower together, so I'm not sure it's the same)

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