A Stealth Life
The View from the Passing Lane

For many transsexuals, especially those in the earlier stages of their transition, the goal of a gender transition isn't just to transition.  Our dream is to fade seamlessly into the fabric of society as a member of our authentic gender.  It's to be totally and completely accepted as what we appear to be, with no hint of our unique pedigree.  It's to leave behind all of the stigma and the crap associated with being transsexual.   The term we use for people who are able to do this, to live this way - totally off the radar - is stealth.

This is a tall order.  In fact, for a significant number of our transsexual brothers and sisters, it's an impossibility.  There always seems to be something in the way.  Our physical stature won't let it happen, or our voice gives us away, or we can't seem to walk or move right.  The percentage of transsexuals who actually transition to the point of living full-time in a gender different than the one they were assigned at birth is small.  The percentage who could actually live stealth is absolutely miniscule.

Many of us spend thousands and thousands of dollars to be able to do this.  We can visit surgeons to feminize our face, our throat, or any number of other body parts.  We can meet with speech pathologists to speak and communicate more effectively in our authentic gender.  We can work with any number of image consultants, wardrobe consultants, comportment consultants....all in an attempt to make up for all those missed years of socialization while at the same time overcoming a lifetime of training in a gender we're trying to escape.  But in the end, no amount of money, surgery, or training can help many of us pass totally and completely.  That's just the way it is.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, "passing" is the ability to pass successfully as one gender or the other.  Frankly, I have a problem with that particular term as it implies that we're trying to pretend to be something we're not; that we're fooling someone.  I could just as easily say that I passed as a guy for nearly 40 years when in fact I was merely a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Instead of "pass,", I far prefer the term "blend", but who am I to begin my own vernacular?  So, for the sake of being understood, I'll begrudgingly use pass in this essay.

It's important to point out that. for male-to-female transsexuals, being able to pass is not necessarily the same as being pretty.  At my first support group meeting I met some people who were as plain as plain could be....you'd never call them pretty and they didn't even try...and that really surprised me.  But also, you'd never for a moment stop and think that they were anything but what they appeared to be, either, which was unremarkable, typical women you'd see while shopping at Wal-Mart or Target or something.  They didn't try to be glamorous.  They didn't aspire to some stereotypical vision of femininity.  They didn't put on airs of being foo-foo.  Heck, they didn't even wear makeup from what I could see.  They just wanted to be themselves.  And they did a wonderful job.  They passed without question.

I have a dear friend who once said that anyone who doesn't pass simply hasn't had enough surgery yet.  Although such simple thinking is obviously wrong and terribly misguided, I think it represents something that's rarely discussed in our community.  There seems to be some unseen hierarchy that the more passable you are, the more real you are as a transsexual and a person.  This, too, is misguided, and will be the topic of some future essay.  Suffice to say that I do not consider the two to be connected in the least. 

As with most things, passing cannot be measured by absolutes.  It's difficult to say someone passes all the time, or never.  It rarely works that way.  Many of us can pass 50% of the time.  Although we're terrified of being identified at first, we slowly realize that many people really aren't all that aware.  They go through their lives and accept what they see at face value.  Certainly, if there's something so obvious that it can't help but draw their attention they'll notice, but by and large they really don't process the world they encounter on a day to day basis very deeply.  Most people can pass with these people at least half of the time.

The more time you spend with someone, the harder it is to pass all of the time.  It gives others time to scrutinize you more, noticing things that they wouldn't see if they simply passed you in a hallway or driving in a car in another lane.  They'll notice that you have remarkably big hands, or that your voice sometimes sounds funny, or that you make an awfully deep noise when you sneeze, or that you haven't really finished electrolysis yet.  

And even though some of us can generally pass when someone is looking at us and has some visual cues to work from,  some of us invariably get "sir'd" on the phone or in the fast food drive-thru.

Totally and completely passing all the time is very, very difficult.  But, do any of us hope for anything less?  Can we really share with anyone who's not transgendered just how deflating and devastating a misplaced "sir" or a silly snicker can be when we're at our most vulnerable?  We can be in a supermarket and hear people laughing two or three aisles away and we're convinced they're laughing at us.  Maybe they are.  Maybe they don't have a clue that we're even in the store.  When we're hypersensitive like that everything seems aimed at us, even when it's not.  For anyone who's ever been there, it's a very unpleasant time.  Imagine being stuck there....

In other essays I've written that one of the main realities of a transition is to become satisfied with "good enough".  Sometimes in life, we have to.  We're forced to accept that we may never going achieve this seeming nirvana of a stealth life.  Realizing that, one of the real decisions we need to make for ourselves is which is worse....to feel trapped in a gender-bound world of expectations and obligations that we know is a lie, or to exist in society as something less than what we want to be?  Unfortunately, sometimes neither answer is satisfactory and terrible, tragic things can happen.

I think the most significant change in me during the early stages of my transition was growing comfortable with the fact that others might know about my situation just by looking at me.  There was a time when the mere thought of being pegged scared the living bejeezes out of me.  I couldn't imagine a life like that.  I remember traumatic moments dealing with paralyzing fear, trying to find the courage to get out of the car to do something as simple as stroll through the mall and eventually driving home in tears, a failure.  It was horrible.

But as time went on, I became less and less sensitive to how others might be perceiving me.  I never considered the fact that someone might realize what was happening to be any failure on my part.  It wasn't my fault.  It wasn't that I wasn't doing something well enough.  It's just that I was too early in the process for it to be otherwise.

In fact, it got to a point where passing really wasn't all that important. I'd show up at work or at my nail salon, my face like hamburger, all puffy and red and swollen after three or more hours of early morning electrolysis.  Or, I'd be out in public with makeup and a dress, but with whiskers growing out so they'd be long enough for my electrologist to pull out the next day.  It's not that I grew unaware that others might be staring.  It's that I really chose to tune that out, like someone with their eyes closed tight and their fingers in their ears, saying, "La, la, la, la" to block out any knowledge of what was happening outside of my body. 

That growing sense of comfort, that expanding level of self-acceptance, was the single-most significant development in me in those early days.  I won't say that you need to grow some pretty thick skin (although I think those who remain overly sensitive are in for a difficult go of it), because that's not it.  You need to begin to worry less about what others might be thinking of you, and concentrating more on how you're feeling about yourself.  And believe me....you will.  Or, you'll turn back.

Before going any further I want to be clear that I don't really care whether someone chooses to live a stealth life, or not.  If you can do it, and you want to do it, there's nothing stopping you except you. You've earned it.  Know that you've achieved something that most of us can only dream about.  That's a personal decision the nobody has the right to judge, or to second-guess.  That being said, though, there's no dishonor in NOT living stealth, either.  Whether you choose not to for any number of reasons, or whether you couldn't even if you wanted to, that's not failure.  My goal here, in saying what I say, is to provide some perspectives that you may not have considered before.  That's it.  So, before anyone gets their panties all bunched up...take it for what it's worth.

In October of 2002 I attended the Southern Comfort Conference in Atlanta.  I sat in on a panel discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of passing.  As the group discussed the benefits of being able to pass, all the typical reasons you'd expect came up: being accepted, not having to explain, no harassment, improved self-confidence, better quality of life, stability, etc.  Everyone sat around and nodded knowingly.  And when the moderator asked about drawbacks of passing, someone joked, "You've got to be kidding.  What could be a drawback of passing?"

Of course, there's nothing wrong with passing.  To be perfectly blunt, I can't imagine life any other way.  But the problem I see is when passing becomes an overriding consideration, when passing becomes so important in life that it begins to dictate how you are.  There's a huge difference in passing so you can live, and living so you can pass.  

The transition process is a very freeing experience.  It frees you form a lifetime of expectations and obligations associated with a role that no longer applies.  It provides an opportunity to unload a lifetime of emotional baggage that has built up in the background, suppressed and repressed over years of frustration and denial.  It allows a brand new, totally clean slate for self-definition...from what you want to be called (your name), to how you want to look, to the things you want to do...it's an incredibly freeing and empowering process if you approach it with the right frame of mind.

In one of my other essays I talk about a vision that my dad shared with me when I was young.  He explained that each of us is born into this world with infinite possibilities; that our potential is limited only by the physical boundaries we inherit simply by being human.  We can speak any and all languages.  We can learn any culture.  We can do and be almost anything.  However, from shortly after we're born our lifetime is spent in a continual process of narrowing our potential.  The moment the doctor declares that we're a boy or a girl, our initially unlimited potential is immediately significantly narrowed.  As we learn a culture, and a language, and the realities of our socioeconomic world, that potential is narrowed further and further.  

By the time we're adults our once unlimited potential has become a mere sliver of it's original promise.  Often this is through no fault of our own, but sometimes we unknowingly do it to ourselves.  Either way, it is what it is, and we generally accept it at face value.

Oddly enough, transitioning across genders is like being born again.  Many of those doors that had closed, limiting our potential or our ability, are suddenly there for us to open again.  We're able to redefine ourselves in a way that very few others can even imagine, and this redefinition is as much an expression of our freedom to be ourselves as anything.  It's actually an incredibly unburdening experience.

For those whose potential was limited by forces outside ourselves, there is nobody to blame.  But for those who limit their own potential of their own free will, you have nobody to blame but yourself.  I find that those so concerned with passing, with living a stealth life, must necessarily conform to some vision of a man or a woman that society can accept.  They must be a certain way to avoid detection, to avoid providing any clues about their past.  There can be quite a bit of pressure in that; quite a bit of fear.

I'll be honest.  My goal throughout the early stages of my transition and even through SRS was to live a stealth life, and I could have done that if I wanted.  I'd worked hard to achieve that, harder than most people can imagine, thinking that that's the kind of life I wanted to live.  It looked perfect.  I couldn't see any flaws...any reasons NOT to do it.  And in the end, it was right there...ready for me to grab...ready for me to do if I wanted.

Shortly after SRS, I moved to a brand new city where nobody knew me.  I was accepted totally and completely as Donna.  I didn't have to deal with pronoun issues, or bathroom issues, or transsexual issues....because nobody knew I was transsexual.  I bought a house in a nice neighborhood where I was Donna, the divorced lady with the dog who liked to work out in the yard.  I started my new career here, and found myself totally and unquestioningly accepted throughout middle and upper management.  It seemed like nirvana.

I thought I had planned it all so well, and at the beginning I promised myself that I wouldn't tell anyone here.  I wouldn't expose my past to my newfound friends, neighbors and co-workers for fear of poisoning the opportunity for Donna to have a quality life.  She deserved that.  She'd lived in exile for so long, that she deserved an opportunity to live free from stigma and prejudice.  

But as I embarked on my stealth life, I slowly found problems with the plan that I could not have anticipated when I started out.  I found that I couldn't share my past with anyone at a time when I desperately needed to share.  I found my ability to be intimate with even the most casual friends was stifled by my need to preserve the facade.  In a very real sense, I felt like part of the witness protection program....a person without a past.  And in doing so I realized, to my dismay, that I had simply traded one closet for another.  I'd gone from hiding the portion of my life that was Donna....to hiding the portion of my life that had been Dave.  It felt just as confining and stressful as before!

Now, if you plan to have no friends, that might be okay.  But I'm a social person so as I made friends and wanted to talk with them about what was happening in my life, to confide in them as a gesture of intimacy and trust, I felt bound by the promise I had made to myself to keep my secret a secret.  I refused to follow in the footsteps of other friends who lived stealth who had fabricated whole entire unlived lives...their girlhoods, being in girl scouts, going to the prom, being a bride, having children...it was all there.  They could discuss it with such detail and conviction that nobody would have any hint that none of it ever really happened.  But one of my rules of life was to avoid lying, so I didn't.

In my book I write that I think women have a much deeper sense of honesty than men do (please forgive the generalization).  They consider honesty to include things that men don't.  For example, many men feel that by omitting something they're not lying or being untruthful, and I suppose technically that's true.  That's how I rationalized not telling my wife about my transgender feelings for all those years.  But women have a much deeper sense of honesty that includes being open.....expecting almost complete self-disclosure that far transcends simply telling the "truth".  This is a big deal.

I think part of the most difficult part of a transition isn't necessarily the physical part, it's the mental part.  Men are taught from earliest childhood to avoid allowing themselves to be vulnerable.  They build all kinds of defenses...physical defenses, mental defenses, emotional defenses....to prevent even the perception that they might be vulnerable.  Transsexuals often have the highest, thickest, toughest walls, built extra sturdy to prevent any detection of their secret selves.  And I think one of the least discussed and most difficult parts of this journey is to break down those walls....to allow ourselves to become vulnerable.  That's absolutely huge.  It has implications ranging from intimacy, to self-perception, to mental health....it's just enormous.  But, I didn't begin to learn that until I started to face it during my stealth life.

Why don't we want others to know?  It may seem like an obvious answer, but it's really not.  I assure you, if you're stealth for any period of time and finally come out to a friend they'll ask why you didn't tell them sooner.  They'll be hurt by feeling that you didn't trust them enough, or feel that they were close enough, to share.  It gives an impression that we're embarrassed to tell.  Or that we're ashamed, when in reality that's so far from true.  It's a real damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't kind of thing.  

Others often can't begin to realize how difficult it is to tell someone about ourselves.  It's a gesture of intimacy that needs to be treated with the greatest of care.  It needs to be appreciated for what it is....not analyzed for logic or reason.  Others can't share the fear we feel...our terrifying fear that things will change.  They haven't had to live through the rejection we have.  They haven't watched one dear friend after another slowly pull away out of discomfort or awkwardness, finally disappearing altogether.  One minute, we're dear trusted friends.  The next, we're different.  It can become awkward.  It can become difficult.  I've seen it.  I've felt it.  But to explain that we like someone too much to jeopardize the friendship by telling them is the same as not telling our husbands and wives because we don't want to face the possible consequences.  We're scared.  

The people we choose to tell handle this news in a variety of ways.  Sometimes, it does become awkward.  But sometimes, it makes the relationship even closer.  It's an added level of intimacy that is appreciated and accepted.  Sometimes, others (especially women) seem to feel a need to share something personal about themselves with us in return!  I once told one co-worker about myself, and she proceeded to tell me that her brother was a cross-dresser, that she was bisexual, that she was on all kinds of meds....I couldn't shut her up!  Oy.

Of course, one of the most difficult issues revolves around intimate relationships.  Some of us may find ourselves attracted to someone, who is attracted to us, and they don't know.  We may find this friendship we've started to build come to a precipice of becoming physical.  This can be a horrifically difficult place to be for those who see this relationship as having potential for anything more than short-term fun.  Take my word for it, the impact of rejection has ramifications far outside something a stranger or co-worker could do to us, especially if it happens over and over again; it can be devastating.  It often appears to be a lose/lose proposition.  We want to be open and honest with our intimates but at the same time that honesty could send them running for the door. 

The bedroom represents the pinnacle of passing.  If you think it's hard being stealth in the world on an ongoing basis, being stealth in bed opens a whole new can of worms.  It's where we can't hide anything.  How many people who have lived their lives as men know how to make love as a woman?  Kiss as a woman?  Touch as a woman? Approach sex with the same mindset as a woman does?   Although there are workshops on walking and talking in a female role, I don't know of anything that can help a transsexual learn to make love as a woman other than to do it. 

Let's talk about the flip side for a moment.  Know that there can be significant implications for not being able to pass that none of us want to face.  It often affects the comfort level that others feel when they're around you.  My son has told me flat out that if I stood out like a sore thumb he wouldn't be nearly so accepting of me...wouldn't be nearly so comfortable with me.  And while we might thing that's pretty shallow, it's really not.  People don't want to be put into the spotlight like that anymore than we do. 

The dynamics of passing are actually pretty interesting.  For example, friends and I have developed something we call the "T-squared rule"  It states that the chances for any individual to be identified as transsexual increases exponentially with the number of transsexuals in a group.  So, if you're choosing to be stealth, the take-away is that you probably don't want to be going out with too many transsexual friends as you'll end up guilty by association..

A derivative of that rule indicates that anyone in a group that has been identified as having more than one transsexual in it is automatically assumed to be transsexual (which is sometimes not-so-funny to genetic females who find a need to explain that they're real women).

So, anyway, here I was, living this wonderful stealth life, feeling like a total hypocrite.  One of the core rules in my life was to avoid letting fear direct my life, but I could find no other motives for living stealth than fear.  I felt this incredible sense of freedom that I had gained in my transition was slowly slipping away.  I felt this tremendous sense of pride in being who and what I am, and not being able to share it.  I felt this need to be open and honest, but stifled from being able to express it.  So, I did what I promised I wouldn't do.  I told someone.  I told Julia.

Julie worked with me, so by telling her I unleashed my secret into the workplace.  One minute I had a stealth life, and the next I had a co-worker looking at me with her jaw on the floor and saucer-sized eyes....hyperventilating.  But that one experience...the newfound sense of self-respect and the freedom that I found by telling Julia...changed the direction of my life.  It showed me that I didn't have to totally compromise myself by outing myself.  

To be stealth takes a specific and deliverate mindset.  You have to want it to happen.  You have to make it happen.  It takes planning. You have to maintain the stealth-ness on an ongoing basis.  Some may say that's as easy as living day to day, and it certainly may be, but the need to maintain that level of secrecy is always there, it's always a consideration.  

And, let's be very clear on this, especially for those living a stealth life.  Just because you haven't told anyone doesn't mean others don't know, or don't suspect.  That's the constant battle of the stealth life, right?  Who knows?  Who may have guessed?  We look for telltale signs to see if we've given ourselves away....shown a chink in our stealth armor.  So really, living stealth is a state of mind as much or more than a state of reality.  Sometimes you'll tell someone and they'll say they knew already....they were just waiting for you to tell them before bringing it up.  

One friend thought she was living stealth, and to be sure we're happy in our ignorance.  We feel we've pulled it off.  But there's a price.  That gnawing concern that others might know is always there.  One day a co-worker wished her a "Happy Father's Day" as he left the office for the weekend.  That simple gesture sent her into a tailspin.  Why would he say that?  He must know something!  If he knows, he's probably told others!  I'm not stealth anymore!!  I'm just fooling myself!  They're going to fire me!!  Oh my God!!!

All that....because some guy was being friendly enough to say something nice.....

For many years, until only relatively recently, there really weren't many transsexual "Success Stories".  There really weren't many successful transsexuals out there for others to learn from, to see that there really was some sense of hope for happiness after risking everything you've ever known and loved.  Part of the reason is because the internet wasn't there to provide the connection that we have today.  But perhaps an even larger reason is that these people were stealth.  They transitioned, and they hid. 

To be sure, there was (and in many cases today, continues to be) a good reason for hiding.  There was a very real fear for their own safety, even their own lives, if they were somehow discovered.  If we think the world is un-accepting today, you should have seen it ten, twenty, thirty years ago. That still exists in some places.  That fear for security (the second lowest level on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs), whether it be personal security or job security or relationship security, is real and justified. 

Oddly enough, I think another reason that people tend to become stealth is to distance themselves from the "community".  I think some of us exhibit a sense of trans-phobia, feeling that they're somehow "different" from everyone else and don't want to be associated with them (whoever them might be).  If you're active in the community for any length of time you'll know what I mean.  It's far more prevalent than most people might imagine. 

But more and more we're seeing people at higher and higher levels come out.  Doctors.  Surgeons.  Executives.  Engineers.  Entertainers.  People of tremendous intelligence and accomplishment are choosing not to be stealth when by all indications they could easily fade away.  They're allowing themselves to be found.  And in doing so, they're providing guidance and hope to an entire generation of little brothers and sisters.  They're busting all the common stereotypes and paradigms.  They're allowing themselves to be known as transsexuals, and they're sharing the pride they feel in their newfound sense of self. 

To be stealth takes a specific and deliverate mindset.  You have to want it to happen.  You have to make it happen.  You have to maintain the stealth-ness on an ongoing basis.  Some may say that's as easy as living day to day, and it certainly may be, but the need to maintain that level of secrecy is always there, it's always a consideration.  

Earlier in this essay I indicated that passing cannot be measured in absolutes.  However, stealth-ness is necessarily measured that way.  You either are, or you aren't.  There's no such thing as "partly-stealth"  or "mostly-stealth" in our vernacular. 

Paradoxically, I've learned to become stealth, and not, both at the same time.  I've learned that I can be stealth in some aspects of my life where I don't feel a need to explain myself or my past, while at the same time be "out" in other aspects.  I can maintain my link to a community that haI suppose that's the best of both worlds. And I really feel like I have that....

To stealth, or not to stealth?  That is the question.