Not basing your gender presentation on TV, movies and magazines seems like sound advice for everyone – not just trans people.
#9 OVERDOING GENDER
From my own experience and from other’s transitions I’ve witnessed; a lot of trans folks tend to overdo it when it comes to the gender presentation choices they make they begin to transition. I look back and cringe a little when I see some of the outfits and make-up decisions I wore early on. I think the reasoning for this is two-fold.
- I was trying my best to signal to the world “I AM A FEMALE NOW!” So I picked the most stereotypical feminine over-the-top outfits available. I’ve also seen a lot of younger trans men who express their newfound masculinity in a parade of suits and muscle tees along the same lines.
- I believe a lot of this is because as trans people we base our gender presentations on what media and society has deemed a male or female person to look like. If you are basing your wardrobe/hair/make-up choices off TV, movies and magazines…you’re going to look a little off.
It takes a bit before we become comfortable enough in our own newly established genders to start expressing them in more realistic/traditional ways.
I’ll add that I think there’s a huge difference between emphasizing your gender because you’re expressing an internal sense of it as opposed to emphasizing your gender because you’re worried about what people think of you. To me, it’s self expression in the first case, but self consciousness (at best) in the second.
I hope, by now, everyone knows I hate hate hate the term “passing”. I do. I come to hate it more every year.
#10 THE PROBLEM WITH PASSING
“Passing” is a term rife with complications and innuendo. Originally “passing” was a term used to describe gay or lesbian persons who didn’t seem to “act homosexual” (whatever that means). For trans folks “passing” means to be seen as socially/physically as cisgender (i.e. non-transgender).
I’m fortunate that I tend to “pass” fairly well. People read me as female when they meet me and as a result I tend to have an easier time (i.e. less harassment, humiliation, discrimination) than many of my fellow transgender brothers and sisters. However, not everyone is able to pass due to physiology or lack of access to HRT and other costly aesthetic procedures.
The problem with passing is that it implies that there is a “correct way” to present as either male or female, and that this ideal is cisgender. It also suggests that transgender individuals are somehow attempting to fool or trick people into thinking they are cisgender. This sets up an “us and them” situation with trans folks on one hand and cisgender folks on the other, and those who pass are like spies in the house of gender normativity.
There is no right way to be male or female. At most, some of us tend to look/act in ways that we as a society deem as “feminine” or “masculine” most of the time. Trans people who don’t live up to that standard shouldn’t be penalized or victimized for not living up to our culture’s false standards.
The other implication, of course, is that trans people are not actually the gender they’re being read as when they “pass”. But I am *still* looking for a way to express this idea without using this godawful word. I’m open to suggestions and coinages that express the idea that someone, anyone, is having their gender interpreted correctly by those around them, and this is true for trans and cis people alike.