[MichelleM]

We encounter many people in our daily lives, whether by telephone, static or moving images e.g. TV,or directly using one or more of our senses. Whatever the form of contact, we nearly always manage to assign a sex to each person with a high degree of reliability.

What are the essential cues that enable us to achieve this over such a wide range of sensory input data? To keep OT, breast development is one clue, although never of itself conclusive (!), but what if breasts or their absence cannot be seen or felt? What lessons are are there to be learned here by those who would seek to pass in a gender differing from their biological sex? Some of the answers may seem obvious, but I remain astonished that our brains manage to gather and weight available input data more or less subconsciously, and make instantaneous judgements based on data which often seems wholly insufficient. The brain's weighting of the data is obviously important here.

On a related note, after having just become aware of my probable GID a few months ago, I've had a couple of instances where people have reacted to me that made me wonder if they picked up a TG "vibe" from me. Now, I'm not positive in either case, but what's interesting to me is that as far as I can tell, I haven't changed my appearance or mannerisms. So, is it likely I actually have made some changes, so subtle that I'm not even aware if them?