PASSING

I recently posted a poll on a few FTM ring websites and forums, asking the guys to say what is or was their biggest obstacle when passing as male pre-hormones. The combined results of all five polls were as follows:

28% Voice

5% Etiquette faliure

26% Chest

3% Height

21% Face (includes facial hair)

1.5% Hands/Feet

0.5% Something else

13% People using your old name

Now I have no idea what the 'something else' was, but only one person voted for it so perhaps it's something unique to that person. But since I don't know, I can't cover it. But I intend to cover all the other things in order of how large an issue they are, and hopefully it'll help other guys like me and the ones who voted in my polls (thanks guys) to pass more confidently. These tips are primarily aimed at UK transmen, but there is advice here for everyone.

VOICE

This one, combined with the chest, seems to be the killer on all the polls. Of course, if you're all dressed up and looking like a dashing chap, it doesn't help if when you open your mouth a squeaky sound comes out. But don't panic, there are a number of solutions to this.

Firstly, not all of us can afford or have access to speech therapy. And I'm not a speech therapist myself either, so I'm not going to try giving a load of useless advice that doesn't work just to disappoint and demoralise people further. This solution is for the lucky ones who can get it, and if they can then it'll pretty much solve the problem on its own. For those of us who can't, however, it can be a good idea to find a way of making your voice pass for male as it is.

Younger chaps can do this without much difficulty, especially if they're at college or in a job where their real age is confidential or not relevant. It won't work for barmen, obviously! After doing a bit of research I've found that the usual age for a bio-boy's voice to break is anywhere from 13 to 18. I remember when I was in the sixth form a guy called Simon in my year still had a high pitched voice at the age of 18. But nobody questioned his masculinity!

It's a well known fact that FTMs under the age of about 30 can easily pass themselves off as teenage boys, so if you can do this, your voice won't seem incongruous. This means wearing trendy clothes and haircuts and stuff, but you needn't install a skateboard as a permanent attachment if you don't want to :-) It's a question of asking yourself whether you'd rather be seen as a teenager or as a woman, and I know which one I'd choose. It's not perfect, and you get patronised like you did when you were a teen, but your voice will not give you away.

If this idea really doesn't appeal to you, and you want to pass for someone that's at least passed their 21st birthday, then I have a few tips for lowering the voice a little, and with a bit of practice it can help, though in my experience this can be a tiring exercise especially when you know that before long you'll be on hormones anyway and your voice will break. It hardly seems worth all the effort to me, for the short time that it'll be useful. But here it is anyway.

First of all, select some albums with music from bands with male vocalists. And don't do what I did, and go buying Jamiroquai, U2 and Blind Melon albums - using vocalists whose ranges you can already match is cheating, and it won't work! This is the warm-up part, and if you really, really can't sing, then don't bother with it. Whether you like his music or not, Leonard Cohen is perfect for this, and Elvis Presley and Pink Floyd's music also contain a lot of deep voiced melodies. Sing along to this music as often as you can, and try not to hop octaves but to stay at the pitch of the singers as well as you can. When you can almost match Leonard Cohen's pitch for most of an album, you're getting somewhere. On to stage two.

Sit up straight and put your hand on your neck. Sing "laaaaa" for a nice, long note, starting on the lowest note you can sing. Then go right up to the highest, and back down again, feeling your larynx move as you go. Put a finger on the point your larynx stops at when you're on your deepest notes, and say a few sentences whilst trying to keep it there. You'll find if you lean back a bit and tip your chin forward you can get even deeper, and if you're lucky you might get a bit of that "boom" that male voices are supposed to have. Now take a book and read out to yourself a few sentences, always keeping your larynx at the low pitch point, feeling it with your fingers. Keep going until it becomes natural enough for you to do it without your hand there to check all the time. That should sort out your pitch.

But perhaps even more important than pitch is inflection. The main thing to remember is that bio males just don't tend to use as much variation in pitch in their speech as women do. Even when your voice breaks on T, you'll probably still sound like a very camp chap if you're still using female inflections. This, in itself, isn't really a problem, unless you feel it is. There's nothing wrong with being camp, but if you feel this isn't the image you want to present, then you can check your tones of voice to make sure you don't do those things with it that bio-men don't do.

Glaringly obvious is the screech factor. You know when you hear women in town getting cross with their kids? The familiar sound of an irate mother screeching "Liiiiiiiiaaaaaaaam, get heeeere!" is something that simply wouldn't come out of a man's mouth. Men don't screech or squeal or nag or whine. On the whole. Liam's father, if he were present, would probably call his son with a quick, curt growl, and if Liam didn't come after the second grunt, then he'd walk over to him and get him.

A normal male pattern of speech is pretty monotonous. In fact, they just don't talk as much as women, full stop. Men's speech is usually concise and their sentences are constructed in a chronological order. Men also don't tend to excuse or justify their words as much as women do. This isn't sexist, it's just what I've observed.  For example, if you ask a man how he got home from town, and he came by taxi, he would usually just reply, "In a taxi." Whereas a woman is more likely to offer an explanation - "Well I didn't want to have to struggle on the bus with all the bags so I just got a taxi." Whether it's right or wrong, or whatever social or political reasons there are for it, when I was doing my research for this page I sat in many cafes and pubs and libraries and travel agents and offices and listened to the speech of the people around me. What I noticed was that in the presence of women, men tend to keep their mouths shut, let the women talk and decide, and then say, "So what are we doing?" When women are not present, men are usually quite decisive and don't tend to dither much. If you're walking along with your friend and he says, "Shall we just pop in here for a pint?" then your answer should be a one word equivalent of "yes" or "no". A short explanation can follow a "no", but if you say "I don't mind" or "If you want to" or "I don't know" then it'll be incongruous with your male presentation. OK, you get the picture. On to something else.

CHEST

Well.....there are several options to suit various budgets and credit ratings. But since my budget is shoe-string and my credit rating is through the floor, and I've managed all of them that gives you an idea of how easy/cheap they are. I'll go through what I've tried, and only include the ones that work!! I've got a DD to hide so these solutions are pretty heavy duty!

1. Buy what they call a "Double Compression Vest" from this website: http://www.underworks.com/997.html (buy a couple actually, you'll want one for being in the wash). Buy the small size, even if you think you're big. As soon as you get it, take some scissors and cut it in the fashion shown here

Then put it on and fold the bottom half up over your chest to give sort of quadruple compression. Safety pin it to where it's comfortable (and you'll notice that where you cut it at the bottom means you don't get it cutting under your arms or rolling) and effective, and now there are a few options: a) sew it as well as you can to make it stay like that, and then put a crop top over the top of it to stop the ridges showing through your shirt/ T shirt, and if that does the job then hey, good thing. B)  If you still need more compression, then buy the Gator Compression Top from the same website, and slip it on over the top. What I do is pull my boobs up and outwards so under my shirt the flesh forms the shape of male pectorals.

2. Another option is this one: http://www.morrisdesigns.com/gynecomastia-vest.htm  which is just an easier to put on thing for when you're coming out of showers in the gym or whatever, not quite as effective, I find, unless you get the small sizes. They do deliver to the UK but you have to e-mail them specially about it because there's no provision for it on their site.

3. For lazier days when it doesn't matter so much, the sports bra option. Get a reasonably comfortable (preferably seamless) sports bra and put it on, pulling your boobs up high. Then get two or three bandages from Superdrug that answer to the description of self-adhesive sports support bandages, they're about 3" wide and cost about £3.50. There's a knack of doing this so that you can still breathe but still be reasonably flat. It's good for winter when you can wear plenty of layers to cover up the bumps. You start in the middle of your chest area, holding the bandage end at your side. Take it loosely around the back, then when you get to the other side, stretch it tight over the front so it presses you down. Go round again and do the top and bottom like it too, then do it again with as many bandages as you have to, to flatten it enough.

4. The Frog-bra, available from www.title9sports.com  (search for it under their sports bra section) mashes you up pretty good, and more to the point it's perfect for the pre-T transman or those whose frames haven't filled out yet. In winter that one can be alright just on its own, but for extra confidence or in summer you can combine it with the bandages. These guys are bit more tricky - they don't deliver to the UK, so you'd have to find a connection in the USA or Canada to get it mailed to, who would be willing to air mail it on to you. But the product is WELL worth the hassle.

5. Finally, go to a haberdasher's and buy a lot (about 3 or 4m) of wide elastic, about 5 or 6 inches wide. Wrap it round you once while you're breathing in and your chest is as big as it gets, so that it's pretty tight. Then mark where that is and cut it and sew it. You could do a couple of them to wear on top of each other. If they start slipping simply cut another couple of bits and make shoulder straps out of them.

My personal favourites that I use most often are options 1 and 4. Though 3 is the most comfortable and breathable, if you're big you really can only pull it off on days when you can wear thick layers.

FACE

Of course, the part of you that people are (supposedly) looking at the most of all. If it's glaringly obvious that you have a female face, then what are you supposed to do? This issue hounded me terribly for ages, I felt very depressed because no matter how well I did everything else, my face gave me away every time. But with perseverance I found some solutions.

Most obvious in the head area is the haircut. Now personally I always viewed myself as the long-haired rocker type, the unkempt warrior, being the geeky fantasy fan that I am. But alas, all that long hair did for me was to frame and accentuate my female features. So I had to get it all chopped off, even though as I sat in the barber's chair I resolved to grow it back again once I've been on the hormones for a while and can get away with it!! So, begin with selecting a barber. This is harder than you may think. The vast majority of female hair-stylists will not be able to resist putting the odd flick and curl and embellishment into your style, and the majority of bog-standard 'unisex' hairdressers (though you don't see many men in there, do you?) are about as much use for this part of your disguise as a toilet on a canoe. So you're going to need to go to an old-fashioned barber's.

Finding a good one can be difficult. I had a few negative experiences with this. Basically, the very old-fashioned, very cheap, no-frills types can be good if you already pass before your haircut. If you don't, then you might meet with a horrible amount of sexism in this area. I encountered a number of these types who, as soon as they saw me come in the door, took one look at me and said, "We don't do women" and then ignored me as though I were a ghost. Even when I argued that I wanted a male haircut, it went in one ear and out the other and before long I had already decided I didn't want that creep near my hair anyway. Another snag with these types is that they will NOT listen to anything you say about what style you want. They'll just do the closest approximation of what they think you're asking for, and you probably won't like it. I avoid these types of barbers now.

There is usually, in every town, at least one of what I call 'trendy barbers'. They're basically male-oriented, small salons run by a man in his thirties with a couple of assistants in their twenties, and unlike the 1940s feel of the no-frills ones these salons tend to be decorated in bright colours with contemporary or catchy names. (For any FTMs in the Lincoln area I shall take this opportunity to recommend "Dan's" in The Mall (halfway up the hill) he's an excellent barber and a very broad-minded individual, and doesn't cost the earth; I wouldn't go anywhere else). These are the sorts you want to head for.

Choosing a style is easier than you think. Take a look at yourself in the mirror and examine your face. What shape is it? What's your basic colouring? Once you've ascertained these things, you can just look at as many men with similar face shapes and colouring, of an age that you want to present as, and pick a style that you like. For example, my natural colour is blond and my face is kind of long and oval, so I browsed through a few Cary Elwes fan-sites to see the various haircuts he's had, and picked my favourite one. Since then I've progressed to a kind of rough spiky wet-look cut, which I think suits me better. But that's the idea. Remember though, that men don't have those triangle pointy-bits at the sides like women do, so get the sides cut straight across. If the barber asks you if you want a 'square neck' or 'tapered neck', ask him what he thinks is best. Ask him if you have a D.A. (Duck's Arse - common term among barbers to describe the awkward bit of hair at the back of your neck that grows in a point) and if you have then it's best to go for a tapered cut.

At this stage, it's probably not a good idea to dye your hair, unless it's some dark colour. I'm not saying that men don't dye their hair, because we all know they do, but it's sufficiently unusual to attract attention, which you don't want, because attention attracts scrutiny and scrutiny makes most people nervous, and under that situation you're more likely to give yourself away. Initially I thought it'd be a good idea to dye my hair dark brown, because I thought blond wasn't particularly manly, or so some people told me. But it was obvious by the rest of my complexion that it wasn't natural, and contrasted with my skin and eye colour which only drew attention to my smooth, beardless skin! Finally, remember that if you use hair gel then buy a men's brand such as Brylcream (found in the shaving section of Boots), because the ones on the shampoo shelf will have a girly smell about them. Smelling male goes a long way towards making you feel male, it gives you a kind of confidence to look people in the eye, so it's worth splashing out on a nice cologne and good quality men's deodorant.

Glasses are a fabulous way of obscuring soft, rounded features. Square or rectangular frames from the men's or unisex shelf in an optician's will help you no end, believe me. If you get tinted ones or react-to-light ones then they will also distract attention from your face and to themselves. If like me, you don't need glasses, then just get some anyway with plain glass in them. It can transform your face!

As for facial hair, my advice is this: forget it! Unless you have it naturally, there is no way to fake it convincingly. Actually, I tell a lie: there is a way to fake it convincingly, but it involves costly sessions with make-up artists and research into film studio supplies. Male actors who are playing the part of a bearded man in a film (NOT theatre - at a theatre the audience is far enough from the stage to make it unnecessary for facial hair to be particularly convincing) will often fake it so that the beard is of a consistent length throughout the film or scene. And often the cameras come very close up, so it has to be a top notch job. If you have the time, money and inclination, you could probably find an artist who would do this for you, and sell you the stuff so you could do it yourself in future. But unless you really have to I'd advise against this. I mean, how do you explain to your next door neighbour that you appear to have grown a beard overnight? It's just too dodgy and too expensive.

Apart from this, I'm yet to hear of a single suggestion that actually works. I've been told by an American friend that cutting snips of your own hair off and arranging it on your face with Spirit Gum (theatrical glue) is a dead cert, but when I tried it I found it hideously time-consuming for an end result that was, to put it mildly, pathetic. The old mascara trick doesn't work either. Well, it might work in a dark nightclub if nobody touches your face, but it's not worth it.

Just remember that many bio-males have smooth skin and if you're doing the old teenager routine as described earlier then lack of facial hair is not a problem. My dad is in his sixties and when he shaves his skin looks as smooth as my mother's and takes about 48 hours to become stubbly again. Maybe that's just us blond guys for you, but the point is that it happens, so don't worry about it.

I did actually improvise some side-burns on my sister once, when we were kids. She stupidly trusted me to cut her hair and we were playing a game where for some reasons she wanted side-burns. Naturally we were both whelted for it when my mam discovered and grounded us, but what I did was pretty cool (obviously my mam is just a philistine :-)). I got a section of hair from the side of her head by her ears and cut it to about the bottom of her ear. Then I took some water and plastered it down onto her cheek (hair gel would be a more long-lasting solution). Then I snipped at it a bit until it had that kind of rough, layered look of natural side-burns. It was really cool! I can't do it on myself and none of my friends will trust me to try it again on them (heathens!) but if you feel game for a laugh and you have a fairly artistic friend then you could take a chance on that one.

UPDATE!!! I was tipped off by a make-up artist who worked for the BBC, that the product Nanogen (which can be purchased here), which is actually for thickening balding hair, when applied to the chin, makes infallibly convincing stubble. Unable to really believe this, thinking it was too good to be true, I demanded a free sample, which actually manage to impress me! Yes, it works, though takes a bit of practise to get it in the right places! I'd recommend trying it to those who feel the inclination. The extra confidence boost is well worth the money!

PEOPLE USING YOUR OLD NAME

Life isn't fair, is it? You've done your best with your voice, chest, hair, everything is sorted out and you're minding your mannerisms painstakingly. And then what happens? Your sister/friend/mother strolls up behind you in town, taps you on the shoulder and calls out, "Hi Jill" (add appropriate name). Immediately everyone turns around and looks at you as if to say, "That's a girl??" So unfair. I had this problem doubled, because I have two young children who were in the habit of calling out 'Mummy' at an embarrassingly loud volume! So how do you cope with it?

Simple, just don't answer. Pretend you didn't hear, or that they're talking to someone else, and don't turn around. Usually the person will realise the faux pas they've committed and rectify the situation tactfully. Of course, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they do something like, "Saaallyyyy!!! Oh! Shit, sorry, I mean Jiiiiiim!" which just makes you cringe! But this is, admit it, one area over the situation where you can have control if you're firm and strong enough. Chances are that once your 'disguise' is watertight enough then anyone who doesn't know and would call you by the wrong name won't recognise you anyway.

When it comes to kids, there's no other thing for it than to just tell them to stop calling you Mummy, and explain why. You have to tell them. They're surprisingly quick actually, to accept it and understand it. The way I explained it to my 5 year old daughter was by telling her that on the inside I'm a boy, but on the outside I'm a girl. I told her that being a girl on the outside makes me very upset and so the doctors have to change me to a boy so that I'll "match". I told her that unless I could make people believe I was a boy for a while then the doctor wouldn't help me, so she had to help me to convince everyone I'm a boy, by not calling me Mummy. She bought it, she took it very well. To begin with she liked it, it was like a kind of game to her. She'd see a friend in town and say ''I'm with my uncle'' and then when we walked away she'd giggle at me and feel proud that she'd helped me. I chose a name for her to call me that sounded like a combination of my new name and the name she already called me. So Mummy + Samuel = Sammy.

HEIGHT

It amazes me how short people have this rose-tinted view of what it's like to be tall. I reached the dizzy height of 5'11'' when I was 13 years old, and stopped there, thankfully. When I was an underage smoker I had people constantly telling me how easy I must find it to get served with cigarettes, and from the age of about 14 or 15 my friends seemed to be under the impression that I could buy alcohol with no problems. They were so wrong!! Being tall doesn't equal being an adult, just like being short doesn't equal being a woman! Apparently, because I was a 'tall woman' I could do the following: become a catwalk model, air hostess, get served with alcohol and cigarettes (so presumably my mother at 5'4'' at the age of 40-odd would be asked for ID then?), get into over 18's nightclubs (don't they know that bouncers don't look at height or age of girls but at proportion of flesh displayed?), play netball and basketball (au contraire), and wear all the designer fashion clothes. Thank the gods those days are over! But now what have we? Apparently, because I'm the average height for a man, I have no trouble passing. Hmm. Funny, because I have to apply every single one of the tips on this website and even after a year now I still get the occasional ''madam'', where many of my vertically challenged trans-friends seem to have become ''young lads'' in the public's eyes almost the moment they got their hair cut.

If you're paranoid about your height, my main advice would be this: get a grip! Short men do happen, you know! Take Thomas, my cheeky friend from Watford. Bio-male, age 25, height 5'3''.My father - bio-male, age 62, height 5'6''. But if you really, really, really believe that being short will stop you from passing, then buy some thick-soled shoes, learn to stand up straight and be done with it. I'm told by a fashion expert that dressing all in one colour from head to toe, especially dark colours, gives an impression of height.

HANDS AND FEET

Alright, so this one can be a bit of an issue. In the summer especially, those manly arms that you've built up at the gym (or not) and those hairy legs that you stopped shaving ages ago can count for nought if they're tipped by delicate, girly hands and feet. The solution is quite simple for your feet: chunky trainers and boots. And while we're at it, I've heard a few complaints (myself included) that when you stop shaving your legs (if indeed you ever did shave them), the hair only grows thickly on your shins, leaving your thighs conspicuously bald but for a soft, downy sprinkling. Do not despair! In summer you can still wear shorts - just buy long ones that reach to just below your knees. Or cut them yourself from an old pair of jeans. The hands are a problem though, I'll admit. There's not much you can do about that. If you take to wearing those leather straps (friendship bracelets?) that were fashionable in the 80s and still are in some scenes, then they might distract the attention away from your hands. Clip your nails square and short (I just leave about 2mm on my right thumb because it's just practical; nails are useful, especially for a guitarist), and don't wear jewellery. I'm not saying men don't wear jewellery, but if you do then it'll attract attention to your slim, girly fingers. But it's my opinion that if the rest of your image is fairly water-tight then no one will be looking at your hands anyway.

ETIQUETTE

Finally, something we all know we can feel out of our depth with sometimes. Those little slips of the tongue that make people look at us in that funny way, those little movements and touches that just make the icing on the image! Of course I can't replace for you however many years it was that you missed of male upbringing and conditioning, but I can give you a few pointers to get you started.

In pub situations, men rarely ask anyone else to go to the bar for them. If someone is standing up, clearly already intending to go to the bar, then a man will not hesitate to add his order. But I haven't seen any men passing money to their friend and saying, ''Get me a'' - That's what women do! It seems, from my observations, the sole privilege of the fairer sex to be exempt from ever approaching the bar and ordering a drink unless they really want to, or have no choice! So learn where the bar is and get off your arse :-)

Toilets: If you can avoid it, don't take kids in with you. The reason? ''Mummy'', ''Aunty'' or other female 'nom de plume' is probably at its most unwelcome while you're in the men's toilets. Go calmly in, use the cubicle (men do it sometimes) and walk calmly out. Look at the floor. DO NOT look at anyone else.

If you bump into someone, don't go out of your way to apologise. Don't look down either. Keep your eyes ahead and raise one palm towards the chap and say a quiet, ''sorry mate''.

P e r s o n a l  s p a c e: never, ever, unless you have no choice, touch another man. Imagine that there is an invisible force-field around 1 square metre that exists around every man in the world. This is not so, because many men don't mind touching. But most do, so to be on the safe side, don't do it. If you're sitting on the back seat of a car, or on a bench in a park, it's the ''done thing'' to make sure your knees do not touch the other guy's. Being male has the advantage that you are 'entitled to' more personal space. I was on a bus this afternoon where a woman was sitting in front of me. She had a whole seat to herself, but she had her whole body, limbs and everything, so drawn in and compacted that I wondered if there were an invisible monster sitting next to her that only she could see. That's what women do; they keep their elbows in, their knees together, their feet on tippy-toes - be sure you're not doing it! Men tend to spread themselves out and take up more space.

If you're inspecting your nails (which, admit it, is usually just a nervous habit because your nails are fine 90% of the time), remember to curl your fingers towards your palm and look at them that way. The thing with the spread out fingers is what women do when they're checking their manicure or admiring their engagement ring. Cut down on the number of nervous habits you display; typically women show more of them than men.

Lastly, don't smile so much. It sounds awful, but it's true that men just don't smile as much as women. That doesn't mean you have to be some kind of stone-faced grouch, but just watch out for when you're doing it. In the next few days just mark to yourself when you see women smiling, and I guarantee that a large amount of it will be able to be put down to submissive behaviour. Don't tell them that because they'll deny it and go on a feminist rant at you, but it's just a fact that all human behaviourists have observed. For example, men don't usually smile when they say sorry. Think about it: two skinheads bump into each other. One of them looks down at the floor then looks the other in the eye, smiles and with a nervous laugh says, ''Sorry!''. Really picture that in your head. One of those is going to get punched, isn't he? That kind of behaviour is OK with women because it's seen as submissiveness. But in men it's usually just bolshiness! That's why the best thing for the hypothetical skinhead to do is to just carry on walking, looking straight ahead, after mumbling a very quick apology. Monitor your own behaviour for a while and decide for yourself how much of your smiling is your own personality, and how much of it is female submissiveness. You may surprise (and annoy) yourself!

Written by Samuel Baker, 10. August 2002 Other hints can be found on Andy's Passing Tips page.

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