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How many 6' bearded trans men who look like biological males are out there? The FTM photos I've seen range from "looks like a butch lesbian" to "is a short, dumpy, androgynously featured person who may or may not have a wispy goatee".
Is this the kind of woman you mean by "clearly the words 'man' or 'woman' doesn't refer to the person having XX or XY chromosomes in common usage"? Would you introduce Emily to your straight friend looking for a woman? For comparison purposes, when Emily was still Anthony.
Now, they've only been on HRT for a year. If they lose a ton of weight, get surgery, do the voice exercises to change how they sound, etc. then one day there may be "Emily passes sufficiently enough that you don't immediately go 'that's a guy'". But if you tell me that you'd uncritically introduce Emily to someone straight looking to date a woman, because "categories are fuzzy" and "we don't judge people on their chromosomes", I doubt it.
So yeah, we can tell men from women just by looking in the vast majority of cases. And just by looking, we're going to go "Emily is not a Real Woman in the sense of exactly the same as a cis woman". If "Trans women are real women" was happy to accept "but not the same thing as cis women", fine. Unhappily, there is a contingent who push for "exactly the same as a cis woman", citing "I have the biology of a cis woman; I'm on HRT, so are women who are post-menopausal; I may not have a uterus but neither do women who have undergone hysterectomies; they are accepted as women so should I be".
Surely you know how this game goes? You share non-passing trans people, I can share passing ones. What do you think about 6’3 Mitch Harrison who competed in the Titan Games? Sure not all trans men look like this (but most do eventually pass as short effeminate men), but they are out there - both me and gay men I know have dated trans guys who passed.
I wouldn’t introduce a passing trans woman to a straight man uncritically, because most straight men aren’t interested in trans women and many are downright threatened by the concept, genital preferences are a thing, and the cost-benefit ratio is too low. But, I could gently approach the subject and see if that particular person is interested - I have done so in the past, I’ve had straight friends say “if she’s hot and had bottom surgery, I don’t care”. And what do you think is more likely - that a straight man would be interested in a trans woman that looks like this, or for a trans man that looks like Laith Ashley? Which one do you think confuses gay men, and which one confuses straight men?
Trans women aren’t the exact same as cis women, and I’m happy to accept that. Both the “trans women are exactly the same as cis women” and the “trans women are just men in a dress and we can always tell” camps are wrong.
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