Stealth mode
Realising you’re trans is a lot like falling in love. No one can tell you you’re in love, you just know it, and once you know it you’re pretty helpless to stop it taking full control of your life. It will make it hard to eat and sleep, it will loom large in your mind at every moment, and the satisfaction of the need it represents is often tenuous, fleeting, and wonderful.
But being trans is also a sacrifice. To much of the world a trans person is unusual, exotic, sometimes even eroticised. And this is never more the case than in the rare experience of trans women who aren't intuitively read as trans.
When I transitioned I did so with full appreciation of the likelihood that my transness would remain visible no matter what I did. I took my first transition steps fully anticipating that my history would be apparent to all who beheld me. But I was willing, perfectly willing, to pursue my womanhood even if it would not be easily legible to the people I met in the street. The pursuit was beautiful in itself, and I knew my gender being hard to read would make space for those that came after, and so I could find meaning in my visibility.
But I found, fairly quickly, that the world began to read me consistently as a woman. And the more time passed, the easier it became. I stopped using makeup to hide features and started to use it as a form of self-expression. I became familiar with my new shape and instead of using necklines to hide the breadth of my shoulders, started exposing them because I liked them. I started choosing clothes that were my own style, that I liked, that fit with how I wanted to express myself. And the more comfortable I became, the less out of place I felt and the less out of place I looked. I became outwardly the woman I had always been inwardly, and I started to feel comfortable, even confident, moving through the world as myself.
But no matter how invisible I have become, being trans isn’t something I can ever truly cease to be. It remains a secret that, socially, feels somehow cataclysmic. Like I’m in deep cover. Like my very nature is clandestine. This is why we call the decision to live without telling anyone about your transition history, living ‘in stealth’.
I went out with a new friend this week. We were supposed to go for a quick coffee and we stayed for over three hours talking over teas and coffees and hot chocolates, laughing together, and becoming fast friends. I talked with waiters and cashiers and customers and of course my companion, and in each interaction I realised just how whole I have become. My voice is smooth and pitched into a comfortably femme register, and I’m confident in how I sound. I was wearing a smart black dress and converse, and had left the Rocinante (my wheelchair) at home. I’d put colour through my deep red hair and have conditioned it so much that it feels full and soft over my shoulders. It isn’t about being pretty, though beauty is a form of armour in the way that clothes and makeup will always be. The joy flows from being visibly, wholly myself.
We have become friends, my companion and I. And I have not told her that I’m trans.
Now of course my wonderful companion could at any moment Google me and such a search would instantly reveal that I had transitioned, but I’m hoping against hope that she doesn’t.
I know that how I grew to be the woman others see is a very different story to most of theirs. But with that remaining hidden, people treat me wholly as if I had always been this way. I wish so much that I had. With their interactions communicating this assumption that our experiences are more shared than they truly are, I feel the perfect, euphoric peace of being realized.
I feel the blissful anxiety of such a privileged position. I’m worried people could find out, and that the fragile peace I find in these moments might at once be shattered. I’ve no doubt my companion would treat me no differently if she knew, but I’d see her actions tainted by what she knows of me. I realise that it is my own poison I drink when my status is known. But I drink it all the same.
So what do I do, dear reader? Do I keep this secret safe? Can I? In a world where the internet knows I’m trans all it would take is a curious search and I’d be discovered. Or do I find some way to let her know, hoping all the while that how she sees me will not change, and that I can avoid misinterpreting her benign actions for pity, or hostility toward me for my nature.
I keep wondering whether there is some magic I have not yet mastered, one where I am confident that my transness does not undercut my femininity. But in this country courts and governments openly declare that our transness does indeed invalidate our womanhood. In this country physical intimacy without first declaring your trans status can be criminal. In this country being stealth is seen as an inherent safeguarding risk, a threat to sport fairness, an imposition on the rights of the people around us.
In this country, stealth isn’t just about feeling valid, it’s about feeling safe.
But to be fully stealth requires sacrificing everything I hold dear. It means a new job in a new city, with a new name, and worse it requires me pulling up the ladder behind me. Because if no one knows I am trans how can I make space for those who come after to follow in my wake.
So here I remain, both stealth and visible. Hidden in plain sight. And I make friends, and get close to people, and pay for coffee, and get cocktails, and laugh and hug and hope to all the fates that my nature remains secret from them for one more blissful day.
Just one more day.