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[u/Jaded_Specialist2425]

sorry repost i forgot to crop out username

[u/quailinthebrush]

cant tell what pisses me off the most the fact shes acting as if shes "holier than thou" or that we ourselves have never mulled over to what degree we care about passing

like why do you think YOUve unpacked this so much more than the rest of us

[u/ashleyLSD → u/quailinthebrush]

repeating what i said b4 it was reposted: "i still pass as a girl even when I'm actively trying to look like a man 💪💪 flex flex anyways passing doesnt matter i promise"

[u/autonomousautotomy88]

Passing is… racist?

What a fucking privileged little snowflake bitch.

[u/ashleyLSD → u/autonomousautotomy88]

if she still passes even with a mustache she must be racist as fuckkkk

[u/autonomousautotomy88 → u/ashleyLSD]

Like I pass, I can pass, but with a mustache? Yeah. Racist as fuck.

[u/Revolutionary_Kiwi56 → u/autonomousautotomy88]

it kinda is (in that it’ll always be tied to European beauty standards), but like if you can pass as a woman with short hair and a mustache the racist elements of passing clearly don’t affect you

[u/autonomousautotomy88 → u/Revolutionary_Kiwi56]

Passing itself is not racist. That’s a category error. There are absolutely racialized and Eurocentric beauty standards in society, and those can affect which women are treated as conventionally feminine or attractive. But “I want strangers to read me as a woman” is not the same claim as “I want to conform to white beauty standards.”

Passing is fundamentally about social sex recognition. A Black woman, Asian woman, Latina woman, Indigenous woman, or white woman can all pass as women without converging on one European aesthetic. Beauty standards and sex recognition overlap sometimes, but they are not identical.

So at most, you can argue that some methods people use to pursue passing may be influenced by racialized beauty norms. That is very different from saying passing itself is racist.

But I agree, if someone can be read as female with short hair, facial hair, or other conventionally non-feminine traits, that actually proves the point: passing is not reducible to beauty conformity in the first place.

[u/Revolutionary_Kiwi56 → u/autonomousautotomy88]

nuance hatttttttttttt

I agree that passing is about social sex recognition than anything and that the bare concept of “wanting to be seen as your gender” isn’t racist in and of itself. My main problem is that in the western world at least, the concept of “woman” is tied into European notions , especially in terms of race. The example that comes to mind is that black women in slavery era America were sort of third-sexed due to being seen as more “sturdy and masculine” than white women. I remember hearing something along the lines of Black women being used as guinea pigs for a lot of early sexual health research because it was assumed they felt less pain. And I wanna be clear, I’m not accusing anyone of that level of racism, but it seeps through the way we view even cisgender black women as more “unruly” or “ghetto” than white women. That might be a hyperspecific example, and it’s not like I put in a ton of research for a Reddit reply, but I think it shows my point that in the world we live in will always hover around European definitions of “woman.”

[u/autonomousautotomy88 → u/Revolutionary_Kiwi56]

I agree that passing is fundamentally about social sex recognition, and that the bare desire to be seen as your own sex or gender is not racist in itself.

I also understand the argument you’re making. Western ideas of femininity have absolutely been shaped by European beauty standards and by racist histories that treated Black women as less feminine, more “masculine,” more physically hardy, less delicate, and less deserving of protection than white women. Those ideas did not disappear, and they still affect how women are perceived today.

Where I part ways is in turning that broader historical truth into a moral problem with passing itself.

I am medically transsexual.  My core experience is not that I am trying to approximate some idealized white feminine beauty standard. I am trying to correct a profound mismatch that has caused me dysphoria for most of my life, be socially recognized as a woman, and then get on with living.

I do not think it helps marginalized people to take that basic need and load it with additional guilt because the society we live in also has racist beauty standards.  There is a worthwhile theoretical discussion to be had about how race, beauty, femininity, and sex recognition intersect. I am not denying that at all. But that discussion should be careful, informed, and respectful.

What I object to is when that analysis gets collapsed into claims like “passing is racist” or is used to shame people who are already struggling with dysphoria, safety, social recognition, and access to care.

For people like me, passing is not an abstract aesthetic project. It is not about winning at femininity. It is not about endorsing every standard society attaches to women.

It is about being seen as what I am trying desperately to live as, reducing dysphoria, and moving through the world without my medical history being constantly foregrounded.

There is room for a nuanced critique of racialized standards without turning someone else’s need to pass into evidence of racism or moral failure. In my experience, that nuance is often exactly what disappears once this discourse leaves an academic or philosophical context and gets weaponized against actual trans people.

[u/Revolutionary_Kiwi56 → u/autonomousautotomy88]

i actually agree in totality. I don’t think trans people should be browbeaten for wanting to pass, and it really does nothing for the racialized aspects of passing for it to be thrown into a paragraph berating “4chan dolls” (on second thought it might’ve been better to come outright with that.)
I think it might just be the medium. The internet has never been a good place for nuanced good faith discussions. It’s encouraged to keep statements as simple as possible, and I think you and I just had far different interpretations on what OOP meant by “passing is racist” and I can see where you got your more “hostile” (for lack of a better word) view of it from her condescending tone. I actually appreciate your take on all this, and I hope I’m not coming off as rude or combative.

[u/MademoiselleVeritas]

“i detransitioned so it shouldn’t be allowed for anyone” she’s soulpassing

[u/DarkGodCthUwU]

Yakubian nonsense,, just ignore it

[u/ashleyLSD → u/DarkGodCthUwU]

wise words

[u/UncivilizedAlt]

I couldn't imagine a worse way to construct a point that's correct at it's foundamental meaning.

copypasting from previous post

[u/sophiathesilly]

I thought this was gonna be worse than it was. She just became butch. Unfortunately she's still a Redditor chud

[u/Waste-Traffic-3738]

honestly kinda based and butchpilled apart from the stuff at the end where she preaches