Can women identify sex better than men?

[pippapegga]

I've just finished watching DEVS on BBC with DH (brilliant series if anyone is looking for something to watch by the way).
Anyway, in relation to the character of Lyndon - before any pronouns were used I automatically was referring to her as she etc as I just naturally assumed that she was female. DH didn't know who I was referring to at first and we ended up a 'that's a woman' / 'no that's a young lad' discussion until I decided to just Google it. Now the character is meant to be a male, however the actor is a female. To me it was glaringly obvious that she is a female, although she clearly presented androgynously. But DH genuinely thought it was a man.
It got me wondering whether men just don't have the same instinctual ability to see the subtle differences and are more taken in my how people might 'present'. We see so frequently people really trying to convince us that men in dresses can truly 'pass', and now I'm starting to think perhaps some people can't actually see the difference.
Just for the record, DH is GC and totally supports the radfem movement in relation to gender and modern trans-issues, he's not some woke dude-bro.

i asked my other half about the Devs charachter (we are on ep 5 i think) and he thought she was a female in the show.

I suppose i hadn't caught any pronouns in the show to wonder either way and with a lead female who is very boyish (but clearly female) i didn't think there would be another female who presents boyishly in the show.

Wasn't there some film about a war photographer where the supporting male charachter was actually played by a lady?

Wow! That seems amazing to me. Yes, she had many signifiers more often associated with masculinity, but I never thought there was anything unwomanly about her

I know me too! He also thought that Kiara Settle in The Greatest Showman was a man, because beard. It didn’t occur to him that it would’ve been easier to stick a fake beard onto a woman, than to sculpt some fairly impressive boobs and dub a beautiful woman’s voice onto a bearded man. I do despair sometimes

I'm embarrassed to say that I have not noticed a couple of times (I'm a 42 year old female).

I'm genuinely quite bad at recognising when someone is presenting as trans whether they were born male or female. If they started their transition quite young then it's even harder.

Jazz and Blaire have incredibly successful transitions

Photos on Instagram of the transition journey really blow my mind.

My almost 10 year old DD always seems to know (not from pictures) in real life. She often asks me "Why is that man dressed as a woman?" And I haven't noticed at all - or at least until she drew it to my attention.

I don't know why I'm so bad at it.

I think for some men it will be about the visual for sexual attractiveness. They will subconsciously think that a performance of femininity or female stereotypes = possible sexual partner.
So if they see a short haired female in masculine clothes not performing as expected they won't even notice them.

This makes more sense in my head than written down

He also thought that Kiara Settle in The Greatest Showman was a man, because beard.

How? Just how?

I agree that women, as the more physically vulnerable sex, are more accustomed to doing mental risk assessments and are therefore generally better at noticing certain subtle sex indicators.

However, I also think with androgynous people on TV, etc, there's a tendency for males to see male is the default and to assume a character is male unless it's been indicated otherwise. Women are more likely to be open to the idea that a character whose sex doesn't matter to the plot might be a woman because we are women. But I think men in a man's world sometimes forget that. Like in the book Invisible Women.

He also thought that Kiara Settle in The Greatest Showman was a man, because beard.

How? Just how?

I know right?! I joked that it must be hard for him seeing his favourite thing (boobs) in such close proximity to a beard

I think it’s to do with what WhatsNewPussyhat says about an indication of sexual availability. Beard = not sexually attractive therefore not female. He’s the type to freak out if I have a short hair cut (I still do it sometimes ) because long hair = beautiful.

Yes it's been proven time and time again. Women are able to identify biological sexually with almost 100% accuracy. Men I think maybe 80%? If you think about it it's an evolutionary advantage for females to be able to identify a male so not surprising.

What is fascinating is that in pitch black, with just a few lights on torso arms and legs, women can still identify the males!

And yes agree DEVS was great! (I assumed Lyndon was female, then thought pre-pubescent boy, but then went back to female as too tall for a boy not to have hit puberty).

I think he’s just not paying attention really most of the time.

I think this is the crux of it - my DP certainly notices if it's something he's paying attention to, but otherwise it just doesn't enter his head.

I thought it was obvious Lyndon was female, but that if she'd wanted to, she could have done a passible job at being a 14 year old (with careful clothing choices - she still had hips).

Similarly, I was watching hustlers on Prime, and in the stripper's changing room it was completely obvious that one of the actors was male - despite a significant amount of effort clearly given they weren't wearing much!

My experience with my toddlers is that they know who they're more wary of (generally men - although over-bearing women were edged away from, and some lovely men had something that they instantly trusted) - what they couldn't do is articulate that, so they used he/she based on clothing, despite instinctively (by my observation) knowing the sex of a person and behaving differently around them.

I'm with PP; I think men are more likely to be taken in by the performance of femininity and don't really look to see what's underneath.

Plus a lot of them still haven't got their heads round the idea that some men might actually want to wear makeup and dresses and long swishy hair, so they see those signifiers and assume female.

I'm reminded of some slides that were used in a group psychotherapy session I attended last year. We were asked to identify the emotions being displayed by various faces. There was one of a woman in quite pornifed makeup and pose, and the men in the group had no trouble picking out "desire" from the list of emotions she could have been expressing. The response of the women in the group was more of a mixed bag. What I took away from the whole thing (aside from a feeling of vague yet long-lasting discomfort) was that it didn't occur to the men to look past the performance of femininity, whereas women are better at identifying it as a mask.

Women are able to identify biological sexually with almost 100% accuracy. Men I think maybe 80%?

So overall, humans can identify biological sex 90% of the time.
That's pretty huge.

I think you are right op.
Even if i see a transexual and i dont know how i know, i still know and feel no doubt.
Dont mean to offend. It is just very instinctive

A few weeks ago on Facebook I clicked a link to unusual pictures. Wont ever find it again so cant link to it.
But (and this has stuck with me for weeks now) one of the pictures showed a man at the top of an escalator, about to get off so you see the back of him, wearing a beautiful coat. But because of the angle and the coat, all you could see were feet. His head was down, and arms encased in the coat. Yet the description below the picture and my own head, clocked that it was a he.

I admit that I'm very very wary around men, so probably in 99% of cases I could tell a man from a woman pretty quickly irl. It's much harder from a picture. I dont know what about this picture made me know for certain it was a man. The coat wasnt even a giveaway, it was fur I think.

So overall, humans can identify biological sex 90% of the time.•
That's pretty huge.

When disguised or wearing clothes/hair as conventionally the other sex would...

I have found myself seeing tiny twitter profile pics on my phone and thinking, hmm, something off about that face, and 9 times out of ten when I look further into the profile it is clearly a transwoman.

I have also been walking down the street behind someone wearing feminine clothing but have been instantly aware that they are trans, in the same way that I find you can tell when someone is pregnant when walking behind them - must be something about the way the changing centre of gravity affects your gait.

Is the greater female accuracy of perception why so many transwomen are convinced they 'pass' when most women can tell at a glance?

We've got one more episode of Devs to watch - DH and I had a similar conversation last night re Lyndon. I was quite surprised - apart from looks the voice was so obviously female - unless the guys are thinking the character is a prepubescent prodigy rather than a teenage prodigy.

I rather liked Stewart's comments to Lyndon on wokeness in one of the earlier episodes.

gait, size of bones, size of hands and feet, jawline, adams apple.....

tbh i assume the reason most TW think they pass is because most of us even when we clock someone is a TW dont go up to them and say "youre clearly not a woman" - I mean in what world would you do that? they assume they pass because people on the whole dont want to be deliberately hurtful and point out that they dont

Is the greater female accuracy of perception why so many transwomen are convinced they 'pass' when most women can tell at a glance?

I think that's largely wishful thinking. When browsing Reddit groups where men who identify as women post photos of themselves for public consumption I've been amazed by how many blatantly obvious blokes are under the illusion that they look like sexually attractive women.

About half way through the series I suddenly thought, hang on, I think that is a woman and looked it up. Seemed sensible to have an older woman acting a pre-pubescent boy, but later on they said that Lyndon was 19, at which point it all seemed odd. Very old to not have gone through puberty.

Until CV-19 kicked off, I used to do parkrun regularly in my local park. If a runner was about to overtake me, I would try to work out whether it was a man or woman. Despite not being able to see them, I was right 100% of the time. I think men push through the air differently.

I thought he/she was a woman playing a younger character (I thought around 16) and the character Lyndon, was deliberately androgynous. Ie a girlish boy, or a boyish girl. Didn't think it actually mattered one way or the other

No, it didn't matter to the plot either way, and there were plenty of geeks of both sexes so it wasn't like they were messing with the one good female part.

I have my head on.the clouds half the time so would probably be pretty bad at this.

However, I do think there is something to the idea of spotting patterns - I've had more than one non-British friend tell me they can pick Brits abroad as there's a definite 'British walk'.

Watching my French friends, they seemed to walk with their feet pointing at 10 and 2 so maybe there's something to it. In all cases, maybe the subconscious mind had twigged the difference while the conscious mind is still trying to rationalise it.