Joel Yi Xin Hung hehim

In kindergarten, Joel Yi Xin Hung noticed how deep his voice was for someone of his assigned gender at birth. In elementary school, he would hang out with other guys in his class and strived to be like them. But it was during quarantine in his early high school years that Joel joined an online server with other Queer people and began coming into his identity.

“I think [Queerness] was something I'd always kind of thought of.”

On the surface, Joel is not someone that is “visibly queer.” On a sunny June day at North-Arm Dyke, he was wearing a gradient of shades — off-white shorts, a grey t-shirt and a black hat. He sat on a bench in full sun as float planes took off from the Fraser River ahead and committed cyclists rode by on the trail behind.

“I try and just look like a normal guy,” he said. “Like the kind of guy you’d see on the street … you see me, and then you forget me.”

Joel understands passing as being seen “as the gender you identify as, but also as cis.” He looked out at the water as he spoke. “I think passing only applies to certain kinds of Trans people, kind of like myself.”

As a Trans man, Joel is someone who falls within a binary Trans identity and passes regularly. He is able to use the men’s washroom with little issue, and in one instance, a fellow Queer classmate praised him for asking for their pronouns. Joel was confused by this, since it is standard within the Queer community.

“I [realized] I was perceived as cis,” he said, describing the mixed emotions that came with the interaction. “I’m passing, but at what cost? At the cost of being immediately accessible to … other members of my community.”

Joel spoke slowly to find the right words. He explained how at this stage of his journey, passing is something that he actively tries to do, sometimes falling into “cookie cutter [gender] presentation.”

“I don’t necessarily want to keep on adhering so strictly to gender presentation … but then there’s also this really intense feeling of dysphoria sometimes when I don’t pass almost perfectly,” he said. “It’s like self-inflicted pressure, but then also a desire to not conform as hard, because that’s almost the antithesis of Queerness.”

Joel hopes that as he grows more comfortable with his masculinity and starts to transition medically, he won’t feel as obligated to follow conventional gender presentation.

Joel emphasized the need to acknowledge a range of experiences, not only those experienced by different identities within the Queer community, but also the nuances of an individual’s experiences.

“The past self of a Trans person isn’t always necessarily null and void. That kind of upbringing will always shape … who I have become as a person, even if I don’t like to think or talk about it,” he said after describing being raised as a girl. “That was still me, but I can change … All people can change, and to change and to err and to figure things out is human.”

“I hope that's what people are understanding, [gender identity] is so fluid and open.”

Lyn Scatchardtheythem

There are two things Lyn Scatchard loves: sewing and flowers. In their most recent project, they decided to combine the two.

“This is supposed to be a rose,” said Lyn as they showed off a white sweater they were embroidering flowers onto. Sitting on a picnic bench in the Biodiversity Research Centre’s courtyard, the surrounding greenery was a fitting background for the flowers on Lyn’s sleeves. They explained how the flowers on the sweater convey certain meanings — hydrangeas represent pride, blue roses represent achieving the impossible and anemones represent sincerity.

“Eventually it’s gonna be anemones all down the arm … mostly blue on [one] side with a couple pinks, and then mostly pinks on the other side with a couple blues.”

In many ways, the sweater represents Lyn’s gender identity as a non-binary person. To them, being non-binary is “not quite a boy and not quite a girl, but kind of both at the same time.”

Lyn has never seen themselves as straight, but when they resonated with a Trans YouTuber and memes, they were surprised to realize they were also Trans. Initially they thought they were a Trans woman before realizing that non-binary was a more accurate description for their identity.

To Lyn, passing means being perceived as one’s true gender by strangers. But as someone who exists in the “middle” of masculine and feminine, this is often not always possible in a binary world.

“If you meet a stranger and they look at you and see the gender you believe yourself to be, that’s passing,” they said. “For non-binary [people], there’s not quite an equivalent, because everyone always makes their best guess.”

“In media, it’s always presented as you’re either a man in a dress, or you get a makeover and suddenly you’re completely the most beautiful person … and how that’s really not often the case where it’s more of an in-between.”

Instead, Lyn looks to cause “some sort of confusion” when strangers attempt to gender them. “Or if someone calls me ‘sir’ and then the next person calls me ‘ma’am,’ close enough,” they said.

It’s a compromise but in an ideal world, Lyn just “want[s] to be known as me, as Lyn, non-binary.”

“[Queerness] is about being myself,” Lyn said. “I think the best way to describe that is by describing myself through labels that I feel comfortable with. So I am non-binary. I am a knitter … I am someone who likes plants. I like hanging out with my friends. It’s a difficult thing to describe, but I think these things are all a part of me, and they make up who I am.”

BD Vosstheythem

For first-year geosciences PhD student BD Voss, passing had been about safety for most of their life.

Raised Mormon in Utah, then continuing their education in New York, Wyoming and West Virginia, BD’s gender presentation — or ability to choose and experiment with their presentation — was often constrained by their environment.

“I was often also in states where people are allowed to carry weapons, knives, guns — both concealed and open carry,” BD said. “In those kinds of environments, being able to pass as a binary gender is incredibly important for your safety.”

BD is non-binary, so passing for safety also meant being perceived as a gender they do not identify with.

“Especially while I was on testosterone, but before my breast reduction surgery, I would often up pitch my voice and make sure that I sounded very feminine,” said BD. “Then once I got top surgery, it became a lot easier to pass as a guy, and then it was like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna use the men’s restroom when I go to a gas station.’”

Despite the heaviness of their story, BD’s playfulness was apparent — as they described their experiences they gestured wildly with their hands and took out a dinosaur cap to wear. While sitting in the Pacific Museum of Earth, BD began to rethink their relationship to passing, alongside what comfort in their body truly feels and looks like.

“I’m sitting here having to think about what it actually means for me to pass and whether or not I want to pass in the way that I am used to the idea of passing … Now it’s very much more about comfort.”

At its core, BD’s comfortable and authentic gender presentation is a refusal to be a “willing participant in this gender binary.”

“I don’t want to participate in it, but I have to anyway,” they said. “[It makes] me think a lot more about cultures in the Lower Mainland — both Indigenous and immigrant cultures — for whom the legacy of Western colonization has impacted gender presentation … and honest portrayals of themselves that are culturally relevant to what they grew up with.”

But for BD, intentionally exploring this comfort on their own terms requires time and emotional output. As a graduate student balancing research, teaching, volunteering and much more, exploring and “playing” with their gender identity isn’t always feasible.

“Am I really ready to start playing again? … Am I able to emotionally let go of the fear of getting killed, and also the fear of feeling gender pain, in order to play in the ways that I want to play?”

As they sifted through their jewelry box filled with ammonite pieces gifted by their grandma, colourful rings, bracelets and a T-Rex necklace, BD noted this tension between wanting to play with their gender expression and their fear of “gender pain.”

“There’s no way for me to pass as something closer to what I actually am … gender is a sandbox and I’m gonna play in it, [but] I’m not currently ready to find out which parts of the sandbox hurt me.”

Yuki Ichikawasheher

Yuki Ichikawa recalls growing up in Lethbridge — a conservative city in southern Alberta — and finding a desire in herself to explore girlhood. From asking her dad questions like, “Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be a girl?” to sleeping in her sister’s Halloween costumes, she was constantly questioning the rigid social rules around her.

Around 2020, she transitioned socially and medically. What seemed like the last step in a decade-long process of coming to terms with her identity ended up being the beginning of her journey of discovery.

Transitioning introduced a host of other issues, including the complex phenomenon of passing.

“In the past, [I’ve had a] negative relationship with feeling a pressure to pass, pressure to be perceived as cis,” she said.

Yuki elaborates further on this pressure she has felt to present more femininely — wear makeup, dress a certain way — in order to pass as cisgender. Passing is more than looks — it’s tied to safety, identity and perception.

“In certain aspects, I’m very openly Queer and very openly Trans,” she explained. “But then in certain areas of my life, I do pass, and my Queerness and Transness is not visible. And I do have mixed feelings about that.”

With this comes a sense of dissonance as an advocate for the Trans community. Passing as cisgender, in some ways, does not advocate for the visibility of the community.

Yuki realizes her visibility is beneficial to people, but at the same time, she recognizes there are situations where disclosing her identity is not safe, as the environment might not be supportive or have deep-seated unconscious biases.

“My visibility has been beneficial for other people directly,” she said. “For other Trans people who might want to walk the same path [and] for cis people to realize that there’s Trans people in their spaces.”

Yuki’s relationship with passing is ever-evolving. Over time, she has realized that as she settles into her identity, she no longer feels the need to pass. She doesn’t feel the same pressure to go the extra mile to prove her feminine expression.

“I’ve become more secure in my identity, in a sense, through passing; through having my gender affirmed by strangers,” she said. “It’s kind of cyclical in that sense … I think passing helped me become more comfortable with not passing.”

Moving forward, Yuki is starting medical school at UBC in August and hopes to amplify Trans visibility in health care. Growing up, she did not have anyone who shared the same experiences as her that she could look up to, so she hopes to be that person for an upcoming generation.

Yuki is not just passing through life — she is shaping it fully and fearlessly.

Published July 22, 2025, 10:01 a.m.

Share this article copied!