• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      You underestimate the benefits of puberty blockers and hormone therapy on “passing”.

      Someone in high school that’s had access to puberty blockers before secondary sexual characteristics become prominent is already going to present fairly androgynous because that’s what puberty does, it extends sexual differentiation.

      If the person then also has access to hormonal treatment, they’ll be experiencing what is essentially the exact same development of secondary sexual characteristics as they would if their own body was producing them.

      Hormones aren’t going to grow reproductive organs that aren’t there, but when it comes to things like facial hair, hip and shoulder width, breast development, that’s going to be visually congruent with however the person would have progressed had they been born with the endocrine system that matches.

      Now, if a trans person progresses into puberty before having access to treatments, then you’ll have an ever increasing degree of body changes congruent with their assigned gender.

      So, no, them having eyes isn’t some kind of automatic trans detection system.

      Hell, some folks, they don’t have a ton of differentiation even once they’ve completed puberty, so you can have adults that start hormones without any other treatments end up “passing” without any visual cues.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Yup. We have a librarian here that’s trans, and the only reason I know is because I have eyes (and they transitioned after getting the job). Oh, and we’re in a pretty conservative area, and I’ve never heard or seen anyone having any issues with her, though I’m sure it happens.

      Oh, and that librarian rocks. We couldn’t find one of our holds, and it turned out it was stuck in their book elevator thing which had broken down that day, and they went out of their way to fish our books out for us. It’s completely unrelated to her gender identity, I just thought that was really cool.