Because of this, the transgendered men try to 'pass' as females so that society will believe that, since they are supposed to be girls, they are being appropriate. A transgendered friendly society, on the other hand, will not care if the gender expression doesn't match the biological sex.
My own feeling is that, while there are may be a small number of transphobic people, society as a whole really doesn't care more than the transgendered people realize. Also, the programming that I mentioned before affects the transgender people as well so that many don't realize that society for the most part doesn't care. What this means is that as long as we carry ourselves with dignity and know that what we are doing is fine, then society will treat us the same way.
Something else I have come to realize is that 99% of the world (i..e. the cis-gendered) knows that they are male or female, then don't think about it beyond that. They don't care about gender issues, they just go along and be themselves. We (the 1% transgendered) are (at this point) the only ones who care about the gender issues. Because of that, we, who are something other than the cis-gendered male or female, are the ones trying to figure out what it is to be male or female. That's kinda backward, isn't it?
The next page has my thoughts on passing.
This page last updated 21 November 2001
URL: http://www.geocities.com/darlene_20832/cisgendered.html