ooo, this a useful observation, thank you.

Thinking about it, I have found even when people know I'm trans, like when laser techs are lasering my genitals so there is no room for ambiguity, they treat me as a different gender than "man", i.e. the way they talk to me and themselves is in a way that I know as distinct from when I was perceived as a man (higher pitched or feminine, more warm, more talkative in general, nicer, etc. even between themselves). Being a trans woman, contrary to anti-trans rhetoric, seems at least in my case to be perceived as at least partially disarming.

Other good examples include when I went out in public pre-hormones and wore dresses and such, and people (usually liberal white women) would regularly tell me they love my dress or skirt or whatever, and I would get over-friendly looks from some people. It seemed like the opposite of the glaring conservative men, I got overly kind supportive liberals. This over-friendliness has been replaced with indifference and maybe normal polite-friendliness instead over time.

Thinking about your experiences, I do feel for trans men who cross the threshold into that lonely life, but having lived as a lonely man, there are definitely some men who can offer close fraternity - it is just hard sometimes to find those men and form relationships, but it is possible!

haha, but seriously the algorithm does a poor job of correctly identifying women or the "female" nipple

honestly, when I was getting my nails done, a dude walked up and got way too close, took his sandals off bumping into my shoes, etc. - I am not used to people violating my personal space that way and being so impolite about my belongings, so I think that might have been gendered, i.e. maybe he felt he could take my space because he was a man? surreal experience tbh

This, for real though. You can often tell you've made it when people stop treating you specially.

By way of analogy: I live in a non-English-speaking part of the world, and was very self-conscious about my language ability. To begin with, everyone told me "you speak very well" (with an implied "for a foreigner"), but after a lot of practice that finally gave way to a curt "that's wrong" whenever I slipped up. Now people generally assume I was born here to immigrant parents.

Gender-wise (although I'm nowhere near female-passing yet), I guess things like double-takes in bathrooms, or people being "gentlemanly" are good things to look out for?

I wish I would pass to myself 😭 I felt so dysphoric yesterday, I just can't believe anyone would not see me as trans - but I also don't know how to explain their behavior.

yeah, I assume most people are just being polite as well. My voice isn't cis-passing IMO (but my self-perception can be off), but it no longer sounds like a man's voice either, and in public I pay much more attention to my voice and try to pass with it more (major work in progress, honestly one of the hardest parts of transitioning).

Passing is important to me for safety reasons because of where I live, but admittedly it hasn't been my explicit goal as much as something that I desire. No one has sir'd me or used he/him pronouns in a long time, but sometimes I get a "they" that could indicate they don't know my gender and want to be careful, though that is sometimes just my sensitivity (sometimes they use "she" later for example and the "they" then seems less like I thought).

But yay to strangers using your preferred pronouns without prompting, that's awesome!

I wish it felt like actually meeting those goals, I don't experience it that way.

lol, I am not even sure how to start a fight with a stranger if I wanted to. I think I would find it difficult to do.

But seriously, 20 years is a long time to feel like you are not passing 😭 I don't get misgendered in public either, but I think that's because people are polite, not because they think I'm a cis woman.

Where I live being trans is a risk, so in my mind the rebuttal to "so what if they do" is that it's unsafe, but tbh I have all sorts of negative feelings about being trans, like feeling embarrassed for not having the "right" body. For the most part I just try to ignore the gender and interact authentically, but I obviously have to pay attention to my voice and I suspect I am implicitly changing a lot based on the social situation I am in. Probably I need to leave this place, it is not healthy for me to be somewhere that is so hostile to what I am.

Whoa, a lot to unpack there.

First, it sounds like you have been transitioning for a while - do you have vocal dysphoria, and have you worked on voice training? When I socially transitioned my vocal dysphoria became rather intense, and the fear I had speaking, for example to a new colleague at my work who may not otherwise know I'm trans, became panic-inducing. I found voice training really helpful, and now my voice passes enough in public and on the phone that I never get "sir'd". If you were inclined I bet you could do the same!

Either way, I'm sorry to hear about the antagonistic situations you find yourself in. I think I would feel unsafe in a situation like that. 😞

With regards to your support circles telling you that you pass: of course they might be just polite or being nice, but there is another possibility, that they have mapped you to a woman in their minds so they interpret your voice as feminine. I found this happened for example when I watched enough Finnster (don't judge me 😝), eventually their voice sounded like a girl's voice to me even though if I heard it on the phone for the first time I'm sure it would be read as masculine.

Ultimately whether a voice sounds masc or fem has at least something to do with how we are interpreting the situation, and I have found myself and others capable of interpreting masculine voices as feminine when you get used to thinking of that person as a woman. The same thing happened for me with Bilal Baig's character in Sort Of, her voice definitely has masculine features (often too heavy and large), but instead of hearing a "gay man" voice like I would over the phone, I started to just hear it as a woman's voice and it was hard to go back and hear it as a "man's" voice.

Anyway - this might be what's happening with your friends, maybe they can't hear or see you as a man anymore, even though strangers still might. Still, sounds like you are doing a good job getting feedback from strangers online about your voice. I know the /r/transvoice discord has a place where you can upload clips of your voice to be critiqued as you are working on your voice training, and there are resources like Selene's clips and TransVoiceLessons that can be helpful even without seeing a speech language pathologist.

Thanks for sharing and being vulnerable about your experiences. 🫂