since I am a guy living in a female body I am by definition a trans guy or a ftm
Enh, not necessarily. I'm trans, but my husband's also in this system and he IDs as firmly cis. (Long story why; basically he joined the system in his late twenties, and had a cis life beforehand.) Though if you ID as an ftm, by all means do so!
As for how we navigate, we're pretty much out of the closet to everyone who matters. (We're only in the closet at work and with our housemates, who were strangers to us when we moved in. Being out as multi, I discovered, makes it very hard to find strangers willing to live with you.) As a result, all our friends know our various genders and pronoun preferences (or just refer to us as our group name and 'they') regardless of our physical appearance or identification.
In singlet context, we ID as a trans guy, since me or my hubby are the main fronters in those contexts. We did this even before we had any medical procedure crap done; it's not like all trans guys pop out into the world looking like Clint Eastwood!
Mostly, we navigate gender by coming out as quickly as possible. If people can't handle that, then we ditch them and our problem is solved. Thus far, people have been good about learning our genders properly.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 01:29 pm (UTC)Enh, not necessarily. I'm trans, but my husband's also in this system and he IDs as firmly cis. (Long story why; basically he joined the system in his late twenties, and had a cis life beforehand.) Though if you ID as an ftm, by all means do so!
As for how we navigate, we're pretty much out of the closet to everyone who matters. (We're only in the closet at work and with our housemates, who were strangers to us when we moved in. Being out as multi, I discovered, makes it very hard to find strangers willing to live with you.) As a result, all our friends know our various genders and pronoun preferences (or just refer to us as our group name and 'they') regardless of our physical appearance or identification.
In singlet context, we ID as a trans guy, since me or my hubby are the main fronters in those contexts. We did this even before we had any medical procedure crap done; it's not like all trans guys pop out into the world looking like Clint Eastwood!
Mostly, we navigate gender by coming out as quickly as possible. If people can't handle that, then we ditch them and our problem is solved. Thus far, people have been good about learning our genders properly.
--Rogan