How important is passable/female identity?

[smc]

Originally Posted by Michaela

I know that I will never pass.
I have feminine face, but there is nothing I can do about my length.
But still I have the right to be myself.
Most transgenders and transsexuals have something that give them away, we are not perfect.

The women on this site are very beautiful, but they are as representative for the average trans-woman as the girls in fashion magazine are for the average cis-woman.

Why do you expect us to be perfect? Most cis-women are not.
Beauty exists in many forms, it doesn't need to be perfect.

If you ever meet one of us IRL, I hope that you see the whole human in us, not just somebody for your own sexual desire.

I can only speak for myself, not other men on this site, but while I certainly enjoy looking at (and even posting some of the) porn here, my attraction to transwomen goes well beyond the exclusively sexual. And I really dislike this term "passable."

I respect and indeed celebrate your right to be yourself. Very well put. And while I agree with you that "beauty exists in many forms" and that it "doesn't need to be perfect," I do not believe that it is imperfect. If beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder, than so too must be the "perfection" that is assigned to "beauty." So much that is wrong with how people feel about themselves in this world, especially women, is linked directly to the development of a kind of universal concept of what constitutes "perfect beauty." When the world gets away from that, we will all be better off. Personally, I have never found the girls in a fashion magazine (as you say) more beautiful than "real" women -- and by real, I include all transwomen.

By the way, where you write "there is nothing I can do about my length," I think perhaps you mean "height." I, for one cannot imagine finding it unfeminine if you are especially "long" in a certain place.