Passing (gender)

In the context of gender, passing refers to a person's ability to be regarded at a glance to be either a cisgender man or a cisgender woman. Typically, passing involves a mixture of physical gender cues (for example, hair style or clothing) as well as certain behavioral attributes that tend to be culturally associated with a particular gender. Irrespective of a person's presentation, many experienced crossdressers assert that confidence is far more important for passing than the physical aspects of appearance. Groups of people whose members may be concerned with passing are crossdressers, drag queens and drag kings, trans men, trans women and those who identify as a third, non-binary, or genderqueer identity.

Gender attribution is the process by which an observer decides which gender they believe another person to be. Once an observer makes an attribution of the gender of a person, it can be difficult to make them change their mind and see the person as another gender.

This is sometimes referred to as simply "gendering", not to be confused with sexing.

In black culture, the failure to pass as the desired gender is referred to as being read. (/rɛd/) In this context, "read" is used as a verb. The event of being read is known as "a read". (/riːd/) In this context, read is used as a noun. It can also be called "being clocked."

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