Congratulations on Year 1. I can relate to the difficulty of being correctly read as male while living in a liberal city. Though I am agender, I seek to be read as male in a society that does not (yet) understand or accept non-binary people. I have also been on testosterone for coming up on three years, but I still get misgendered as female an uncomfortable amount of the time. Wearing a baseball-style cap doesn’t seem to help in my case!

Unlike the vast majority of transmasculine people I’ve known or read about, I do not bind and am not seeking top surgery. Reading reports of folks like yourself who still get misgendered after top surgery furthers my resolve to only have that procedure if I want it for myself, and, unlike testosterone, I do not at this time.

I’m 5' 4", and I’ve bought a significant proportion of my post-transition clothes at secondhand shops. Buying shoes can indeed be a challenge; when I found a discontinued model of my favorite athletic shoes in my size, I ordered three pairs (fortunately, they were heavily discounted). I will have to check out this Topman place you mention…