Originally posted by StyleTimeThat's true, to a degree. But I still would say it's mostly my own decision — I know I could live that way fully, in fact the place I work is slightly left-leaning and big on trans rights and representation. There may be a degree of assumed social pressure in my mind, but it's mostly a conscious choice, as much as is possible.
Pressure from the world around you doesn't have to mean fear of physical violence. I'd argue fear of not passing still stems from other's reactions to you, even if not outwardly hostile: you feel like they won't acknowledge as a woman, so you feel pressured to conform.Where I get confused is that you've stated you'd prefer to have been born female, or at least present female fulltime. So it sounds like you are transwoman possibly? It sounds like you've resigned yourself to sometimes presenting male out of necessity, rather than any desire to be a man or natural gender fluidity. Have you ever felt like you needed to rationalize your identity away over fears of not "passing?"
On this, I agree 100% with Adam though. People use the same reasoning to reject "atheist", despite literally being atheists. Bisexuals sometimes avoid the term entirely, sometimes due to how both homo/hetero crowds/partners react to it.
It doesn't make the terms any less applicable though.
Idk man. I don't really agree with a lot of the terminology, as I've said. I think a lot of the words carry too many connotations, and people have different interpretations of them anyway. If I could click my fingers and be a woman, then I'd do that, but obviously it's not that simple and I've tried to approach it from a primarily rational point of view. I don't feel feminine when I haven't shaved, so presenting female doesn't feel right to me; in those occasions I'm happy to go back to presenting male and, unlike in the past, no longer feel dysphoric. I feel like myself either way, as gender isn't the biggest issue in my life nor the most pronounced aspect of my personality — I clearly have a deep preference, but I've learned to be happy with both.
At the same time, this is why I still describe as 'trans', despite disagreeing with the term on many levels; I may not like it, but I live it, so I concede to the general term. I just don't feel the need to have it entirely define me, which again, involves my privileged surrounding and circumstances. However: fully living like this is pretty new to me, as I only started really dealing with it properly last year, so I couldn't say how I'll feel in the future. srug Part of me thinks that if I don't fit neatly into one of the checkboxes, then maybe the current model just isn't that useful or reflective of the nuances of reality.
I think humanity has a long way to go until it truly starts comprehending the complimenting and contrasting dichotomy of masculinity and femininity. Most of modern gender rhetoric has no reference to Jungian psychology, and as far as gender goes, most of my beliefs and philosophies on the subject come from Jung, particularly his concepts of the Shadow, Anima/Animus and the collective subconscious, so I can't really take it seriously with such a major gap in its grounding.