I’d like some advice on jewelry I can wear out and about when I’m presenting as a man. Preferably something that wouldn’t get too many looks on a 40 year old.
Simple gold or silver chains are an obvious choice. Bead mala bracelets too.
I’d like some advice on jewelry I can wear out and about when I’m presenting as a man. Preferably something that wouldn’t get too many looks on a 40 year old.
Simple gold or silver chains are an obvious choice. Bead mala bracelets too.
what’s the point of wearing the jewelry if it’s male-coded?
what would you want to wear if you were “allowed” to?
I want to wear it for myself, and not necessarily male coded jewelry but stuff I could wear without raising questions with friends or coworkers.
I’d love to have earrings. Also just random rings and bracelets. I love semi precious stones so probably stuff with a lot of that.
depending on where you live / what is culturally acceptable, you could probably just wear whatever you like - gender non-conforming styles are something even cis-men explore, esp. since the 1960s in the U.S. when feminine hippie styles (long hair, flowy clothes, floral patterns, etc.) took on anti-war significance.
EDIT: you have to remember, cis people are truly clueless, most people won’t question your gender as a man even with jewelry, feminine behavior, etc. - many people will even think there were no signs when you had been feminizing in many ways
EDIT2: some examples from my own life, I wore women’s clothing like skirts whenever I could growing up, yet my parents, friends, and other family never thought I might be trans; my step-mother even gave me her hand-me-down jeans to wear and this was considered reasonable / normal. When I transitioned, everyone was shocked, my mother told me there were no signs growing up. I think feminine traits on a man just reads as “gay”, so just remember your fear that you will be outed as trans based on feminized things like jewelry might be outsized, others almost certainly aren’t thinking that even if it should be obvious.
Lol. I think I’m starting to learn this.
It’s awesome you were able to explore your feminity so openly. I’m in the US south so there’s still a pretty low bar to being viewed as unacceptably feminine. Reading as gay is something I’d prefer to avoid just as much as being trans.
That being said, even with how bad things are getting I don’t think I’ve internalized how accepting most people are these days. Finding a more feminine style that works for me will take a while probably.
sorry to give the wrong impression, I also live in the U.S. south and my dad physically threatened me and my mom when I was 4 years old and was gender exploring by trying on my mom’s heels in her closet … I had to hide most of my cross-dressing from people in my life but especially from my dad, and every exploration was a calculation of risk. The first time I bought skirts as an adult, I felt panicky while checking out, terrified they might think I was buying them for myself. Looking back, that was a silly fear considering nobody would think that.
That said, nobody that did know about my cross-dressing ever thought I might be trans. However, I didn’t want to be read as gay either, just like you, I just knew it was safer to seem gay (and I didn’t seem capable of not being seen as gay, people just assumed it from the way I looked and sounded, even if I did nothing to feminize).
I will say, socially transitioning before medically transitioning taught me that literally 99% of people don’t care at all, you can wear a dress and paint your nails and wear jewelry and still look like a man, and you might get some stares or looks, but that’s about it for the most part, even in the south. I think people just tend to mind their business. There are obvious exceptions to this, and it’s good to avoid aggressive men, but it’s nothing like I thought it was going to be (I guess in my head I figured I would be attacked on day one, and that the reactions would be more violent or angry).
I hope that someday soon you are able to transition. ❤️ Stay strong.