I've found myself in an interesting predicament. I am not publicly out as transgender; I'm still going by my birth name and pronouns. I do not intend to socially transition until I come out to my parents (hopefully sometime in the next year or two). Despite this, I am making the effort to look, sound, and appear as masculine as possible, as it gives me greater confidence and comfort in my body. Judging by the amount of customers who call me "sir" while I am at work, I think I'm doing a good job. But perhaps too good. And it's gotten me into a couple sticky situations. Everyone at my store who works on my team knows me by female pronouns and my birth name. But there's a cashier there (working on the opposite end of my store) whom I have befriended and driven home on two occasions. He has not asked for my name (which is weird, I know), and nor has he heard my coworkers call me by it. So for the past few weeks, whenever we have interactions, he's been assuming I'm male, and addressing me as "man", "dude", "bro", and "he" when using the third person. Which is something I enjoy, as I rarely get the opportunity to be spoken to as such for an extended period of time. But I'm worried of what will happen when he inevitably hears someone call me "she" or "[birth name]". A similar problem is arising at school. All my lab partners in my human anatomy class have been referring to me with male pronouns, as they do not know my birth name. The problem is, my professor, who I happened to have last semester and is on a first-name basis with me, knows me as female. So eventually they're going to hear her call me "she" or my birth name, and then it's going to be very awkward. I could come out to my teachers and request that I be addressed as male, but I do not feel comfortable coming out at all until my family knows first. Anyone else had experiences like this? How'd you juggle passing successfully while being in the closet?
I'm actually in the exact same position at work, though I am out to friends and family and I've been on T for three months. It is quite awkward as my voice has already dropped and I'm passing like 90% of the time to customers but none of my coworkers know. And I haven't been able to make friends with coworkers because I can't even add anyone on facebook because my name and everything is different. I don't have much advice though besides maybe speeding up your coming out process. If only I took my own advice lol. I've been socially transitioning for six months and on T for three and still not out at work. It is just too awkward.
