There's a huge aspect of the issue here that this article doesn't really touch on, which I think is a tad important for cis people to know, and damn important for trans femme types who haven't worked it out yet- The way underwear is cut really matters quite a bit, and HRT exists.
The main public discourse around trans people, even when it's not being dominated by bigots, still gets stuck, on at least SOME level, on the whole "men in dresses" angle, who may or may not have had THE SURGERY, and are super obsessed with wearing the girliest things. I mean, just sharing "what really jumped out at you in hindsight?" stories an entirely too common touchstone is coming across this bogus "test" someone wrote up back in the day-
http://transsexual.org/cogiati/index.php?lang=en… Just do a search for the word "dress" in this thing. Compared to say, "trans" or "HRT" Trans resources online were REALLY lacking in the '90s and early 2000s.
And then of course the actual standards typically laid out when seeking various options for medical transition, particularly any sort of surgery, you may really have to parade around in a skirt in front of a therapist for a year or so to demonstrate you've been "living as a woman."
When not jumping through hoops to get access to things though, honestly I think the majority of trans women I know just went right on wearing the same clothes they did before they even realized they were trans, well after coming out, and starting HRT, and only switched over to clothes pulled from the women's section (or partially switched, I just realized as I'm typing this I'm wearing a super baggy old shirt and sweatpants myself since it was cold last night and they're thick) because it turns out that when you do get on HRT for a while, it kinda, you know, radically reshapes your entire body, and after a certain point, everything you used to be able to wear starts to pinch you or fall right the hell off.
And once that happens, switching where you get all your clothes just makes sense. Particularly since hey, turns out clothes made for women are in general make more fundamental allowances for different body parts of different people having different thicknesses and use materials that have more give to account for that (while again, being way thinner hence my old-clothes-as-wintery-pajamas). And one aspect of this practicality that I personally didn't work out for ENTIRELY too long is that the differences in men's and women's underwear are not, in fact, purely a matter of style, nor the need to give certain genital configurations a little extra space. At some point HRT decided I should have those real thick curvy thighs and that "hips" and "waist" were no longer going to be interchangeable terms and a but that isn't like, concave, so suddenly the old men's underwear I'd worn forever had this waistband that didn't do a damn thing, and these leg bands that painfully squeezed my thighs. So I went "FINE!" and grabbed some fairly standard not at all frilly women's underwear and... yeah wow what an amazing difference that ended up making. They stay up and aren't carving painful channels into my legs at all. It's pretty great. But this also only works out for me because. well, personally my need for extra space down in front is not particularly great. Although there are still SOME issues there with compression and ventilation on a hot enough day, and I'm atypical in how little of a concern I have there. So, most trans women, even if they couldn't care less what their underwear looks like, do have this really unfortunate choice between which of two sensitive areas they want compressed and pinched. A shame.
