Evan Urquhart

"Life experience" is a brutal and punishing demand to put on trans women (by design), but I haven't seen people talk about how meaningless and weird it can seem as a requirement for trans men.

An AMAB person wearing women's clothing (and doing other presentation things to signify 'woman') is not culturally equivalent to an AFAB person wearing men's clothing. They're so different, in fact, that requiring "life experience" for trans men becomes near meaningless.

An adult AFAB person could easily wear boys' clothing from the age of 3 and never once be perceived as anything but 'sporty', With a short haircut maybe he'll have been seen as a butch lesbian, but even that depends on how feminine his features are and local style.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts when I started timidly wearing men's clothes in light colors (pink button down with a cream sweater vest, for example), I could still say I was femme presenting. Definitely not turning any heads or attracting attention.

It was great for where my head was at the time bc I didn't want to stand out in any way, but having clothes cut for a man's body helped the gender dysphoria a significant amount. Plenty of cis women here have at least some items of men's or unisex clothing, esp sportswear.