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 never said ALL trans people are indistinguishable, I said the gender free from fwr look a lot like women

What you posted was a rather silly and irrelevant "gotcha" as you know perfectly well the posters on here who apparently "clock transwomen" all the time weren't talking about women like that. I don't "clock" trans women. It leads me to believe a lot of what I read on here may be exaggerated.

It leads me to believe a lot of what I read on here may be
exaggerated

That's lovely dear, I dont care.

How disingenuous. You know perfectly well that is not what posters mean.

Why?

The point is that biologically male trans people are recognisable as male. And likewise female trans people. "Gender free" is a form of non binary identity, in trans ideological terms. However the sex of these people can be easily determined, for the most part. I think you misunderstood.

Isn't it a bit like 'You can always tell when someone is wearing a wig', when actually you can only tell the ones you can tell, and the others you assume to be not wearing one?

I know this has turned into a bunfight but just going back to the original topic, this is so fascinating to me: my husband too was confused about the sex of the actor playing Lyndon whereas it was absolutely obvious to me that it was a woman. However, like another poster upthread, I tend to have enormous trouble with faces: I too struggle to tell Dominic Raab from Matt Hancock (I could do it if they were side by side but would easily mix them up if I just saw one) and I'm famous for not recognising people I know in the street, and struggling to follow TV shows and films when two similar looking actors (especially brunette women) are cast. That difficulty just doesn't seem to translate into an inability to correctly sex people. I didn't even register that Lyndon was supposed to be a male character, I thought they kept the gender deliberately neutral, with the name and the presentation, and I thought they'd refrained from using pronouns (although I stand corrected on that front).

Interesting that nobody would have trouble identifying the sex of the actor who played Lily, who also had short hair and wore fairly gender neutral clothing. She evidently just has a more feminine face than Cailee Spaeny, whose face is quite ambiguous even with longer hair.

Isn't it a bit like 'You can always tell when someone is wearing a wig', when actually you can only tell the ones you can tell, and the others you assume to be not wearing one?

I think there are sufficient documented examples of high profile transwomen (who transitioned in adulthood) who have had the maximal available surgical interventions but still don't entirely "pass", to assume not. If you throw enough money at getting a good hairpiece you'll get a convincing one no problem; but if someone like Caitlin Jenner, with apparently unlimited funds and determination, can't do better than they have, it's unlikely there are loads of undetectable transwomen moving among us.

Came here to say Katie Alcock is great on this - the stuff about gait- but she's already here

High profile people are not a good cross section. Otherwise a high proportion of the women in Morrisons would have noticeable plastic surgery, and Trump would have great hair.

They are high profile because they like making a show of themselves, so it stands to reason that their appearances will be more dramatic than those of us common folk.

Most MtF I see dress with the flamboyance of the narcissists they are and don't seem to care if the attention they get is positive or negative so long as eyes are on them.

Consequently, it's not just blokes in dresses and makeup I see in my very liberal city but men with brightly punky-dyed hair, face piercings, tattoos, and clownish clothing intended to draw all eyes to them. They don't pass as mature adults, and also they don't pass as women.

Yes caitlyn jenner looks like a very stylish transexual.

But not a woman

@insideandout3 How do you know there are not quiet, passive ones who are quite convincing, though? You'd just walk past them without knowing.

I know because many times now when I've been presented with a photo and a headline that says the person in the photo is a woman and I've had my doubts, further investigation proves my hunches correct time and time and time again.

It's not just me. A few years ago there was a local TV ad that featured a historical woman played by what all my senses told me was a man. When I googled to see if the actor was trans I saw searches by other people asking the same question, and the person in the ad was indeed MtF.

Like all other animals, humans are very capable at identifying their reproductive mates.

Yes, same here @insideandout3 . I was watching a true crime thingy on youtube the other day and the big twist at the end was that the Italian lover giving an american ear nose and throat doctor on a run avoiding malpractice suits a place to stay was really a man. But the first .0001 of a second the person was on screen, I thought 'bleep' that's not right. And all the comments beneath made it clear that everybody else had known instantly too.

@eckhart I don't know about that. There's always something. Men can't make their shoulders less broad.

Occasionally though you do see a man with such sloping narrow shoulders that he looks female to male.

@sawollya The assumption that 'there is always something' is what I'm questioning.

There's a lot of men with broad shoulders. But, as you say, there are some with narrow ones, and A LOT with medium ones, which could pass for female. Hands can be a giveaway too, but to be honest, when you pass a person in the supermarket, how closely do you study their hands?

I'm androgenous and get taken for both genders regularly by strangers. A lot of young men with long hair get pissed off because everyone thinks they're a girl.

There's a woman in the next street from me who I thought for a long time was born male, but she wasn't, I was surprised find out.

I think people assume it's obvious because some are obvious, and they stand out. It's greyer than black and white, though, I think.

I hear you, honestly, if they succeed then I don't know they have succeeded.

And maybe some times, the transexuals who want to pass as women happen to have narrow shoulders, happen not to be too tall, happen to be feminine men (Some men are slighter than other men and I guess they're at an advantage)

I don't know if we're ever consciously studying shoulders, hands et things but there is data collected almost against our will and fed back up a command centre in the brain that goes 'bleep, that's a man'.

Also, it's harder for us to verbalise these differences but jawlines and foreheads and bridges of noses - there is something that we pick up on there.

The only exceptions to this are asian transexuals as their men tend to be slighter and less hairy.

Male trans people on social media or in the public eye who claim that they pass or genuinely do think that they pass as female, who actually do pass to a casual observer under close scrutiny, I'd put at less than 1% in my totally non scientific assessment.

Males in the UK/US etc just really don't pass as female if they've gone through male puberty. I think it's a bit more common for females to pass as male.

I think people assume it's obvious because some are obvious, and they stand out. It's greyer than black and white, though, I think.
Depends on what you look for. If you look to determine threat, then you won't look if you don't perceive any potential threat (IE if the person is just in the same supermarket aisle as you and shopping). If you look to determine sexual attractiveness then you might not look if the person was too young or old or tall or fat or whatever or if you just weren't in that kind of mood.
The majority of people we get within eyeshot of, we don't really notice.

People on TV are being actively observed in the way the person in the tinned veg aisle isn't.

Also I notice lesbians often because I notice a different walk/gait (and after all these years it has oddly become the best predictor for me). I have no idea as to why this is.
I notice transmen (who I think are very often not noticed at all, as shorter, slightly built men) because I actively look at them, again because I sense a similarity, I must subconsciously think "another lesbian like me" and look more closely at them.

So I must look for, actively look for, things in people that other women might not look for at all. And you don't see if you don't look.

But the light points example was very interesting, in terms of determining who is male (which is of benefit to both sexes but particularly for women) it certainly seems plausible that is a subconscious self-preservation mechanism.

Depends on what you look for

This. We don't generally 'look for' anything in strangers. So we see very little. I presume this is why I'm often mistaken for the wrong sex, but my friends can't understand it.

Like you say, you don't see if you don't look. So, the only people you'll really notice are the unusual ones. The men who are trying, and failing, to pass as women. The ones with the really fearsome looking dog. The really bad COVID cut. etc

Also everyone looks more at women than at men. Straight women look at other women all the time and I don't believe straight men look at each other in the same way.
I don't know how much that is to do with female socialisation/the male gaze etc and comparing oneself with other women for those reasons, but women just get looked at more than men do.
If I am dressed in a shapeless way I am genuinely not noticed by many people and I think this must be quite refreshing for young girls fed up with constantly being compared and sexualised hence non-binary and trans personalities and dress codes.
It's really nice to wander about unnoticed and having a door held open for you just isn't worth everyone looking at you at all.

So I think there are different groups that "pass" as the opposite sex:

• Men who have taken on a sexualised hyperfeminine persona and dress accordingly confuse other men who see the trappings and not the physiology
• Men who have had extensive plastic surgery to remove certain primary and secondary sex characteristics confuse both men and women but primarily men
• Women who dress androgynously are either subconsciously read as male by men who think of male as default or are just not seen and therefore not noticed as female by everyone else
• Women who transition are generally not noticed by anyone because they look like narrow shouldered wide hipped short beardy men and that's not exactly Abercrombie and Fitch poster-boy material nor particularly threatening

Hope that makes sense.

This. We don't generally 'look for' anything in strangers. So we see very little.
Depends on the situation. In the alleyway at night after closing time we look for lots of signs in strangers.
The same walk to the train station in the morning we might walk straight past our best friend because we are fixated on our end goal.

I agree, in certain situations we are hyper vigilant. But that's not most of the time by any means, for most people.

Your definition of women who transition made me laugh. I only know one and you were accurate.

There is also a dramatic difference between how people look in person and how they look on film or in stills.