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I think it was Aella that wrote about how passing was actually meaningfully important in the whole trans issue, and I have to agree. If a man can successfully pass as a woman then he should be allowed to use women's restroom, although it seems like saying we "allow" that is pretty meaningless in that case. If we can't tell that it's a man how could we stop him? To me this basically feels like the norm thirty years ago, kind of an unofficial don't ask don't tell restroom policy. If you look like an absolute freak then yes women should be able to scream and shout at you and summon security to harass you for an hour or so.
Edit: In a way it reminds me of this classic. I feel like they both come down to "know your place" and act accordingly. Now how do we codify that into law? I'm not sure how, but I'm not sure it needs to be.
Here's the thing with that, they never do unless they are literally pre-puberty (so not a man) or on T-blockers from before puberty or asian (inherent low T). That's why they are pushing the acceptability boundary even to those who don't try to pass. Trying to make it so its taboo to question the ones who obviously don't even while trying. Like those absolute delusional people on reddit who claim trains woman are all around you and you simply can't tell, the reality of the situation is anything but.
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Take any provision that protects women's spaces and clarify that "woman" is, as intended by the authors, a sex term and not a claim about "gender identity". Whatever that is.
Yeah. I think acknowledging a sex/gender distinction would cut through most of the newsworthy categories.
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That’s still unworkable because you can’t separate outside knowledge.
If you’re sentencing someone to women’s prison, do you really rely on passing? If I’ve got a vendetta against a trans coworker, can’t I out her no matter how well she passes? If my buddy Big McLargeHuge, manliest of teenagers, wants to get into the women’s locker room, what’s stopping me from playing wingman by accusing him of insufficient T?
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The problem here is that the percentage of MtF who “pass” is vanishingly low. It’s nearly always spectacularly easy to “clock” an MtF - especially once you hear the voice.
I’m actually agnostic about so-called “bathroom bills” myself, but however we end up resolving the issue, “an MtF can enter the women’s bathroom if nobody notices it’s an MtF” is not a solution, because it will lead to 98% of the same outcome as “no man can enter the women’s bathroom.”
The voice is, yes, usually a giveaway. But there are a lot of masculine-looking actual women out there (even some with deeper voices) due to genetics / endocrine issues, to the point where I'd be often be uncomfortable guessing --- certainly from looks alone --- whether a given person is a lucky MtF or an unlucky actual woman if encountered out of context.
Oh definitely. The first trans friend I had, I did not clock him, but that’s only because I assumed he was just a very unfortunate-looking and unfortunate-sounding woman. This was when trans was starting to get public attention but before it was everywhere; if I’d known then what I know now, I think my “trans alarm” would have gone off, but I agree that there are some women out there (“stone butch” lesbians, people with medical situations) who also risk setting off “trans alarms”.
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Are there studies on this or is this anecdotal? If the latter, you wouldn't be able to account for the MtFs you're missing precisely because they do pass.
You can see a distribution of some that pass better than others, and notice that it tails off towards the end of the distribution so the amount that completely pass is small.
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I’m not aware of any studies on it, but my experience is that every single time somebody tells me about a “passing” transwoman, I end up seeing the person and it’s obviously a man. Sure, it’s true in a sort of unfalsifiable way that there could be all of these undetectable transwomen walking around among us, but at that point you’ve reached a sort of Russell’s Teapot, “invisible dragon in the garage” level of claim.
I would kill to see some high quality studies using blinded (I'm not sure double blinding is possible, since presumably a trans person would know they're trans) trials of test subjects interacting with both trans and cis people to see just how common it is to truly "pass." Sadly, the academic political environment makes it so that basically no one who would be positioned to do the research would be interested in having an answer. And even if that were not the case, the number of trans people is so small that getting sufficiently random or representative members of that group seem likely to be impossible.
The way I think of it is that, given how incentivized the current "progressive" trans movement is to present MTF as being exactly the same as females in every way that matters, if there were some fairly significant population of MTF trans people who "pass," there would be quite a few such people who are either held up as examples or who become mini-celebs as activists for the cause. There's certainly no shortage of MTF trans people who obviously don't "pass" that you can find both online and in-person (at least in my neck of the woods around Boston) despite the fact that, again, the number of such people is very small relative to the population. The only person like that who comes to my mind is Blaire White, whom I don't follow, but who I believe isn't on the side of the "progressives" in this.
We need a definition of what passing means before we can test, or even properly argue over it.
Passing is on the one hand used by TRAs to mean "polite people treat me as a woman when I obviously visibly signal that I wish to be treated as such." Which almost everyone can achieve.
On the other hand, anti trans types define passing as "absolutely no outward indication whatsoever of any physical difference from a median/modal member of the target sex." Which no one achieves.
The degree to which someone passes is also dependent on context.
If I saw a tall masculine looking middle aged woman at mass, I would assume she was an unfortunate looking tall woman. Even a slight mustache wouldn't throw me off.
I assume everyone at Pride Night at my rock climbing gym may not be what they appear. The slightest hint of GNC and I'm going to be circumspect.
It would be tough to account for all that in testing.
ETA: Two differing study designs that would likely yield different results, both of which would measure "passing" in different ways.
"You're going to talk to a series of 20 people. Some of them are trans. Please indicate which people are trans on your scantron sheet. The more you get correct, the more money you will receive on your way out."
"You're going to talk to a series of 20 people. After you finish, please write down a description of each person in order."
I posit that very few trans people will "pass" in test 1 unless it's really rigged, and that a great many CIS people would get false positives. On the other hand, under test 2, I think a good number of people would not write down "trans" or "obviously (other gender)" in the description for trans people.
If that's how TRAs use "passing," I've never encountered it, and it also seems like a vapid meaning, because the "polite" in your quote tends to refer to the characteristic of submitting to such wishes.
The way I understand it, the "test" that's being "passed" in this context is essentially the trans Turing Test (Turansing Test? Turans Test? Trunsing Test?). Now, obviously there are many tiny nuances and details of what qualifies as passing the Turing Test, but broadly, I think the idea is that, after interacting with a trans person, you can't tell that they're trans, then they "pass."
There are likely multiple ways to measure something like this. One theoretical study I imagine, blinded test subjects would interact with a group of people, some trans, some not, and then answered what sex each person they interacted with was born as. If a trans person had >50% of people answer as the opposite of their birth sex, that person would "pass." Another option would be to have test subjects interact with pairs of people, one trans and the other cis, of opposite sexes and the same gender, and if the subjects can correctly guess the trans person at >50% rate, then that person doesn't pass. Could also adjust it to be 1 trans and 9 cis, and if the rate is >10%, or any variation of this, I suppose.
The context also certainly matters a lot, but that can be both controlled for and also studied, to see how people's ability to "pass" change in different environments. What I'd personally love to see is correlations on the type and length of interaction. If you're just talking to someone, does their chance of "passing" go down or up as time goes, and is there some inflection point at which the "passing" rate suddenly skyrocket or plummet? What about if you add hugging to the mix? What if you're in a group setting, where all the other test subjects are confederates who have been instructed to treat the trans person like they do/don't "pass?" What if activities involving physical strength or severe emotional topics are involved?
It'd be fascinating to see some break down just what specific characteristics and interactions maximize and minimize the odds of "passing." It could give birth to a sort of "trans-o-sphere" equivalent of the "man-o-sphere" where trans people optimize on the traits that allow them to "pass" most effectively and efficiently, following a sort of "passMaxxing" strategy, if you will.
Why are you talking about this like it's a hypothetical? This space arrived years if not decades ago. Like some sort of weird bizarro-world version of rule 34, if you can think of some trait or activity which is even remotely gendered, you will find an online community of trans people tearing their hair out because they aren't "doing" it properly and/or a guide on how to do it more effectively:
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That's absolutely what's often cited as the experience of "passing." "I went outside, everyone referred to me as a woman, and no one called me out as trans, ergo I passed." Tbh, if anyone thought I was trans but never brought it up out of politeness, how would I know? My experience would look exactly the same on the day to day: I go outside and act like a man and people treat me like a man. Maybe some people are uncomfortable with me or don't like me, but who knows, maybe they're Cowboys fans who cares?
But that's not what real life looks like, which was my point about context. In real life I don't walk around suspecting people's genitals might not match their presentation. So the moment you ask people to identify trans people from a group, you've radically altered their normal calculus! The moment you bring up "trans" you've radically altered their normal calculus. You see this a lot with people talking about true crime stories, "oh how did no one suspect, there were all these clues!" But the people didn't know they were in a mystery, they weren't looking for clues. If you tell people that the sex of the person they're talking to is a mystery, they'll seize on all kinds of clues. If they don't, they'll slide right by the clues. So the moment you run a study on the basis of "spot the tranny" you vastly alter the odds compared to baseline.
Hell, the moment you tell people they have to make a decision one way or the other, you're throwing off what passing means in reality. Because non-passing can also mean something like "Idk, she makes me uncomfortable but I can't put my finger on why..." Uncanny valley stuff. So what do we do with that? Where does that fit into either a day-to-day understanding of trans life, or into a Turing test?
Passing is, weirdly, vastly harder in queer spaces than in non-queer spaces, even if queer spaces are much more likely to hug-box trans people about how great they pass and bend over backwards to avoid mistakes. It's not odd at all for me to see a middle aged woman with a whispy little mustache at church, I wouldn't think she's packing a cock under there just has unfortunate hirsute characteristics.
I wouldn't characterize such a statement as conforming to that definition of "passing," though. It appears more like just jumping to conclusions, that the absence of people bringing it up is proof of the absence of people noticing, which is what determines "passing."
I mean, I can take your word for it, that some TRAs do use the term that way, but that seems clearly very different from the way people use the term when discussing CW issues, and not in quantity but rather quality. When people talk about "when trans person X passes," I don't think they tend to mean "when trans person X only interacts with or notices people who will treat them in a certain way," but rather "when trans person X presents in such a way as to meet some sort of threshold in how others perceive their gender."
We can design studies to make the true measure obscure from the participants. This is a common enough problem in such studies that it's fairly standard practice, and there are many ways to accomplish it, including just lying to the participants about what the study is actually about. Of course, it's questionable how effective such things are and they're all imperfect, but, also of course, all models are wrong, yet some are useful.
This seems quite possible to test as well, though likely quite difficult to do properly. One can measure physiological signs of discomfort, and one can also get assessments from test subjects that don't involve making decisions one way or another, but rather just the sense that they get. It's possible to quantify such things and then compare how they differ between different populations. There are many pitfalls to such efforts, and I certainly wouldn't trust the current academic apparatus to carry out such studies with enough rigor to draw any meaningful conclusions, though.
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It's also dependent on the level of interaction. Passing to a friend or coworker is going to be harder than passing to someone they interact with as a bank teller or cashier. In the context of public restrooms, this would be the easiest place to pass, in that they're only spending a few seconds dealing with strangers who probably aren't paying them much attention.
And the urban myth of Boys Don't Cry or the Trap, a trans person who passes so well that they get all the way into bed before the genitals are discovered.
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Hunter Schafer would be the one I think a lot of people would point to as the pinnacle of “passing trans”. I won’t go so far as to say that Schafer looks “obviously like a man”; rather, Schafer is in a weird sort of androgynous zone. Certainly not someone I would ever see as an attractive woman, but I can imagine not clocking Schafer if I passed him on the street.
Laverne Cox gets my vote. Of all ethnic groups, black women tend to be the most androgynous looking anyway, which probably helps.
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Schafer usually gets cast as trans characters, so I wouldn't say they're the "pinnacle of passing", because they being noticeably trans is part of the point.
I'd probably go with someone like Ángela Ponce: if you already know, you'll find a lot of tells, but they clearly resemble more an attractive woman than a man.
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Schafer is closest probably but even she probably drops a point when the photo is candid and unstaged.
Then again, I do know she's trans so...
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Is 98% of the same outcome not a solution? It’s a solution that comes down hard on one side, but a solution nonetheless.
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The problem this creates it that any tomboyish looking woman is now a target for harassment.
Why do trans people need to use the bathroom they don’t belong in so badly? We literally have them sex segregated to protect women. Why do these men need to be in the enclosed, single exit room with women?
The grace here should be going both ways: I’ll call you the name you are asking me to, but you need to realize that your fetish is your own fetish, and shouldn’t be imposed on women who are simply trying to exist. Just let them have the bathroom FFS.
Well first you have to establish it is a fetish, which you haven't done here. Assume for a second it isn't a fetish. Assume that there are people who are born into the "wrong body" and this person is one of them. How would that change the framing of your argument? And your understanding of the argument, people who disagree with you are making?
Because the alternative could be "Your belief it is a fetish, is your own bias, and shouldn't be imposed on trans-women just trying to exist. Just let them have the bathroom FFS".
Your argument need some kind of underpinning otherwise, it can simply be turned back around on you. It hasn't any logical construction. Not saying you are wrong, but your argument is just not very good so far. You need to buttress it.
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