Passing Narratives and Street Harassment

I’m a transwoman who’s been out and full-time for about a year now, and a couple months ago I entered the androgyny phase–where I pass well enough that I don’t get male pronouns in public, but not well enough to get female pronouns. This is a little frustrating, because subconciously, I never know if I’m being clocked or not. There’s also nothing to push against–I can feel ways about male pronouns and female pronouns, but when I’m not getting either, I just kind of feel invisible.

This leads me to one of the happiest and creepiest moments of my life. A couple weeks ago, I was walking in town and a guy in front of a bar made a comment that got way too personal with me, and any normal response would have been to get creeped out and keep moving. I did that, but less than five steps later, I beamed. Not because I’d just been harassed, but because I’d just gotten my first instance of harassment that assumed I was a ciswoman.

I’m not the only one whose first instance of passing was hostile. A friend of a friend wrote a blog post about how the first male reading he got in public was attached to the word “faggot.” Is our society that afraid to call people what they’re presenting as? That the only strangers with the guts to err on the side of presentation being the ones who don’t care about our feelings anyways? Or am I misreading this situation?