yes, this is a fairly well documented phenomenon. from Viviane K. Namaste, Invisible Lives, pp 144–145
The necessity of passing is directly related to the cultural coding of gender. In their ethnomethodological study of the implicit ways in which gender operates, Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna demonstrate that social meanings are grafted onto bodies in order to give them one of two binary sexes. The researchers presented 960 students with representations of many different bodies. For example, they showed a picture of a body with long hair, breasts, and wide hips, and asked the participants in the study to tell them if the person was a “man” or a “woman.” Kessler and McKenna found that the interpretation of sexed bodies was overwhelmingly skewed in favor of masculine referents. If a penis was present, a “male” gender attribution was made 96 percent of the time. Yet in order for a figure to be considered “female” more than 95 percent of the time, it needed to have a vagina and two other cues indicating femininity (e.g., long hair, breasts).
This research has profound implications for the study of violence and gender. If gender ambiguity is habitually resolved within a masculinist frame of reference, then genetic males who live as women will be among those most at risk for assault. Simply put, within Western societies, it is easier for females to pass as men than for males to pass as women. Ethnographic research on gender confirms this hypothesis: in Holly Devor’s study of “gender-blending” females, she notes that several of the women she interviewed felt free enough to walk down dimly lit streets late at night, given that they were perceived to be men. Furthermore, many genetic females can live full-time as men without plastic surgery and/or male hormones. Conversely, many genetic males need to take female hormones in order to pass successfully as women.
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