Hiding Trans Sexuality Hurts Us All
We Create our own Unequal Employment Opportunities
We Enable Gossip, Denial
We May Enable Hate Crimes Against Ourselves
We Can’t Stand Up for Ourselves when Trouble Happens
We Begin to Seem Eccentric
We Can’t Unlearn We’re not Okay
And then We Wake up Years Later to Realize We Never Lived Our Own Life
Summary
This page is the result of my experience in the field since 1981, and 31 years with a focus on “stealth transsexualism,” people who try to live as if they were born the other sex. That is not possible to do as, barring some very strong intersex characteristics before, the presentation is generally lacking, people find out, etc., and the effort to downplay self causes more problems than it is seen to solve.
Hiding Trans Sexuality Hurts Us All
Trans people seek sexual “privacy” fearing prejudice; yet when society downplays our sexualities—acts like they’re offensive or says they shouldn’t be mentioned—that is transphobic, prevents full inclusion, alienates trans people, and can even cause hate crimes.
Some trans people may opt out of sexual disclosure or a more thorough integration in society, but if trans sexual natures are downplayed by society in general, others may not feel they can opt in.
We Create Our Own Unequal Employment Opportunities
If we don’t say it, we can’t show it, so we may refuse employment where it could be revealed—such as where locker rooms are involved as in sports, police, the fire department, military, or with costuming or uniforms, or other logistics… With the laudable public T cry for equality, denying sex issues is self-discrimination, self-oppression. Institutions and corporations who know we will respond with this distance, and who cooperate with downplaying trans person sexuality—claiming we ask for privacy on an individual basis—are colluding with a social denial that results in only partial integration, inequality. In short, society is glad to cooperate with demanded denial of T sex issues because it doesn’t want us close, anyway.
We Enable Gossip, Denial
After we become “ourselves”—we’re still and always human—we need love. But do we think the first love we find will be the One that lasts forever? Most relationships break up, trans people have a harder time finding love than most, and ex-loves tend to talk, usually to others, not to the T herself. This is very common. There is no such thing as a good secret. In addition, some people will perceive our sexual response or genitalia on their own. How can a person put down roots in her new life that way? How can she feel connected and valued? And where will she find love—live in this area, and date in another? And what if love is found? Marry then move, to be discovered again? I believe we cannot ask society for a binary acceptance when we intend to be non-binary, ask people to play along with what we hide. Such things are part of the “secret agent stuff” of stealth living, is self-defeating in the end.
We May Enable Hate Crimes Against Ourselves
From the view of someone into hate and violence, society’s exclusion of the issues can confirm the bias of prejudice, and people who are hiding something are easier prey. “Surprise violence” has happened with others: assault, battery, rape, or murder where someone is surprised by what he finds during sex, like unto Jennifer Laude or Dee Whigham and countless others. And the social stigma of gynandromorphophilia, of being pressured by condemning others not to be attracted to sex-and-gender non-binarism, can lead to violence, which may have played a part in the killing of Jerry paul Smith. The idea of being non-binary, or being trans something, must become “okay” in society, and that does not come with obfuscation or subterfuge.
We Can’t Stand Up for Ourselves when Trouble Happens
We can’t address something we hide, can’t say what it really was, and when hate crimes occur, we may feel we can’t even go to the police. I, too, have failed to go to the police when attacked, fearing revelation or bigotry. I wrongly refused to let my transsexuality be an issue in social interactions; I’m a poster child for mistakes in this area. A lot goes unreported, so there goes help we could have received, research, statistics on what we’re facing in the world. New transitioners can’t even know what they’re getting into thanks to money-focused leaders who hide these things, pander to propaganda to sell books and movies.
We Begin to Seem Eccentric
Think decades into what is hopefully a long future: Dealing with issues we don’t share—sexual assault for example—others don’t know why we avoid that person, that group, or seem fearful—and false or partial explanations make it worse because people think we’re crazy or they’re being gamed. This creates distance from others in our lives, loneliness, alienation. We can’t smile through decades of that; it eventually weighs on weary shoulders.
We Can’t Unlearn We’re Not Okay
Most of us learn growing up we’re not okay as trans. We fear rejection so we agree to hide aspects of ourselves to please prejudiced people, of all things. In the act of hiding, we are dumping on ourselves, agreeing we shouldn’t be known or that our sexual truth is wrong to mention—which adds more long-term weight to carry. We may even be unable to receive the support of someone who is accepting, who might tell us to our face that we’re okay as we really are—because we won’t let the topic be discussed. What are we saying to ourselves if we feel we must hide our genital state or our most basic sexuality as a male or female? When reality dawns how we dump on ourselves, that can be crushing.
And Then we Wake Up Years Later to Realize we never Lived Our Own Life
To be ourselves is vital to life. It’s so horrid to learn that out of fear we lived, instead, a reflection of someone else’s desire, pretended our sexuality—then we realize we can never recover those years. That large chunk of life is forever gone.
Summary
Life is hard enough for us trans people. Stealth mode living makes it even harder—either in general about being trans or in hiding the real nature of our sexuality. As law professor Kenji Yoshino says, we become the hidden assault on our own civil rights.
Doing this to ourselves, cooperating with people who don’t want us, we can spiral down into alienation, loneliness, depression, and even suicidality.
I ask reporters and leaders of trans phenomena, institutions, universities, and organizations, to stop playing down trans person sexuality, genitalia, sexual response as male or female, to help sell, instead, the idea that we’re okay as we actually are, that there’s no reason to hide, that we can be natural to ourselves and fully integrate as much as anyone else.