In June of 96 I came out to one of these old friends. We had just spent the entire day together celebrating my birthday. Feeling bold that day and having resolved to tell him, I had worn only one piece of male clothing, the shirt. Jeans, socks, shoes, and even my hair style were all feminine. I had also just had my ears pierced a couple of days before and had a pair of silver studs in. I got a lot of inquiring looks from others that day and in fact, our waitress at lunch kept coming back over and over and not very subtly was checking me out trying decide if I was male or female. She even managed to put her hand on my back, I assume to see if I was wearing a bra. I told him on the drive back and he had noticed none of this! My revelation was a total shock.
In the past year I have gone out more and more as myself and have met more and more people as Cathy. (I've started RLT since writing this) Several of them have told me, even after seeing my "male" presentation, that they simple cannot image any one could see me as male, and in fact, even when I now try to present male on occasion, strangers meeting me more often than not read me female. Still, everyone who has known me for years cannot switch their perception of me to female. Only one as even made an effort to do so. What's going on here is the incredible ability of people to stick to their initial pigeonholing of someone's gender. When we meet or see someone for the first time, the very first thing we decide about them is their gender. This happens on a level so basic that we aren't even aware of doing it. The decision of whether or not someone is male or female colors the way we are programmed to respond to them, yet only if we are unsure of where to put someone genderwise are we even slightly aware of the process. No matter how little we may remember about someone we've met casually, the one thing always remembered is gender.
Even on television we can find an example of this persistence of gender perception in action. On the teevee show Deep Space Nine, the character of Dax is a symbiote whose previous host was male and was well known to Captain Sisko. The new host is female beyond a doubt, yet Sisko stills refer to her as "old man". He is showing his difficulty in shifting his gender perception of his old friend even in a situation where the gender change is not unexpected.
Gender perception seems become less mutable with time. The longer we know someone as one gender, the harder it becomes to change that perception. This is very rough on transsexuals because it means that the very people we want to see our true selves the most, family and old friends, are the ones who have the hardest time making the mental gear change. The result is that even if we switch our presentation to the point where it is almost impossible for someone meeting us to read us as the birth sex, it may be completely ignored and not even noticed by those closest to us. Without going to the extremes of gender expression, we enable them to not see our gender as others see it, to maintain their persistence of gender vision of us.
This is either good or bad depending on how we are dealing with our gender issues. For someone seeking a solution somewhere short of full transition, it means that they can express their internal gender to an extent that almost defies the imagination without much negative response from those closest to them. For someone transitioning it is frustrating in the extreme. The transgendered person in transition will have to express themselves at the far end of gender in order to let these people make the shift. Unfortunately, trying to express to the extremes of gender also means that one doesn't conform as closely to what others express and thus bring more attention to themselves and increase the odds that others will look a bit more closely and "read" them as transgendered. A true perception catch 22. I've found myself expressing this in exasperation about one old friend by saying that I didn't think he'd be able to shift his view of my gender unless he saw me in a prom dress!
Many people writing on gender issues of the transgendered have noted that there is a tendency for transpeople to overdress the role at the beginning stages of coming out. While this can be understood as a desperation to finally express their true gender, it also may be reinforced by the need to do this in order to shift the gender perception of their loved ones. Those overly frilly dresses will get one read everytime at the mall, but until mom sees you in one, she's still going to tend to think of you as male. It sometimes takes that jarring overexpression to open the door of gender perception. Once open, the extremes of expression will appear "clownish" or just plain wrong, but it may be needed initially to push that door open. Knowing about your change is not the same as perceiving it. Instead of being part of the learning curve of expression your gender role, this overexpression of presentation may very well be a necessary part of shifting others' viewpoint. You could find yourself needing to wear that prom dress every once in a while when dealing with someone who has known you for a long time, just try not to go shopping in it when you do.
The perception of gender by strangers works on a different level. Kate Bornstein noted in her book "Gender Outlaw" that it takes four strong female cues to override one strong male one. She calls this the presumption of maleness and there is some truth in this. In our society it is much safer to err on the side of male than female in judging someone's gender. A woman mistaken as a man is much less likely to punch you in the nose than a man mistaken for a woman. The issue is a bit more complicated than this however. Different people zoom in on different cues when deciding gender. Some rely on gross body configuration. Wide hips and noticeable breasts will overcome a large number of "wrong" cues for these people. More males than females will fall into this category. Women, being much more aware of the extremes that body type can go to, will more usually rely on a more complete package of behavior, body language, verbal cues and smaller expressions of overt gender.
A man's need to place someone's gender is based on two main elements, power relations and sexual availability. A woman's need to place someone's gender is also based on power relations but more importantly it's based on how to relate socially. What this means is that while a man will react to "reading" a transperson with a sudden shift of perception, a woman can make that shift in small stages and start reacting to a MtF initially pegged as male more like she is another woman before this is noticed on a conscious level. I have noticed this effect for several years now. While presenting as a male and talking to women about designing their kitchens there is sometimes a shift that can be seen in their change to feminine pronouns while referring to me and the manner of conversation takes on a woman to woman style without their always even noticing that it's happening. This type of perception shift rarely happens with a man. With men, once the determination that some else is male is made, it's much harder for him to shift that viewpoint, and if the determination of someone's gender was female, reading them as male is reacted to much more strongly as an issue of cheating them of a potential sexual "target", or an overreaction to finding themselves having been attracted to someone of the same biological sex.
It is this same need to relate to others as a potential sex partner or not when determining gender that makes it harder for a man to shift his view of a transitioning transsexual's gender. Internalized homophobia prevents many men from being able to relate to a MtF as a woman because that carries an implication of them changing to a role of possible sexual availability when they were once perceived as male. Combined with the sad fact that many men see women as inferior and thus cannot imagine someone wanting to take on that role from choice, this makes the gender perception shift from male to female much more difficult for those men.
When women have trouble accepting the transition of a MtF transsexual it seems to be related to how much emotional investment they have in the TS as a male. A spouse would have the most invested and not surprisingly, it's spouses who have the greatest problem adjusting. A woman who has related to the transsexual in terms of their defining desirable traits to be found in a male will also feel a reluctance to accept the TS's change. Ironically when this is the case, it's often the feminine traits of the TS seen as desirable in a male that lead her to resist the idea that the transsexual is female. In the case of a spouse it very well may have been those same feminine traits that attracted her in the first place. Admitting this to herself would mean she would have to accept that she has an attraction to a feminine partner. Even when a spouse is able to do this, the fear of being seen as lesbian by others can still lead an otherwise accepting spouse to end the relationship once the TS transitions.
The people most likely to "read" a transgendered person after meeting them for the first time, are those who are in some way questioning their own gender roles. It is a well known part of transgendered lore that we can read each other most of the time. Young children and teenage girls are also known to more easily read a transgendered person. This really is not that surprising when you consider that young children are watching for cues on how to act for their own gender identity roles and teenage girls are also very observant of older women as role models. Both groups will pay much more attention to a middle aged woman than most adults do and anything that does not ring true with them will trigger even closer examination. If an adult male reads a MtF T* who is normally passable, it is a reasonably safe bet that he has some gender issues of his own.
Children, as a rule, don't have trouble dealing with the idea of someone changing gender. We bring them up on tales of transformation of all types. Children's stories are full of frogs turning into princes and even the cartoons they watch are full of characters who routinely change identity or form. They may read you and say something, but it is most likely from a sense of wonder and curiosity rather than an attempt to embarrass you. The best answer I've heard when a child asks a MtF transsexual "Are you a man?" is "I used to be". Your honestly puts them at ease and places the situation in the proper context for them.
copyright 1997, Cathryn Platine. All rights reserved. This
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