I am still quite early in my transition the idea of actually passing is somewhat distant except apparently under some very specific circumstances. Something has changed in the last few months and now when I exercise it is now a thing that men feel like they need to comment on my body. Obviously mixed feelings about this, something described as Ewwphoria, the positive feeling of being finally seen as a woman but very much in one of the less savoury ways. There are a lot of things that I experience when running that I think are because people are seeing me as a woman, and they add up to quite an unpleasant experience that I had not previously accounted for, people not moving to let you pass, lingering looks to open staring (that might just be the massive tranny effect tbf), public heckling(?) obviously I have talke to women before and knew some of these but for one experiencing them is wild and it does very much make me wonder what effect it has on a population, these micro-aggressions surely cause noticeable effects when applied over a population no doubt there are subsections of gender studies and feminist theory that I am yet to discover.
Actually experiencing these behaviours has made me take a second look at how I approached these issues pre-transition. It is a stark contrast from the masculine experience where you experience near constant invisibility. I think as it was a such a contrast (as well as my own complicated feelings about women complaining about aspects of woman-hood, god I should have known sooner) I was probably a little dismissive and more than a little envious. Now that I have experienced this first hand I can see that if there wasn’t the phoria side then I could see how this would get very old very quickly, often the heckles are nonsensical, half-heard, meant to evoke a response more than honestly engage how is one meant to respond to a wolf whistle? It makes you feel seen but not for something you did or had any active part in but as the victim of a voyeur. It doesn’t phase me whilst running, I am a large sweating mess, but I am still large I imagine somewhat intimidating to most men and still significantly stronger than the average man. But cannot really comprehend how that will change over the next few years it definitely has made me think and see all women in my life as orders of magnitude more courageous than before.