Name: 性別分析04.關於 "過關 "的一些建議 (Gender Analysis 04. Some Advice on "Passing")
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基礎被動語態

Hi, welcome to Gender Analysis. The term “passing” is typically used to describe whether or not

情態副詞

a trans person is perceived as noticeably trans. For a trans woman, to “pass” is

to be seen as a cis woman in everyday life, and vice versa for trans men. Most people

tend to assume that passing is or should be a goal for every trans person, and it’s

easy to see why. Some of us do find it necessary to look like cis people of our gender, because

that’s what it takes to relieve our dysphoria. In other cases, the changes that we need in

order to feel comfortable just happen to push us more in the direction of passing. And when

people don’t know we’re trans, it can eliminate some of the insecurities that can

arise when people do know, like wondering if they really see us as our gender or they’re

just humoring us. More than that, being visibly trans in public can be dangerous. In a study

of over 6,000 trans people in the United States, those who were seen as “visually non-conforming”

were more likely to be harassed in retail stores, hotels and restaurants, and they were

more likely to be attacked when using public accommodations such as restrooms. Practically

all of us have faced the fear or the terrifying reality of being heckled by strangers just

because of what we look like. Passing isn’t just about aiming to reduce our own dysphoria

– it’s also about keeping ourselves safe from everyone else.

All trans people should have the choice to express their gender in the way that’s most

comfortable for them, but there are many such pressures that limit our choices, and passing

can have more to do with cis people’s comfort than our own. Pediatric endocrinologist Norman

Spack pioneered the usage of puberty blocking drugs for trans teenagers in the US, allowing

them to experience a puberty that’s appropriate for their gender. This can be a lifesaving

treatment for trans kids, and it can help reduce their need for future procedures to

remove unwanted masculine or feminine features. Yet in a 2013 TEDx talk, Dr. Spack used one

of his patients as an example of how his treatment can make trans people physically nonthreatening

"There was a bill that would block the right of transgender people in Maine to use public

bathrooms, and it looked like the bill was going to pass, and that would have been a

problem, but Nicole went personally to every legislator in Maine and said, 'I can do this.

If they see me, they'll understand why I'm no threat in the lady's room, but I can be

threatened in the men's room.' And then they finally got it."

A trans person obviously doesn’t become more or less of an actual threat to anyone

based on how masculine or feminine they look. But when this treatment is advertised as a

way to give us a body that cis people are more comfortable around, that’s just legitimizing

their restroom-related fears and working within them. It leaves that particular prejudice

completely unchallenged. This isn’t the only instance where cis people have unwittingly

revealed how much they’ve internalized media stereotypes while trying to express support

for trans children. In the 2012 book Far from the Tree, one mother said: “She won’t

have testosterone ravaging her body. … So she’ll never get an Adam’s apple or facial

hair. She’ll never look like a man in a dress.” That particular phrase, “a man

in a dress”, seems to turn up over and over:

"I don't know that she would have survived male puberty. You know, how's she going to

prove to someone that she is a girl? At best, you know, she would have been shaving every

day and been the man in a dress, and that might be great for some people, but it certainly

"They were making a transition in their 40s, 30s-plus... And especially in the case of

the male to females, they weren't looking particularly female. ... If people said 'man

in a skirt', a lot of them would have conformed to that..."

Now, are we really supposed to believe that women who transition after puberty all look

like “men in dresses”? How much of this comes from an actual understanding of what

it’s like to be trans – and how much of it comes from cis people who’ve watched

Mrs. Doubtfire and Drag Race too many times?

Even if we do want to look just like cis people, there are so many factors that can make this

difficult or impossible. For instance, an early treatment protocol isn’t even available

to most trans people: puberty blockers for trans youth were only introduced in the late

1990s in the Netherlands, in the mid-2000s in the US, and in 2011 in England. There are

still only a handful of dedicated gender clinics for children in the US, and these treatments

often aren’t covered by insurance companies, assuming that a child’s parents are even

willing to help them transition. And this is a moot point for many of us, since not

everyone is aware that they’re trans from an early age – far from it. A 2009 study

in the UK reported that the median age of trans people first seeking treatment was 42

and rising. In adulthood, there’s only so much that transitioning can do for us in terms

of appearance. As a group, we display the same wide range of physical masculinity and

femininity as cis people, and as many trans people say: your mileage may vary. It’s

important to remember that gender dysphoria can happen to anyone. This may seem obvious,

but not everyone who transitions is going to end up looking like Laverne Cox or Andreja

Pejic. There are still limits to what modern medicine can do, and there are aspects of

the skeletal structure that can’t be changed after puberty, such as height, shoulder width,

hip size, hands and feet. When so much of this comes down to biological chance, it’s

simply unrealistic to expect that every single one of us will be indistinguishable from a

cis person of our gender. As for what is possible, surgical aspects of transitioning can cost

tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket, and are rarely covered by healthcare plans.

Facial feminization surgery for trans women consists of a number of different procedures,

and can easily add up to anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000. Chest surgery for trans men can

cost $8,000 or more, and vaginoplasty for trans women can cost $10,000 to $20,000. Given

that 14% of trans people are unemployed, 44% are underemployed, and 15% had a household

income of less than $10,000 a year, these procedures can often be totally out of our

reach. When’s the last time you had $40,000 just sitting around for facial surgery?

Putting aside the practical aspects of passing, consider what it means when this is treated

as something we should all aspire to. I don’t want to shock anyone here, but maybe – just

maybe – being expected to be completely invisible isn’t always good for us. That

attitude has wide-ranging implications for our personal comfort as well as our place

in society. For instance, look at how dramatically the stakes of passing were portrayed in a

recent article in The Atlantic about voice training for trans women:

“If she slips up, the $100,000 she has spent to shed every trace of masculinity will count

I’ve heard from so many people who were worried it was “too late” for them to

transition, because they felt that at their age, they would never be able to pass. Some

of these people were in their 30s or 40s. Some of them were teenagers. But all of them

were under the impression that there was no point to transitioning if they didn’t end

up looking just like a cis person of their gender. They didn’t take into account every

other possible benefit of transitioning, like how much this can relieve our dysphoria and

improve our mental well-being and physical appearance regardless of whether we pass or

not. But when this is treated as all-or-nothing, so many people will feel like their only choice

is nothing, when they could have had so much more. It’s never too late for that. The

exclusive focus on passing is not new – historically, this attitude has wrapped our lives in a shroud

of secrecy and isolation. In the 1988 book In Search of Eve, many trans women stated

that living as a woman required an almost total separation from anyone who knew them

before they transitioned. For some of them, this meant avoiding family, giving up friends,

quitting their jobs, concealing their history of work experience, and starting fresh at

entry-level positions in other fields. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach by Kessler

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性別分析04.關於 "過關 "的一些建議 (Gender Analysis 04. Some Advice on "Passing")

completely

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