Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir)

by Jackson Bird

This is a broad generalization, but it can often be easier for transmasculine people to pass in society as men than for transfeminine people to pass in society as women—depending on who you are and what your transition journey is like. This is partially because testosterone is a helluva drug that can give some transmasculine people far more drastic, visible changes than hormone replacement therapy usually does for transfeminine people. Even without hormones, some female-assigned-at-birth people find it easier to pass as—albeit substantially younger—men in society than male-assigned-at-birth people find it to pass as women. This is important to keep in mind when you consider how many people assigned female at birth successfully lived quiet, mostly unrecorded lives as men throughout history,* while people assigned male at birth who attempted to live as women or even just dared to don feminine clothing were more often ostracized, arrested, harassed, and worse. Western society writ large is much more willing to accept what they see as a woman being masculine than what they see as a man being feminine.