Tag Archives: social transition

Two years ago, I couldn’t imagine wanting to be “stealth” in any part of my life.  Being trans occupied a lot of my time and energy, and it was a really important part of my identity.  Neither of those things are true now.

Back then, though, I couldn’t escape it.  Every time I got dressed, or answered the phone, or introduced myself, I had to think about it.  Whenever I met someone new, I had to weigh the pros and cons of telling them.  If they knew, then there was a chance that they might respect my name and pronouns.  If they didn’t, I wouldn’t have to worry about being on the receiving end of transphobia, or suddenly being asked to do Trans 101.  That’s a lot to deal with when you  really just wanted to do some local volunteering.

Because it was such a big part of my life, and because cis people couldn’t really relate to most of the things I was going through, finding community with other trans people was a huge priority.  It was really affirming to go someplace and be asked what pronouns I use, or to not have people assume they heard me wrong when I introduced myself (“Kayla?”).

At the time, the most ideal situation I could imagine was to have somebody know that I was trans, and respect my identity anyway.  Today, things are completely different.  When I’m getting dressed, I don’t have to squeeze myself into a binder; I don’t think about whether the pattern of my shirts minimizes the size of my chest.  People automatically assign me the correct pronouns, and no one is surprised by my name when I introduce myself.

At first, it felt like I was getting away with something when people respected my identity.  I felt like I was “passing” as male.  Once the novelty wore off, though, I was simply left feeling comfortable.  Much of my social anxiety disappeared.  I still let most people I met socially know that I was trans, but it was primarily just out of habit.

I’ve gotten really used to being treated simply as male, without any scarequotes or footnotes.  And the longer I live this way, the more right it feels for me.  My transition is over for the foreseeable future, and my body dysphoria has lessened significantly since my chest surgery.  At this point, my trans-ness exists as a treatable medical condition that is essentially no different from male hypogonadism.

Eventually, disclosing my trans status (or having my trans status disclosed) to acquaintances started feeling less comfortable.  I began noticing that I was treated differently by folks who knew my medical history–and not in a way that made me feel more understood and respected.  I started to feel like it actually limited people’s ability to understand me.  For example, most folks (who don’t know I’m trans) attribute my femininity to my queerness.  So do I.  I look, speak, and act like an effeminate queer man because I am one.  Instead of taking my gender expression for what it is, many people who know my trans status assume that it’s really some sort of residual femaleness.

In actuality, I don’t feel that I ever was female, and I don’t think that most things have anything whatsoever to do with my transness.  But as soon as most cis people are made aware that my birth assignment isn’t what they had expected, they relate pretty much everything back to my being trans.  Learning “the truth” tends to bring them further away from really understanding and respecting me than they would’ve been had they not found out.

When I enrolled in school back in September, I enrolled without disclosing my history to anyone. It hasn’t come up, and it hasn’t felt relevant to bring it up.  Sure, there are lots of opportunities to tell people.  I just don’t see a reason to.  I get plenty of chances to talk about being a survivor of family violence, too, but that’s hardly ever relevant, either.  People can get to know me professionally and personally without ever knowing many intimate details of my life.  They might be surprised if they learn some of those things later on, but people are always finding out what happens when they make assumptions about other people’s experiences.

Not so very long ago, I thought that it’d be dishonest for me to interact closely with someone and not disclose–that I’d be hiding something, or lying about my past or present.  Instead, I feel like I’m being seen for who I am, without other people’s misconceptions about gender or transition getting in my way, for the first time in my life.  It feels great.

As my life has gotten busier, my involvement in local and online trans community is taking a backseat to other considerations.  I don’t know to what extent I’ll be “out” or “stealth” in the future, but I suspect I will always keep my medical history private at work in school.  At this point, most of my close friends know my history, but I can’t even remember the last time I disclosed to a cis person outside of an activism setting (actually, it was probably when I corrected my Social Security information).  If this trend continues, I might eventually find myself almost completely stealth.  It’s still not something I’m particularly looking for, but I’m certainly not opposed.