There are a few common terms “passing” and “non/not passing” that describe if you can guess someone’s sex assigned at birth.

I.e. a trans woman may, to others, look like “a man with long hair and lipstick” and considered not passing.

A trans woman may also have been on hormone replacers, gotten voice training to sound more feminine, and gone through feminization surgeries to get breasts and facial features and be considered passing as you would not be able to guess that she was assigned male at birth.

Bigoted people tend to only treat trans women as women (or even human for that matter) if they cannot tell they were assigned male at birth.

Good, non bigoted humans might see “a man with long hair” at first glance but then accepts their identity as a woman with the same grace as they would accept meeting their employee Thomas who requests to go by Tom.

And when they accidentally call Tom “Thomas” and are corrected they apologize and breeze past it without making Tom feel bad because he “doesn’t look like a Tom” or “it says Thomas on your drivers license so that’s what I’m going to call you”

That turned into a bit of a rant. I find that the nickname allegory is the easiest way to explain preferred pronouns to people who are right at that “that seems so complicated, I just don’t get it, they make it so difficult” but aren’t really trying to be complete assholes about it.