Every time there's something about "straight passing" couples being not experiencing homophobia then bi people get pushed further away from their rightful community. Also this idea that trans men can perfectly pass and gain all privelages of a cis man.

People really need to take a good look at how much emphasis they place on the supposed "privelages" that someone who appears more cis and straight or male has over other LGBT people.

"Passing" in any way is entirely conditional and can be taken away the instant something slips or a stranger scrutinizes you enough. Walking on eggshells and hoping you aren't found out and risk facing violence is not this great privelage you may think it is.

Remember the trans panic defense? That realizing a sexual partner is trans is used as a defense to murder them? So they "passed" until they didn't, and it actually led to them being killed. Passing did not protect them.

Also there's this idea that any couple that appears to be man + woman will never get clocked as queer. That they can never be queer. That bisexuals don't have the same level of queerness as a lesbian woman or a gay man. But they do. They can be flamboyant, butch, femme, anything that any other queer person can be.

"If you did crack open Irene's head and asked her to give a monologue, I think it would be a lot of lies, honestly. [...] The only way to do it filmically, to try and let the audience slowly realize the subtlety of what's going on, is to drip-feed them these gestures. Hands, longing, how Irene perceives the world, the fuzziness of it, the unreliability of it, then of course the black and white, which is the biggest irony of all, because nothing is ever black and white." - Rebecca Hall

Ruth Negga as Clare and Tessa Thompson as Irene in Passing (2021). Dir. Rebecca Hall

You can be nonbinary and still appear as a woman or a man to many people.

What looks, sounds, or feels "nonbinary" to you matters more than what the general public might think.

Live your life. Do what feels true to you.

i’m sure i’m not the first to say something like this, but let me tell you about my poc-passing-as-white jay gatsby headcanon!!

for some background, in the 1920s there was an interesting shift regarding (white) skin tones. previously, tans were viewed as a sign that a person worked out in the fields, and therefore a trademark of the lower class. however, slowly after the industrial revolution, it increasingly became a representation of luxury, since the rich upper class would have the time to lounge about and sunbathe at their leisure.

i say all this to show that a poc gatsby would have the ostensible class and wealth for a tan, which would ‘excuse’ a slightly browner skin tone in the public eye.

(the 20s was also the setting of passing by nella larsen, so that’s neat.)

in my vision, he’s biracial (maybe his mother was black & his father was a german immigrant) with skin light enough to pass for white.

the fact that nick states that gatsby keeps his hair neatly groomed and cut might be to prevent it from curling up.

additionally, i think it could contrast tom’s white supremacy & his fear of poc social progress.

it would also create a deeper divide between gatsby and daisy, and once again the contrast between him and tom. in my mind, daisy wouldn’t know about it until the point where tom reveals everything about gatsby’s bootlegging etc. with jay revealing it to her in the car ride back (oops then she hits myrtle).

then, when she chooses tom and the life of comfort, wealth, status, etc that their marriage offers, she also rejects not only gatsby’s new money but also his race.

it’s a lot more thematically significant for the american dream as well—it’s still unattainable and essentially tainted by capitalism, and it also emphasizes that it’s restricted to the white upper class. social mobility only becomes available to gatsby when he disguises his racial identity.

similarly, it fits with gatsby’s identity reconstruction—the quintessential american is white, rich, and educated.

daisy and tom have that ticket into society because they have that inherent thing that he will never have—pedigree, in both class and race. that’s something that even nick has.

(in my mind, he tells nick all about it the night before he dies & nick understands as best he can and doesn’t think less of him, because it further highlights the differences between his & gatsby’s relationship v. gatsby’s relationship with daisy; namely, the transparency -> acceptance give-and-take that he and daisy never had. because of having to hide himself from daisy in order to maintain her affection, he builds an expectation that he must be someone that he is not as well as developing a transactional definition of love (he gives, and people love him as long as he can continue to give) in order to be loved. therefore, nick’s immediate curiosity and fascination with who he truly is is foreign to him. not to get too into their dynamic lmao i just think it’s really interesting.)

finally, the very last part where nick is sitting and looking at the bay and thinking about the first immigrants and their dreams and how gatsby embodied the purity and naivety of those dreams is further exemplified by his racial ‘otherness.’

and there’s,,, technically nothing in the book to explicitly refute this from what i remember!

(n.b.: it has been a hot second since i’ve read tgg, so lmk if i’ve got anything wrong!)

*yes, this includes genders that it's currently not possible to "pass" as. it's a fantastical hypothetical

I think there’s this false belief(hope?) that “passing” and being on T will make the transphobia in your life just go away. I’m not going to deny that it’s easier, - it has been - but as a disabled trans person there are endless amounts of situations where it doesn’t matter at all.

If they have access to my legal documents, or if they’re actively doing surgery on me, and If I don’t even “pass” to a cop, a lawyer, a judge, a doctor, or nurse, or hospital, or either of my parents or siblings, then what does it matter that I pass? What am I being protected from with it?

being a person with a spinal cord injury, metal spine, and bipolar disorder these are the people who actually have material power over me. They are, statistically, the most likely to murder me (specifically family & caregivers). They will always know I’m trans and they will use it against me and it doesn’t even matter that I have a beard or deep voice or flat chest now. They don’t treat suddenly me like a cis person. they already know I’m not one

Tessa Thompson as Irene Redfield & Ruth Negga as Clare Bellew in PASSING (2021) dir. Rebecca Hall

it's okay if you don't pass. it's okay if you don't want to pass. it's okay if you can't pass. you can still find happiness and peace in yourself.

please do express yourself in whatever way makes you happiest - to the best of your ability and safety. who you are is good. you are so wonderful, and people want to see you shine!

Alternative movie poster for ‘Passing’ (2021) dir. Rebecca Hall.

Ruth Negga as Clare & Tessa Thompson as Irene in Passing (Film, 2021).

Passing (2021)

Director: Rebecca Hall

Cinematographer:  Eduard Grau

"The course I teach on black women writers is a consistent favorite among students. The last semester that I taught this course we had the usual passionate discussion of Nella Larsen's novel Passing. When I suggested to the class (which had been more eager to discuss the desire of black folks to be white) that Clare, the black woman who has passed for white all her adult life and married a wealthy white businessman with whom she has a child, is the only character in the novel who truly desires "blackness" and that it is this desire that leads to her murder, no one responded. Clare boldly declares that she would rather live for the rest of her life as a poor black woman in Harlem than as a rich white matron downtown. I asked the class to consider the possibility that to love blackness is dangerous in a white supremacist culture-so threatening. so serious a breach in the fabric of the social order, that death is the punishment."

bell hooks in Black Looks: Race and Representation. Chapter 1: Loving Blackness as Political Resistance

There's no "one size fits all," when it comes to how you'd like to be treated as a nonbinary person (besides basic decency).

Maybe pronouns are very important to you, but you might also not care. Perhaps you're not concerned with how others see you. Or, maybe "passing" is extremely important.

Your needs will be unique because every nonbinary person is unique.

From the series “Passing” 2023

tired of talking about passing so much in trans spaces

im fat, goth, i have a round face and hips and a large chest

im probably never going to pass to cis people

and that's okay

i shouldn't have to shift myself to the cis gaze to be a guy