A Handy Little Thing...

[Guest Adam_Lantz]

Something I have always wished I could do is look at a person and tell instantly whether they see me as male or female. I personally get frustrated when I'm out in public trying to pass as male, but no one addresses me as either gender! Particularly when I go into a store or somewhere and get asked if I need help and the person doesn't call me sir OR ma'am...so I think it would be just wonderful if I could have some psychic ability to know if the average passerby sees me as male or female. Does anyone else have the problem of never being addressed as either gender?

[Guest Avery F]

Yes! Absolutely. Ever since I cut my hair a couple of years ago, I almost never get addressed in a gender-specific manner. It's actually quite infuriating, as I'd love to know just how well it is I pass. As time goes on and I keep getting addressed in this way, I find myself going to more and more extreme measures to seem definitively male - soon enough I'll probably be going around in t-shirts with crude sayings or pictures on them, swaggering more than a stereotyped cowboy, and restricting my conversations to a single 'yo'. Well, no not really, but still, it's getting really extreme.

All I can recommend if getting addressed androgynously bothers you would be to just try and enhance the masculinity of your appearance. There are a bunch of good tips on this site already, and I'll add a couple of the less common ones for good measure:

1 - Use male deodorant. Axe or Old Spice is good. Although people don't really notice it, it just gives another subtle cue as to your gender identity.

2 - Buy some powder-based foundation (a type of makeup) that's a shade or two darker than your natural skin tone. Brush it on your jaw and neck where you'd normally have beard stubble. Make sure it's not too dark, or it will look artificial.

3 - Get some mascara and put it in your eyebrows. I know a lot of people use eyeliner to darken their brows, but I've found mascara looks much more natural.

4 - Last, sprawl. Whenever you sit down, try and sort of spread out with your limbs and everything, so that it looks like the chair you're in is rather to small for you.

[Guest Elizabeth K]

Well an MTF here, but I can answer from my experience. I KNOW my presentation as a woman works, and is successful, because I have not been 'sired' even once in seven months I have lived full time. (but I am 25 months HRT). So I make that assumption - I am accepted as me, as I really am.

But as other more experienced trans-people have pointed out here on Laura's - you never know for sure, and I agree with that.

And that 'neither gender' thing people sometimes use? I can't be affected by that, it's just too distracting. I have to assume they see me as a woman and let it go... it's my ATTITUDE!

Perhaps people don't know, they just cannot commit to saying one way or the other, we sometimes are androgynous. So what. I act as I am... they get the point... I show them I am a woman by being a woman.

Try that ATTITUDE approach - especially as you get more male presenting. And just smile if people get it wrong and correct them.

You will be what you are regardless... and remember , a natal man NEVER worries about his presentation. I imagine if someone mis-genders him, he would laugh and tell that person to get new eyeglasses.

I hope this helps.

Lizzy

[Carolyn Marie]

I know the feeling, Adam, and it is frustrating. Sometimes when I'm en femme, and get help from a clerk or salesperson or waitress, they simple don't use pronouns at all. I'm left wondering if they didn't because they just don't use pronouns, or they clocked me and didn't want to offend, or see me as female but just didn't feel like being polite?

The only way to know for sure is to ask them, and I'm never going to do that. So, you're stuck, unless of course you develop telepathy in the near future.

Carolyn Marie