a dichotomy within the concept of "passing" that isn't often mentioned, afaict:

being able to be seen as X, if a person is told you are X

being read as X without needing to tell people

folx who are on the more androgynous side can be seen one way or another when people are prompted to see them that way, because the androgyny leads to a resolvable ambiguity

whereas some folx are simply read as a thing straight away, sometimes for good, sometimes bad

another dichotomy is, you can be instantly read as something, but not as a canonical version of that thing. eg many butch women read as women but not as canonical women in our heteronormative society

many trans women want to be read clearly as canonical women, but many want to be visibly one of the non canonical women. definitely a woman, but one of the weird ones

i definitely feel like that. i don’t see currently see myself as aiming to be canonically woman, i want to be one of the non-normative women, but still read as a woman, not as a man (within the contexts of that binary, at least)