stealth … to be or not to be, that is the question.

[Anonymous]

Pleased you posted this Virginia.

This is a good co-incidence as I was sick on Saturday and stayed in and hired the movie Milk. So its fresh in my mind.

Well umm yes, several lumps in my throat as I watched that film. So many similar struggles to our community. Some of the arguments placed against Harvey Milk (in a debate) are the same arguments & accusations placed upon me in person by certain individuals, so I could relate to the movie quite a lot.

I mostly agree with what is written in that blog although for some, coming out is not possible. Myself I am out to everyone now and at work I am still coming out to people almost on a daily basis. I insist everyone now call me Anthea even if I present as male. (See my TR blog for the reasons I sometimes still present as male) In summing up: All I can say is how much better I feel in myself or my own self worth knowing everyone now knows who I really am.

I too recommend watching the movie Milk.

[Anonymous]

ironically, i came across another blog which suggests that the degree to which we *come out* is as individual as we all are:

Coming out is a pretty important process.

And it is a process. For trans people, coming out is made a little more complicated, and the degree of complication follows the sort of trans person they are.

For some trans people, coming out is really and truly just a matter of wearing clothes that make you feel better about yourself.

For others, it’s about performing, about creating an illusion, about impersonation.

For even others, coming out is a monumental undertaking that once done, coming out as something else is easy.

I’m not qualified to speak about coming out for every sort of trans person. I don’t know the struggles that a genderqueer person has to go through, or a bigender person who is both, or a person for whom gender is meaningless and detrimental to a degree inversely proportional to the degree for which gender is of great meaning and beneficial to me.

Later in the year, there is a national coming out day. This is early spring, though, a time of renewal and growth and rebirth and newness, and I should probably point out that for me, personally, it’s very early in the new year, which started just a short while ago. Indeed, it’s still the first month. 12 and a half to go, not counting the holidays.

Which I don’t expect people to understand, any more than I can be expected to understand the a-gender person I reference above.

But I can at least explain what coming out for someone in a situation like mine — a transsexual woman — is like in general, because for trans folk, coming out is much, much more complicated…

Some of you may be wondering “what? How can it be more complicated?”

Well, it’s kinda like this. Imagine coming out as gay and everyone laughing at you and telling you you were nuts because you are the straightest person in the world. And then they cite all the women or men you’ve been attracted to, all the incredibly heterosexual aspects of your life, and tell you no one will ever believe you are gay, and you’ll never get a date because you just don’t look gay enough or act gay enough or, well, *are* gay enough.

That’s what coming out as a transsexual is like. Those first few days, those heady moments when you are ready to explode because you’ve felt freedom in your veins and you can cast off that “lie”, all too often for trans folk they are met with scorn and disbelief (except by those who actually believe you, they often react with disgust and abhorrence). It’s “funny”. It’s “not possible”.

If you are lucky, you find a few people who aren’t that way — and each year, it does indeed get easier and easier, because so many have gone before us now, and there is talk of us in the news that isn’t wholly nasty. Sometimes they are and stay your good friends, as an Amy found out when she transitioned in Los Angeles, according to a recent Glamour magazine article.

Then again, Amy had come out gay before, and only realized later that she wasn’t actually gay.
Narratives

For many of those similar in what we trans folk call “narrative” to me, we knew it at a very young age, but we were kids and we were told that as kids we didn’t know very well, our elders knew better, and we longed for our parents approval and they usually expressed disapproval if we “misbehaved” or “acted out” or were “bad”, or else they worried about us and took us to doctors and had tests done and made sure we had appropriate role models (ostensibly lest we turn out gay, which, for them, meant not masculine or feminine enough).

So we walled it off inside us, kept it as a secret from the world, and did the best we could to “get over it” and be “real”, or “be normal”.

From testosterone injections that would be considered malpractice today to forced participation in activities deemed masculine to protein powders and exercise regimens (I was expected to pass the Presidential physical fitness tests of the day), my childhood — which I will note was a good childhood, a fairly happy one once I surrendered and did the easy thing and buried my inner self — was a litany of activities intended to make me a man one day.

I took risks people called stupid. Put myself in danger. And, as I’ve noted, I had one hell of a violent and sometimes uncontrolled temper. It took less than a year at the various schools I attended for bullies to learn you simply did not bully me. I was meaner, crueler, harsher, nastier, and far more dangerous than any ten of them put together.

Something like what Juin and Constance went through would have, for me, just been an excuse to push harder. Against authority, against establishment, against the way things are. Because that’s what my childhood experiences taught me. Those aspects are still with me today, as many have likely seen.

I was 41 years old before I started to come out. I almost did in my 20s, but gave up instead.

My “narrative” is different than many. I didn’t crossdress as an adult. I didn’t have urges. I wasn’t gay, so I didn’t go into that area. I had a succession of girlfriends from the age of 12 or 13 on. I was chaste until I was 18, and I have a great losing your virginity story that I get a kick out of. I also made up for lost time after that. I never talked about it, I never revealed it, and I only permitted it to come out twice each day, with the first thought, unspoken, of each morning and the last thought, unspoken, each night.

You might wonder what that has to do with coming out. Well, it’s foundational stuff.
Coming Out As Trans

When I came out, I said the words aloud to myself. That was it. That was all I needed to come out, to be out. I told others, and the reaction was of the sort I described above. My wife told me I couldn’t possibly be such — I was the most macho man she knew — even more so than her father. One friend at the time, who was gay, told me I was cutting the most important thing off. Most other people just looked at me as if I was nuts, or smiled and nodded and figured I’d get through whatever weird phase it was soon enough.

So while I’d come out to myself, I hadn’t come out to the world. I could have jumped up and down and screamed and no one would have taken it seriously. I could have written a press release, gone on national TV, and the effect would still have been the same.

And it really is that way until that day that people see you dressed right. Until you “look like a transsexual”. Awkward, self conscious, kinda dazed, scared, hopeful, panicked.

That’s coming out for a transsexual. For some, it means months of effort, and lots of money. For others, it means hormones and surgeries and laser or electrolysis — all of it to get to a point where you can have “that first time out”.

For trans people, coming out means going out. It means being seen, facing the world, challenging everything that everyone knows and thinks.

It also means danger.

When you are coming out, your head is filled with horror stories. You see drag queens and you weep because you do not want to be seen as a man in a dress, as a man pretending to be a woman or some butch lesbian or adult tomboy, laughed at when you try to hang with the guys. You worry about the self destructive ideal of “passing” because you know that if you “pass” then you will not be at risk, you might be less likely to end up headless or your skull bashed in.

You internalize shame and guilt when you come out as trans. It colors your perceptions. It affects your ability to make decisions about spouses, children, parents, siblings, family, friends.

Think about that for a few moments, please. Coming out, the process, suddenly places you into a situation where you internalize shame and guilt — the very things you are seeking to get away from by, well, coming out.

So can that, really, be called “coming out” for trans folk — for transsexuals?

I honestly question that.

There are social skills and quirks that need to be learned, confidence that needs be built up, a sense of self that needs to be found again — and that one is ever so hard, because when you change your sex, you change the things people look at you to see. It is not easy, not pleasant.
The Tunnel and the Train

I’ve used the metaphor of the long tunnel before. I know it is used often in a lot of things. There is a great deal of literary history to the tunnel and it’s actually more than a little mythic, as it symbolizes a journey to the underworld — or, for the less prosaic, it’s kinda like dying. and in this case, there’s a realness to that idea.

You start out and the entrance is still brightly lit, and you’ve been told there’s an exit but you can’t see it for the bend that’s many long feet up ahead. As you go further in, the fear begins to mount, the risks become greater, you realize that those really are train tracks at your feet. So long as you can still see the light behind you, it’s “ok”. You can always turn back, always run back and hope that things will be the same, even though they really aren’t. But then you hit that point where you cannot see the way back, and you still can’t see the way forward, and it’s so dark you can’t see your nose cross-eyed.

When I use that metaphor, I point out that at some point, you will see a light. And you will hear a noise. And you will realize a train is indeed coming. And for Trans people, you gotta let hit you, I say.

Sometimes you don’t have to hit a train. Sometimes you can just go right on through. Some people go in brave and get scared, others start scared and stay that way, still others go in scared and come out brave and there’s all sorts of different ways to be in there, and the only thing that many of us can do is hold out our hands and hope that someone is there to walk with us, to hold our hand, because it is always easier to travel that path with another, and always harder to do it alone.

And then comes the day when you see the light at the end of that tunnel, and you see the way out.

And as you finally step into the light after so long in the dark, you can feel many things. For me, it was relief and joy and wonder and exultation.

But I’m going to take note of something.

Coming out for trans people is when you step out of that long dark tunnel.
After The Tunnel

It’s long after you’ve come out to yourself. It’s after you’ve hopped through the hoops that circumstance and medicine have placed before you, after the hormones and the money spent on clothes and the painful process of electrolysis (which some people say is what proves one is a transsexual, because that stuff can hurt like hell) and all the rest.

That’s when you come out. That’s when you reach the point that you can shed the internalized guilt and shame and sadness and privilege and prejudice.

That’s when coming out is for trans people — when they’ve reached that point where they are seen as who they are, not merely what they are. That’s when people say “Oh, that’s cool.” Or “Wow, you sure look good!” or other such idiocies that still make you feel really damn good for a while but eventually do get on your nerves as you start to see them for what they are.

But it’s not over yet.
After The Tunnel: Smudges

And once in a while, a few of us who have made that journey, we pause at the exit, and we look back, and we remember that horrible tunnel. And we know there are people still in it. Sometimes, like a panicked person who is drowning, there is a risk of being stuck in there again yourself, held back by their fear, their shame, their darkness.

Most of the time you help them out of that tunnel, holding their hand after you find it when they hold theirs out. And then, once out, they wander off into the world, and you never quite know if they are doing well or what happens to them — because you’ve walked back into that tunnel already to help another one.

Until you reach a point where you just can’t help anymore and you take that walk into the world.

And so you leave that tunnel’s mouth and you follow the road and you head around a bend and you are free of it. And there are people there, and you have a little soot from the tunnel on you, and you have a choice to make.

You can wipe that soot — that black mark, that stain, that stigma — off of you and just “blend in”, and talk about how you’ve no idea about what the tunnel is, and you can be just like them, just like everyone else, and not like those freaks in the tunnel.

Or you can keep the smudge, the stain, the black mark, and mingle.

Among transsexuals, that is a question that many ask themselves — do I hold onto that stain and be marked, or do I wipe it away? It helps if you look a lot like those people, and sometimes it doesn’t matter — no matter how much you wipe the stain off, people still choose to see it because you don’t look enough like everyone else.

Coming out is good for everyone. That wiping off is what we call stealth or blending in or woodworking or any of a dozen other terms borne up through the years.

It is very good for the person. Doing it reduces your risk of harm to yourself. Doing it means people don’t add more ill will, it makes th8ngs easier, it simplifies things. You become invisible, unseen, ordinary.

And there are some for whom that shame never really goes away, and they cling to that ideal the whole trip and the whole journey and they come out that’s what they do, joining the others they want to be like so much and saying bad stuff about those who still have that mark, who refuse to wash it off.

But that’s bad for the rest of them, that invisibility — it is something that one does for one’s self, not for the community.

So when you talk about coming out, remember to talk about staying out. Remember that for trans people it is not an easy thing, and it is painful and not something they can do without the help of others — therapists, surgeons, drugs and it takes a long time.

From the day I came out to myself, it took me two and half years to come out.

And after all of that, coming out as bisexual was about as hard as writing the words and saying them.

see: http://www.bilerico.com/2010/04/coming_out_trans.php

this trans thing sure is complex, isn’t it? who would choose it?

[Anonymous]

Hi Virginia, thank you for posting these two blogs. While the second one has a few “grey areas” in regard to my life, basically I honestly could have written both. The parallels to my life in them are phenomenal, nothing else to say apart from that. From the experiences that I’ve had, been told about and seen, I can believe what the writers are saying, totally.

Brilliant reading,
Peta A.

[Anonymous]

Hey,
I dont normally post on this forum, i like to sit back and read what others have to say. Especially because im early into this journey. However, i can really relate to everything on this thread and i couldnt resist saying something.

Im 24 and identify as trans (gendered/sexual? im just me really!!) ive gone through the stages of dressing in the closet, ive seen myself as a fetishist, CD, TV, – for me its more than that now, i just want to be me. And most importantly be free to express ME, out of that closet.

For me the shame of being “in the closet” was/is huge. For me coming out has brought a whole new package of shame, in a different way. I think shame is a very important thing here, i think every trans person can relate to shame. (?)

I have recently come out as trans to a couple of important people in my life. i can really relate to the journey along that track, i think im in the dark, looking for the light. Having come out, partially and now starting HRT, i cant really see my way out of the tunnel, i cant really see ahead either, im pretty sure i want to go ahead and find that light.

The way i see coming out for trans people is as a long process as has been said. What i thought when reading the first post was that while fear and courage played a big part for me, shame was even bigger, and even bigger still – internalized shame. I dont really fear coming out as i did before, i feel shame though of being me. At this point, without makeup, i still look largely male – stubble, shortish hair, muscle etc. So i may be out to a certain extent, but for me to wear female clothes i feel that i will be seen as a guy in girls clothes. Im fine with saying who/what i am, but being who i am is harder. – shame.

Shame for me is huge, walking forward i can hold fears hand, courage i can have it on a good day, but shame holds me back – its that thing that stares at me in the mirror every morning when i see someone that doesnt look the way i feel, it looks back at me and says “your wrong”.

Coming out is a process and a long one, for me its slow and steady. But on this journey i cant forget my good old friend – SHAME.

Thanx
Jodi

[Anonymous]

OMG … this is a hot topic for me right now.

HARVEY MILK, CLOSETS, FEAR AND TRANSGENDERED RIGHTS

By: Melissa Marie Alexander

This seems to press hard for post op girl to stick around for ever and a day flighing the TG flag.

I have been fighting for the respect of TG people in the commumity for a long time. I came out in a small town, educated an even smaller town west of me. I have taken all the crap that they wanted to throw at me and now I have a lot of respect from everyone I know in both of these places.

I have gone from going out for the first time, to fulltime time, to now post op. I have helped a lot of other girls get started and have seen all of them make it to where they can stand on they own feet and now have other girl that they are helping too.

I am now wornout, tired, and I think it is time for me to take my prize to start to live a normal life. I will never lie about my past, but I am dammed if I am going to carry around a big flag yelling to the world of my past. I think I have earnt the right to become just a normal girl in the world. I have helped clear the path for others, I have helped make this world a better place for us all wanting to move forward. All post girls that are in my position are just the same.

I will always remain changing peoples ideas to what TG people are all about, cutting down the labels and showing people that we are just normal people, not some sort of freak that needs to be left in the corner, but I can not do this by being an activest, I can do this by becomming a normal girl in our world.

I do want to hide my past to a degree, enough that they get to know me as a normal girl, before they take the image of that dirty mag or tranny on the corner in their minds. I need them to see that we are just normal people, that have normal lives, and that we are not some sex adict that should be kept away from children. I have been told that I should not use the female toilets as it has effended some granddad whom has never met me, as he did not want me to pee in the same loo as his grandkids. This is what I have to fight everyday, this is why I get tired and wornout when I have to fight for my rights just to exist on a day to day basis.

So in reply of course I want to hide from the world as TG, I want to lose my past, for me I have fought the battles, I have changed the minds of people and made it safer for those that follow me. I will not lie about who I am, I just dont want to yell it out anymore, and just live my life without the day to day fight.

After The Tunnel

I will always carry around the soot of the tunnel, but my biggest scar is my past before entering the tunnel, and this will be the things that I may never get over, the soot will remain on me for ever, and I can only hope that in the future I will still be the only one to see it. I can only hope the world will not see that and just see me for who I am.

xxx

Kelly Jones

[Anonymous]

Kelly, I don’t think that you have to justify your feelings that you need to live a ” normal” life, it sounds like you have done the best by other folk in the past and being a public person is tiring.
I don’t think anyone should feel pressured into being a representative for the Trans Community, people need to represent themselves. Let them wave their own flags. That said, I think it is good to help other people when one can but it does no good for people if they are sheltered from reality by others, we all need to toughen up and be strong for ourselves IMO.

Jodi, I was saddened to hear that you feel such shame about being like you are. It is something that we have to go through but as you get older , it may become less acute in your life. I think that it is important to seek help from a professional counsellor if it is that bad for you , positive self talk is a must if you want to live a happy life IMO.
So often the self talk we have is the voice of a significant other in our lives, a parent or friend , for me it was a long journey before I could say to myself that I was an OK person and I cannot say that I now don’t care what other people think about me but not enough to stop me doing what I want to do.
Stand tall and learn to love yourself…..its the Greatest Love of All!!!
Hey, not a bad subject for a song, I’ll have to work on that!

[Anonymous]

Dear Virginia

I stare at the screen, which I have read two, three or more times, tears , tears .. What a profound post. I readily empathise with this post, it so, well, beautiful.

Thank you for posting

Ann_K6

Virginian

Quote:

ironically, i came across another blog which suggests that the degree to which we *come out* is as individual as we all are:

And once in a while, a few of us who have made that journey, we pause at the exit, and we look back, and we remember that horrible tunnel. And we know there are people still in it. Sometimes, like a panicked person who is drowning, there is a risk of being stuck in there again yourself, held back by their fear, their shame, their darkness.

[Anonymous]

hi ann

i’m glad you found the blogs interesting. i certainly found them thought provoking.

as for reading them multiple times, i don’t know about you, but my middle aged eyes must be failing or that, combined with the small font on tranny radio makes these posts pretty difficult reading! so congratulations for perseverance.

and i tell you, on the iphone it’s even more miniscule!

hang in there. be yourself. kia kaha – that’s a maori saying from new zealand – be strong. don’t know if there is any maori equivalent, but whatever it is, be happy. we live blessed lives. try being transgender in iraq …

[Anonymous]

I find myself in a similar position to Kelly. I don’t hide my past. I don’t advertise my past either nor do I let it define me. I think I am in another transitional phase from post op trans to female. Yes the soot sticks in that you will always have a past no genetic woman could relate to but in the present and the future you live your life in a way that all genetic women will instantly relate. It’s sort of time to release the past so I can live my life fully in the now and that means dropping the trans label. Is it living in stealth? I don’t think so. It’s just living your life as you are. I think the older ‘past invented life’ that trans women were encouraged to adopt to erase the past has itself past it’s ‘use by date’. It’s living another lie. Just accepting the present and not living in the past is however an entirely different thing.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I find myself in a similar position to Kelly. I don’t hide my past.

Same here..

Quote:

I don’t advertise my past either nor do I let it define me. I think I am in another transitional phase from post op trans to female. Yes the soot sticks in that you will always have a past no genetic woman could relate to but in the present and the future you live your life in a way that all genetic women will instantly relate. It’s sort of time to release the past so I can live my life fully in the now and that means dropping the trans label. Is it living in stealth? I don’t think so. It’s just living your life as you are.

I couldn’t agree more… From my blog (written on 11 March this year)

Quote:

I know a lot of transgender people of which there are only a few transsexuals in the bunch, and most of the transgender people I know are cross dressers of which some are extremely good at ‘passing’. It is, however, a common theme when talking to them about how they went out last weekend shopping “en femme” and how they “passed”. Similarly how they went on holiday without any male clothes and spent the entire week as ’stealth’. One has to wonder what the end game is? To impersonate a member of the opposite sex so well that people cannot tell? It seems so… but where does that lead…?

Well personally from a personal point of view, I don’t think I “pass” I think people see me as a person born a man, they see I have boobs, and they don’t know much more. I am, however, a woman inside, and I am that same woman every day and every night. I get on with life being the person I am. I don’t plaster makeup on, I hardly even use eye liner and lipstick any more. Makeup can be a chore and is a chore when you have to do it just to step outside, in a similar fashion as having to wear a bra every day etc. That said, the need to wear makeup occasionally and a bra every day comes with the territory, I accepted and chose to need to wear a bra for the rest of my life when I decided to start hormones.
Now on to me….

Today I realiased something.. I had an epiphany you might say…

I had to have a medial exam for life insurance and I sat talking to the female doctor and she was asking all the usual questions then got on to the question, “are you taking medication currently, if so for what and for how long etc..” I replied, and after saying the first drug (a hormone in a high dose) she looked at me and said, “Why? You are born female, right?” and it occurred to me that even though I have a cold and even though I cannot “pitch” my voice much this doctor had no idea I was transgender. I told her, and the ensuing conversation she told me that she has a cousin who is like me and is actually a pre-op transgender person on hormones….

This has to be the ultimate compliment to anyone who wants to be ‘passable’ or ’stealth’ but to me it was surprise. Surprise that she didn’t know that I was transgender, that she didn’t recognise the giveaways, and surprise that she didn’t know even with a member of the family being transgendered but that was it, just surprise.

A little later, on the way back from hospital it occurred to me that before I met my Ex all I wanted to be was the woman I really am. All I want to be now is that same woman. Likewise, I wanted and still want to live my life as a woman and I’m not worried and was not worried about what people think or thought of me. During the 9 months with my ex though I wanted to be ‘passable’ (or ’stealth’) and this was something that I didn’t “want” before or after so I have to conclude the desire to be ‘passable’ must have come from that relationship, it must have been a result of being with or in proximity to that person.

Where does that leave me… Well mildly confused… Was I so easily led (or manipulated) into thinking I needed to be “passable” or was it just a phase I went through.

I think, for me, that says it all.

Take care,

Shells

[Anonymous]

I suppose what we all really crave for is being recognised as human beings first and not labelled.. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if every day life was filled with people that were more acceptant of those who struggle to be themselves.. Strange how we admire those with physical disabilites that strive to break records and say that life is only as hard as you make it.. Where upon there are those that just see differences beyond themselves and cannot come to accept diversity..
Yes it was a great film.. I’ve viewed it more than once.. But I still can’t get over the fact that there will always be bigotted people with narrow views.. In the long run you can only ask those to accept you but can never make them understand who we are.[img][/img]

[Anonymous]

Stealth – hmm. Is there such a thing? Or is it an illusion we trick ourselves with?

I decided early into my transition that I would never be totally passable (yes, there is that awful word again) and, that, combined with the necessity to continue my employment for peace of mind as well as financial reasons (no Lotto win for me I’m afraid) would transition with the full knowledge of my co-workers, customers and family and friends.

There have been many occassions when I have been looked at quizzically but not pushed for the reasons for these looks. I generally meet these with friendly banter and just carry on like nothing has happened. Other times, my co-workers who knew me well prior to the change, accidentally refer to me as him or he. Sometimes, the slips on the pro-nouns and the looks get to me and I wish I was stealth and just another one of the girls. But the price for this wish is far too high for me.

So, for most of the time I can accept my old self. I still have photo’s around the house of fond memories I have and people I have known. My family and friends run the whole gammut from very supportive to totally ignoring me now. I know, given time, there will be less and less of “him” as more and more “she” is living her life. I have new friends as well who never knew “him” and I never get the faux par from them.

The price of stealth is very high. It’s not easy to start from afresh completely. But, it does take a lot of patience and a thick skin to knowingly transition in a very public way. The other advantage to others is that the more girls who knowingly and publicly transition, the more ambassadors we have for people to find out and understand our condition. This has the effect of reducing the bigottry against us and we become just a little less invisible. And if anyone is burying these urges themselves, they can realise that they are not alone in their dilemma.

[Anonymous]

Hi , Portia.

For this kid it was never going to happen & really did i wont it to . no . & as others get to know who i am they understand why
being a androgynous woman with that male back ground .
Now my women friends & i have over 20 & others with in groups just accept me as a woman . its just not a big deal iv been with them now for 3 years & others who iknow me some 50 years so i meet 1000s of people & over the last 3 to 4 years has been great,
Iv allso done & do things differently than many trans people so that is a reason im accepted different for every one.

…noeleena…

[Anonymous]

Very often i read posts on TR and begin to reply, and then i feel like i don’t have the right, or i should keep my opinions to myself, or i should just not care enough to reply.
So I’ve begun a couple of replys to this thread and then abandoned them.

Very briefly:
I don’t want to be out to everyone.
I’m not an island either.

I’m not ashamed of who and what i am.
But I want to protect myself as well.

Theres good reasons to not be out. At the same time being out could be a relief.

Not being out isn’t the same thing as being in the closet.
No one could black mail me with outting me.
I have way more guts than that.

Claire

[Anonymous]

The thing about having stealth is great if everything in the process of transition was simple for everyone who did this change in life, whether it be M2F or F2M. Not everyone has the same set of circumstances though and that’s where things get interesting.

If you have all of the money (and more) that you will ever need and can just fill all of the requirements a.s.a.p. and change you birth certificate and live happily ever after then total stealth will work for you as long as you have the looks. I for one don’t have that financial blessing so I have to strike a balance I guess while I transition and after as well. At the moment I have a good well paying job and I wish to keep it because I also have a dream of owning my house. To keep this job as well as transition there would not give me stealth because everyone who works there would know my story, not as in why but the fact that I did transition. As a result I’ve worked out (just as much as a lot of you here have) a balance of life that suits me and my situation. At the time of writing, I’m one week out from my name change interview so there will be no stealth for me at all.

In time to come I feel that things will get easier but I will be always in peoples’ minds as someone who transitioned there. I don’t know what the future will bring but at the moment I’ve made a good bed to lie in and I’m happy. If in time I come to change employers then yes I’ll get a job as plain straight “Peta”, nothing more and nothing less. As for living in general society, that is a different thing altogether. I’ve been living female life now for so long that I can’t even remember when I went fulltime (it’s in a blog somewhere!) and even not having a legal female name hasn’t been an issue. To go further with this, even if you change your name and present as a person of the opposite gender you still don’t have stealth because anything that has a requirement to know your sex uncovers that simple fact so once again there’s that situation. Once again for me, I don’t know how long it will take me to raise funds for SRS. or if legislation changes to my benefit so it’s a choice that I have to make and thus deal with any challenges as they arise.

Having stealth is not easy and quick to come by as you can see so if you really, really want it then save your pennies and get it and in the meantime be plain straight mindful of who you are until you get to the position of being “stealthy”.

Peta A.

And Claire, you are allowed to have an opinion here (and on any other topic) and if you want to make a reply then we are all quite open to hearing it too, me especially.