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Help on appearing gender neutral when out, wanted please!


Guest Refusing to choose

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Guest Refusing to choose

Hey, I'm recently getting to grips with being genderqueered, and previously (as in the last 10 years) I've been wearing the same baggy hoodys and baggy combats - basically male clothes, in the hope that I will at least look like a tomboy,

I've now cut my hair into a mohawk with a slight quiff at the front, and taken to wearing black makeup so as to appear slightly more neutral, and I've just bought a 983--Tri-Top Chest Binder from underworks... but does anyone have any advice on how to appear more gender neutral?

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Guest Jo-I-Dunno

I'm coming from the opposite direction, so my personal strategies don't apply. I can make suggestions, though! Other than what you're already doing, here are some ideas:

  • Build some muscles!
  • Play around with your voice. For a physical female trying to seem less so, try to stay relatively monotone.
  • Study how people stand/walk.

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Guest Refusing to choose

Thanks for those. But I don't think I want to try the stubble look, I'm trying to get away from obviously masculine traits as I'm wearing the clothes. Unfortunately I'm not in a position where I can build muscle either - I have a chronic illness which disables me. But I'll try the voice thing, thanks :)

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Little accessory details can help throw things off. When people don't see something that tells them gender in an obvious way, they look for subtler cues. For example, many butch women I've seen will dress hair-to-shoes masculine, sans makeup, but will wear earrings that pretty much scream "I'm female!" They also don't bind, though their clothes and individual build may leave that open to speculation.

One thing that can throw the subtle off is shaving your face. Because women usually don't shave, that babyfine peachfuzz is there and is a subtle signal that you're female. If you shave it, it can throw off the signal. Also, men grow sideburns, while women's hair tends to grow into a wispy point at the same place. Keeping your "sideburns" shaved so there's no telltale wispy points can help.

That complete absence of hair is true of body hair, such as on arms, as well. If you shave it all off, people can't judge by thickness whether to label you masculine or feminine, while on the legs, where women normally shave, if you leave it unshaved you could be butch and female or male and not very hairy by genetic tendency.

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Guest Jo-I-Dunno

I've thought about the facial fuzz thing before. Like, a couple days after electrolysis when my face is healed but before real facial hair starts growing back, I touch my face and think, "Oh! Fuzz! I forgot how that feels." I never thought about it as a specific gender indicator, though. And lately, my electrolysis appointments have been reaching up into my sideburns which has thrown some people off.

I wish there was a way to do the same thing with my arms and legs. But alas, two years of estrogen and anti-androgens have had minimal on my male Colombian hairyness genes.

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Can electrolysis be used to thin it out? I've got that Latino hairiness, too, though in my case it just means that being female-bodied I'm still hairier than a lot of guys, including a dark enough upper lip that it would make some people self-conscious. And if I went on T...hairy back and eyebrows bushy enough to need combing are in the set of possibilities, to judge by male relatives. (also male pattern baldness...) The idea of needing a nose hair trimmer is about as exciting as the idea of having to shave my legs was when I was twelve (I had to be coerced into starting shaving in the first place).

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Guest Jo-I-Dunno

Yeah. The effects are gradual, not immediate. For example, I've had about 25 individual hour-long sessions yet no single part of my face is totally clear yet, though my neck is starting to look like it did when I first started shaving.

It's expensive, time-consuming, and painful, though. Once I finish my face, I don't think I'm willing to do it anywhere else on my body. But, then again, we're talking about one of the more sensitive parts of the human body with the thickest hairs; maybe arms/legs wouldn't hurt so bad.

And, yeesh, eyebrows. Every time I post a picture of myself on this website, people say "you really look like a girl, but maybe trim those eyebrows". But I take those pictures immediately after I pluck out my unibrow and hairs that line the sides of my eye sockets.

Sorry we're kinda off-topic RefusingToChoose. Or are we...

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Guest Refusing to choose

So I went out today wearing baggy jeans, a knitted sleeved top and a leather coat... and the woman serving me in the shop called me Sir. I passed. But I kinda feel like I failed in a way, I wasn't aiming for masculine, I was aiming for just me.... *shrug*.

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Guest Jo-I-Dunno

Well what did you want her to day, "Good afternoon... you"? Most people are ultimately going to assign you to one or the other. I think the success criteria, if you're trying to not look specifically male or female, lies in getting a variety of responses

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Guest Refusing to choose

Yeah I suppose you have a good point there. The best response I ever got was 'thank you sir, madam, sir, erm?' which made me happy for days :-p

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Guest Juniper Blue

Be yourself ... do what feels right and move in the ways that feel natural to you ... your androgyny will most likely shine right through on its own. Just be YOU! Amazing and one of a kind ... YOU.

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Guest Micha

Yeah I suppose you have a good point there. The best response I ever got was 'thank you sir, madam, sir, erm?' which made me happy for days :-p

:lol:

Personally I like "erm?" the best. ^_^

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Guest Refusing to choose

Ok so I had a (coming out) birthday party with just my closest friends this Saturday. It went really well and I got a llot of comments along the lines of 'yeah we guessed - you're just you to us anyway.' which was nice :D

Yesterday (my actual birthday) I wore womens jeans with a mans short sleeved button shirt and a new tie and I felt fantastic, like that was the style that felt most 'me'. All day I kept saying to my boyfriend 'I feel like myself!' and he just kept replying 'you look like yourself' lol. I think he understood though as he was crossdressing all day and it was just an amazing freedom day. I even got up the courage to go to the shop - where we were annouced as they know us quite well - which was scary but somehow cool.

Anyhow, the message I wanted to say was that yeah II think I've been focussing too much on trying to get the right mix between neither male or female which is impossible (for me) as I more often feel both. So I think I'm onto a look that makes me just feel really COMFORTABLE BEING MYSELF! Which is amazing. . .

Anyways, I'll stop rambling on now..

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Guest Juniper Blue

I have given this more thought. I hope these suggestions help:

One practical thing that might help you to present more androgynously is learning more about barbering. There are some differences between classic men's hair cuts and short women's hair cuts. The most common difference is that men's hair cuts are often "edged up" or have very clean lines. Also, the sides ( at your side burns) are generally cut straight across as opposed to angled down.

It may take a while to rediscover your true preferences with your choice of clothing and manner ... but I imagine that you will descover that the things that seem "right" to you are also quite compatible with the androgynous look that you are seeking.

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Guest Micha

Ok so I had a (coming out) birthday party with just my closest friends this Saturday. It went really well and I got a llot of comments along the lines of 'yeah we guessed - you're just you to us anyway.' which was nice :D

Yesterday (my actual birthday) I wore womens jeans with a mans short sleeved button shirt and a new tie and I felt fantastic, like that was the style that felt most 'me'. All day I kept saying to my boyfriend 'I feel like myself!' and he just kept replying 'you look like yourself' lol. I think he understood though as he was crossdressing all day and it was just an amazing freedom day. I even got up the courage to go to the shop - where we were annouced as they know us quite well - which was scary but somehow cool.

Anyhow, the message I wanted to say was that yeah II think I've been focussing too much on trying to get the right mix between neither male or female which is impossible (for me) as I more often feel both. So I think I'm onto a look that makes me just feel really COMFORTABLE BEING MYSELF! Which is amazing. . .

Anyways, I'll stop rambling on now..

Perfect! ^_^

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    • Abigail Genevieve
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    • EasyE
      yes, i agree with this ... i guess my biggest frustrations with all this are: 1) our country's insistence to legislate everything with regards to morals ... 2) the inability to have a good, thorough, honest conversation which wrestles with the nuances of these very complex issues without it denigrating to name-calling or identity politics.  agreed again... i still have a lot to learn myself ... 
    • Abigail Genevieve
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    • Abigail Genevieve
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    • April Marie
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    • MaeBe
      I'm sure even the most transphobic parents would, too. What does it hurt if a child socializes outside of their family in a way that allows them to understand themselves better? I have encountered a handful of kids do the binary, non-binary, back to binary route and they got to learn about themselves. In the end, there may have been some social self-harm but kids are so darned accepting these days. And really, schools aren't policing pronouns, but the laws that are coming out are making them do so--and in turn requiring a report to a parent that may cause some form of harm to the child.   If the kid wants to lie to, or keep secrets from, their parents about their gender expressions, what does it say about the parents? Perhaps a little socialization of their thoughts will give them the personal information to have those conversations with them? So when they do want to have that conversation they can do so with some self-awareness. This isn't a parent's rights issue, it's about forcing a "moral code" onto schools that they must now enforce--in a way that doesn't appreciably assist parents or provide benefit to children.   So, a child that transitioned at 5 and now in middle/high school that is by all rights female must now go into a bathroom full of dudes? What about trans men, how will the be treated in the girl's restroom? I see a lot of fantasy predator fearmongering in this kind of comment. All a trans kid wants to do in a bathroom is to handle their bodily functions in peace. Ideally there would be no gendered restrooms or, at least, a valid option for people to choose a non-gendered restroom. However, where is the actual harm happening? A trans girl in a boy's room is going experience more harm than a girl being uncomfortable about a trans girl going into and out of a stall.   How about we teach our children that trans people aren't predators who are trying to game the system to eek out some sexual deviancy via loophole? How about we treat gender in a way that doesn't enforce the idea that girls are prey and boys are  predators? How about we teach them trans kids are just kids who want to get on with their day like everyone else?
    • Adrianna Danielle
      I hope so and glad he loves and accepts me for who I am

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