I was in the store the other day and a saw an older woman with very masculine features and I was struck with a strange straight-dope worthy question. 95% or more of drag queens or trangendered/transvestical gays look like guys in women’s clothes. On the flip side, there are very few women you would mistake as a guy. So how is it that we can at a glance determine what sex a person is despite what clothes and body padding they wear?
Practice. I’m sure that sounds like a dull answer, but you have decades of experience in looking at facial and physical features and associating them with men and women. So some extra clothes or makeup is not likely to overcome the weight of the experience you’ve built up.
You can’t tell what genetic sex someone is just by glancing at them. You can tell what sex hormones their body has been exposed to early during development and even currently. It may seem like a nitpick but it is not. Genetic sex doesn’t always match the sex differentiation caused by the sex hormones (androgens and estrogens mainly).
The sex hormones control sexual differentiation within the body and brain. A typical male pattern of exposure to sex hormones during development leads to physical traits like broader shoulders, increased height, more masculine facial features in bone structure, development of an Adam’s Apple, and increased muscle development. The human body and brain default to the female pattern whenever male sex hormone levels don’t trigger the right critical periods. However, later exposure to female sex hormones during puberty and beyond control things like breast development that are easily noticeable.
Does this mean that experienced nurses in neo natal care can easily distinguish infants’ gender just by looking at their faces?
I certainly can’t tell. Boy and girl babies that young all look the same to me.
Perception bias: you don’t notice the people who can successfully pass as the opposite gender.
Secondary sex characteristics include changes to the shape of the face and hands, and the texture of the skin. You can’t cover these up with clothes or padding like you can for shoulders, breasts, hips, etc. so there are always going to be some visual cues as to male/female status.
The fact that we recognize these things so easily is probably both a matter of experience and a certain biological predisposition.
I’ve been told by two different drag queens that they intend to look like men in women’s clothing. They do it for their own satisfaction, not necessarily to fool anyone.
Years and years of experience. How is that you can tell the face of a friend from a stranger in less than a second? Women and men do have different facial and body proportions, and your brain is like some super averaging computer that intuitively figures out what pattern a person you’re looking at fits into.
Perceptions are everything. I went in drag to work(at a live music venue) for Halloween, wore a black stretch mini-dress w/sleeves, tights, wonder bra w/silicone slip ins, a set of wide heels and a red bob cut wig. Plus of course make-up nails etc all done by a semi-pro. I am 5’9" slim and slender but not at all feminine looking
Results were amazing
1 Won the work costume contest $200 ca ching
2 Women knew instantly/rather quickly. If they didn’t know they knew something was wrong
3 Men did not know until I opened my mouth and possibly didn’t care(a little)
3A Men are vile beasts who think primarily with their little brain, I literally had no idea it was this bad, really ladies sorry
4 What the heck are you Women wearing ? I had to disassemble myself to pee and the shoes??? your shoes are specifically designed to inhibit movement while crushing your toes
Best part of the night, I am buying cigs at 3am, no longer fooling anyone cuz its 3am, leaning over the counter when a group of guys comes in and one leans over my shoulder and loudly whispers " Babe I have been looking for you my whole life" and I answer in Baritone “No you haven’t” I thought the clerk was was going to pass out from laughter along with the twenty others in the store, our heros buddies were rolling on the floor, he was nowhere to be seen.
Sorry for a bit of a hijack, but I think it is relevant and funny. I was surprised that the women knew and the men did not, generally speaking for both groups
Capt Kirk
Of course, I am now seeing William Shattner in drag. 
I look nothing like the ShattMaster I promise:D
There’s also always individuals who don’t fit the male/female stereotypes.
Go do a Google image search of Andrej Pejic, the model.
Come back when you figure out what’s supposed to be so obvious to everyone.
Hell, I was doing that before I read the post.
I remember watching “The Crying Game” for the second time at a friend’s house, and neither he nor his son figured out the twist; whereas, since i knew, I was groaning to myself that it was so F—ing obvious all the way through.
The reveal in the movie is classic…
So I’m going with perception bias, and of course whether circumstances or situation are such that you would have reason to suspect in the first place.
What’s astonishing to me is how alike we can look. I usually spend a few hours a year at a clothing-optional beach. From a distance, with the glare of the Sun, I often can’t tell a person’s sex. And the absence of a bathing suit does not help, surprisingly. Close up, of course, it becomes much clearer.
He is very feminine, but SOMETHING if off, maybe the neck muscles and cheekbones and other facial features. I doubt he could fool anyone with contact longer than a glance.
And if we didn’t have cultural ideas about clothing and haircuts you’d have trouble telling them apart until puberty as well.
There’s also the ability to more easily recognize same race and ethnic background as yourself. Having seen pics of Asian “ladyboys” I doubt I would be able to pick them out as men. When it comes to adult white transgender men dressing as women it’s pretty obvious most of the time from a number of subtle physical clues. However, it also depends on context. In a dark bar with a few drinks in you and general revelry going on it would be much less noticeable than in the light of day eating lunch at restaurant etc.
In general the main giveaways are that women (in general) even if they are large or fat have more gracile skeletons than men especially in the hands. Men’s hands are quite different than women’s.
I keep getting mistaken for a guy, and I’m a woman! It drives me nuts.
I see people beat me to this by talking about issues like secondary sex characteristics here, but the thread pertains to adults, not newborns. I’m not sure how much difference there is between babies for even an experience nurse.
That was brilliant, and if I’d been drinking a cup of tea I’d probably have coated my keyboard in a fine spray of tea. Ah, Straight Dope. The monkey butler thread. The one with the silent blimp in the dead of the night that was eventually smashed to bits by the owner’s wife. And this thread. That’s three good things, no bad things.
“95% or more of drag queens or trangendered/transvestical gays look like guys in women’s clothes.”
The thing that gets me is that there’s a core of drag people who dress up, not as women, but as a kind of exaggerated parody of how women in films dressed in the 1940s. I understand just dressing as a woman for the hell of it, but if you’re doing so because you truly believe you’re female, why not dress like an actual woman? E.g. loose jeans and a shirt, instead of a banana headress and a clingy, Jessica Rabbit split-leg number with enormous high heels and a big swooping red wig, tights - did Jessica Rabbit wear tights? - and those opera gloves… no, she didn’t wear tights. Unless they were flesh-coloured.