A reader writes: “I’m a sixteen-year-old trans guy and I’ve been out to my immediate family for one year now. I’ve had many conversations with my mom about someday going stealth. She is extremely against it and says it’s deceitful – that it would be lying to people. She says I would be letting people believe I am something I’m not, a biological male, and that people should know the truth.
“I view my transsexualism as merely a medical condition. I’ve tried explaining this to her, but she’s standing firm with her ideas. How can I get my mom to accept me as a real man and get her to see that living stealth is not lying?”
Unfortunately, your mom is not alone in her belief that living “stealth” is living a lie. This is one reason why I don’t like the word – it indicates that you have a “secret.” Of course, everyone has at least one secret, and usually quite a few, and no one says they are living “stealth” because of those secrets.
But “stealth” is so embedded in the trans vernacular that it will probably never go away, and everyone in our community knows what it means, so we might as well use it to describe the situation that is, in reality, just living as who you are without announcing to the world that you’ve had some corrective medical intervention.
Most of my readers know that I favor being out, for a variety of reasons – the more people know us, the less they fear and hate us; the greater our visible numbers, the more likely we are to get equal rights and equal services; and we can go into politics (or any other line of work) without fear of an opponent digging up “dirt.”
On the other hand, I do not think that living stealth is living a lie. I don’t think it’s a betrayal, as some non-trans people – especially potential dates – like to claim. I don’t think it’s a deception in any sense of the word. And I think it’s up to each individual how he or she chooses to live his or her life.
“Biological man” can mean a lot of things. And I can guarantee that the majority of non-trans men alive today – those that we sometimes refer to as “biological men” – have never been tested to determine their chromosomes. Many have not been tested to determine their testosterone levels. Some don’t even have a penis and/or testicles to speak of, and these are not trans men that I’m talking about. Men come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties, and there are any number of configurations among the non-trans population. So who’s to say what makes a “biological man”?
While I don’t agree with your mother, I can take some guesses at her thought processes. She still sees you as female. She still sees you as her daughter. So to her, it is a lie. She may fear that you will be in danger if you ever have to come out to someone. She may fear that your future job, or even your life, could be in jeopardy, or that you could be the target of some type of “blackmail.” Or she just may be still adjusting to the situation and trying to wrap her head around it, or hope that you will change your mind if she makes you feel that you are being deceitful.
You don’t say whether or not you are on hormones yet, but I’m guessing you’re not. It might be difficult for her to picture what you are going to look like once you are on hormones for only a few months and what types of surgery you might eventually have.
And she might not realize how many people out there are currently living stealth very successfully, with no problems at all. She doesn’t know about them because she doesn’t see them, which is what living stealth is all about, and their numbers are no doubt much higher than the number of people who are living out as trans.
At your age, you can very easily make the decision to live stealth, and it is better to start out stealth and later publicly come out if you want to than the other way around. In this era of the Internet, once you’re out, you’re out, and it is very difficult to go back “in” again. So that’s one point that you can use in discussions with your mother.
I also think that she might change her mind as she sees you change physically. Just seeing photos of other guys won’t do it – she needs to see you as a physical man. Once she sees how drastic the physical changes are, she might realize that your convictions about living as a man, with no “trans” qualifier, make sense.
But keep in mind that you might never get your mother to see you as a man. That is totally her decision and it is beyond your control. What you can request of her is that she use the correct name and pronoun for you and that she not out you. That is a matter of respect, and you have a right to ask for that. If she is not able to do that, then you will have to decide the type of relationship that you will have in the future. If she is willing and able to do that, then that’s about all you can ask for.
She might never agree with you that a stealth life is still an honest one. But as long as she doesn’t out you, you will be able to live your life as you want. Control what you can and don’t worry about the rest.
Congratulations on recognizing what you want to do at such an early age. That should make things a lot easier for you in the future, no matter what you decide.
Readers, what are your thoughts?
First of all, I also would like to congratulate your reader for not only finding his truth but being willing to live his truth openly and honestly.
As for living stealth, I feel extremely strongly that such a choice is the sole right of the reader and absolutely no one else including his mother. In my opinion this is an absolutely valid choice for all of us. I say this in spite of choosing not to live stealth because I initially felt that even trying to live stealth would have been analogous to my going back into the closet which I lived in for almost 60 years. Along the way I discovered that being out has the very real benefit, as you point out Matt, that by allowing others to knows us as we truly are and that in so doing we will slowly win hearts and minds, that we will change the world.
With this said I do not go around with a neon sign advertising that I am a woman with very significant history trying to be a “real man”. In so doing, I allow other folks to make their own assumptions as to who I am. Perhaps I am rationalizing this action of my “living stealth” but in my view it is neither practical or reasonable for me to out myself to absolutely everyone.
In the end to live stealth or not is largely a matter personal choice. With this said, in my experience many trans women are not offered the opportunity to live stealth due to genetics and the ravages of T.
One last comment is that it is very obvious to me that people the age of your reader desperately need to have real life examples of successful trans people. Based on the presentations which I have made at local collages I think that this is particularly true for trans men as, at least in my experience, most trans men are not visible and following your example Matt.
Cheryl
I would strongly agree with your point about the lack of visible, successful transmen. I think they’re so successful that they stop being visible and that that leaves the rest of us younger guys to find the way on our own. I hope that changes someday.
Is stealth a lie? Well that depends on the individual. Society has huge issues with both sex and gender. I don’t expect that to change much anytime soon.
I never went stealth simply because I never moved from my hometown. I never really bothered with what is in another person’s mind because the reality is I can’t change what someone else thinks. But, in the vein of it gets better, as time has gone on some lifetime acquaintances seem to have changed their own minds while others probably never will. What I find delightfully funny is when a friend who has only known me as Deena crosses paths with someone who “outs” me (often unintentionally and with no malice). There was a time when that bothered me because I could tell in some instances that it changed my relationship to a person even if they never raised the issue with me. But I too have changed over time. I reached a point of peacefulness with me as I am today and the “old me” is kinda like the first car I ever owned. I have certain fond memories of the car and certain not so pleasant ones (like when it slid off an icy road and into a huge Oak). That old car was certainly part of my life but it is gone. I don’t even know what happened to it. Maybe its in a landfill or maybe part of it has been recycled into other things.
Continuing the analogy some lifetime friends remember too that old car but for most it is a faded memory. No one brings it up in conversation except my mother and even she seldom does. But bless her heart that old car was a favorite of hers. You see it was the first new car she ever owned and I bought it from her. So yeah, I accept that she has an emotional link to it and that will never change. When I sold that car and moved on with my life I know she was sad. And that is why we seldom speak of it unless we are both in a sort of melancholy mood.
I hope this ramble isn’t too off the wall for other readers.
Some thoughts:
(1) I agree that it’s common for parents not to realize how easily you might blend in the future, and that “coming out” as trans would take an *extra* effort among people who will naturally see you and treat you as a man. I know my parents didn’t believe I would ever ‘pass’ – even though I routinely did prior to ANY medical treatment. The fact that it was about how they viewed me and their struggles was never clearer to me than when they also admitted how much I looked like one of my brothers. To them – I looked the same as me, the same as I always had, and the same as my brother – and, yet, the presumed everyone else would see the same thing. I think it’s just a parents thing, and Matt is right that the best you can ask is that they don’t publically out you and refer to you respectfully, whereever you set your boundaries.
(2) People seem to have the idea that it is binary: stealth or out. Life isn’t really like that. It’s more of a spectrum. Just like there is no one coming out moment for someone who is gay, you will find that as a trans person, life is a series of events in which you may or may not choose to reveal this information. At 16, you can’t possibly know where you’ll feel comfortable on this spectrum. I’m more than twice your age, and I still don’t know how and when I will disclose or not, depending on the circumstance, or how I may feel about it in 5 or 10 years from now.
I think you have to let your mom figure out her own way of dealing with the truth – and feel comfortable with HER truth. You can tell your Mom that she has no daughter, she has a son. But in your Mom’s life, she had a “baby girl” and she’s had a daughter for 16 years. She’s been telling people about her children for years, she has photos, etc. And navigating the “how many kids do you?” “is this your son?” etc questions in public and in different scenarios is NOT easy. She may have a different way that she wants to handle things whether she’s talking to relatives, co-workers, close friends, neighbors,and so on. While it’s fair for you to ask your Mom not to out you in ways that are unsafe or disrespectful, it’s also not fair for you to ask her to lie about the experiences in her life. This might mean at some point sitting down with her – or even with a third party (friendly therapist) to help craft answers she can give people that make HER comfortable or helping her find resources of groups for parents of trans people to let her hear from other people how they came to navigate these issues.
As a result, I think it’s not productive to debate with your Mom about being stealth or being out. You can’t say right now what you’re going to do, and she can’t see right now what your life might be like. It’s just something to argue about. I do agree that its sensible to emphasize that the need for not disclosing info may be important for safety and respect, and I think you should start having the discussions about how hard it is figuring out how and what to tell people. However, you are several years away from independence, and a lot of your mom’s issues and concerns will change in that time. When you move away from home – whether for college or for a job – and your relationship changes, your mom will have less influence and control over how people view you. By then, she may change and have figured it out – or not. And who YOU are will have changed, trans or not, just by virtue of growing up.
Living “stealth” (hate that word too) isn’t hiding the truth — it’s actually the opposite. Being out as trans often hides the truth, not intentionally, but to the extent that it prevents others whose minds are clouded by unconscious cissexism from seeing you as you really are. When a cis gay or bi person comes out, that’s an act of revealing the truth — but when a trans person who was previously stealth “comes out” as having a trans history, it has the effect of obscuring the truth, something that cis people (especially queer cis people) often don’t understand. That’s because being stealth allows others to see you for who you are, whereas being out as trans will trigger many people’s mistaken beliefs that your assigned gender at birth has something to do with who you actually are, or that it ever had something to do with who you actually are.
I want to apologize for this comment not getting posted in a timely manner. It went into spam for some reason and I just noticed it this morning. Good points here, and I’m sorry it didn’t go up sooner.
This is a terrific comment. I’ve often tried making this same point to others.
In general cis people do NOT know what it means to be trans. Therefore, once that word is applied to a person, they don’t actually know more truth about that person. They know LESS. Once that label is attached to a person they assume all the inaccurate things they believe about trans people now applies to such a person, and they don’t.
In my opinion the closest approximation a cis person can make about a trans man is… a man. And the closest approximation for a trans woman is… a woman. If they try to grok the difference between cis people and trans people they inevitably veer wildly off the mark.
As a friend of mine once quipped about trying to get cis people to understand how to relate to herself as a trans women: “You know women right? Do that.” Works just the same for trans men if you flip the gender around. And that is why “stealth” is so appealing.
Yes!!
This is why I plan to come out AFTER I’ve been known as male by people, when possible.
If someone gets to meet you without knowing about your condition, he/she/ze will not have a set of assumptions already made about you.
If you later come out to that person, then it will be easier for them to see you as “John/Mary” and not as “the trans dude/gal”.
Excellent post and replies. What a disheartening situation, though.
To speculate for a second, I have seen it happen where parents’ first fear is that someone might be angered by finding out at the wrong time (i.e. during an intimate encounter), and therefore conclude that it’s safer for your reader to be out. I hope it’s as innocent (and uninformed) as that. In which case, maybe time will help.
There are lots of great reasons to be out, though, and this isn’t one of them. And even for those of us who are out, it’s nice to not have to always be out, i.e. to be kind of ambivalent about who knows and who doesn’t.
That said, the only people who really ought to know what’s in anyone’s trousers are the person, their doctor (when it’s relevant) and their partner or partners. In the case of the latter, I do find it’s a lot easier to be out sooner than later (since a person doesn’t feel that they’ve invested as much in getting to know you as they would later), although there’s never any 100% perfect solution.
And personally, as someone who’s transitioned and found it to be a lot less suffocating, I find that the me now is a lot truer to who I am than the person I was beforehand. So to call it lying is actually quite inaccurate.
As a trans person and the parent of a child who is transitioning I would like to say that most of the parents out there who are on board with their children transitioning (that I personally know) do not still view the child as “my baby girl” or “my baby boy”. They want their children to live out because they don’t want their children to get hurt. I encouraged my child to live stealth because I didn’t want my kid to get hurt. Strange paradox, eh!?
I agree that men and women come in all different shapes and sizes and while some men don’t have penis’ and some women do, no one who is “biologically” this or that ever has to take a test or be examined by a doctor to be told who they are. I’m a biological male who was born in a clearly defined female body. And I can’t wait to have surgery so that I can live stealth. Will I though? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But that is my truth. The reader has every right to live his truth just as his mother has every right to live hers. Perhaps it is just a matter of perspective and respect.
I had these same kind of thoughts when the idea of transitioning first crossed my mind. I thought that stealth would make me feel bad. That I would lose my ability to talk as a trans woman.
But I slowly saw that it was not a deception, but a way of being yourself. I don’t want everyone to know I have a penis, espically the ones who would harm me for such. Stealth is like witness protection, only no one is out to kill you. I don’t know too much as I am only 17, but I imagine that this won’t change much.
Thanks again, everyone, for the great discussion. I haven’t been able to interject much into the conversations lately, because I’m in the process of moving, but I don’t need to, anyway. Everybody has such great input and offers so many different ways to look at a situation. Thank you so much.
Long ago when I transitioned, my elders told me to go stealth and never look back. The primary goal was to “blend” into society, not to stand out. Very few people in my current life know that I am trans (beyond the usual family, spouse, and a few choice friends) and I have never viewed this to be a bad thing.
I work in a skilled trade with a very small community of mostly hardened blue-collared men and so to survive, I keep my personal life very much to myself. Add to this the fact that I am also gay and my partner also works in the same trade… so yes, there’s quite a bit of secrecy in our life. Even my gay friends do not know I’m trans… which is something I decided to omit after having several bad experiences within the lgb community.
I wasn’t always stealth though, but I didn’t always enjoy the life… While being “out” I’ve had friends share info about me to others without my consent. People would ask me all sort of uncomfortable questions in public places, which brought about a lot of unneeded attention. I brought one GLB…T group to it’s knees when I was accused of joining to infiltrate and recruit people (seriously, WTF?)… and they even had a series of special meetings to discuss and eventually voted on if I or any other trans person belonged there (hey, we won btw). I’ve also helped run a trans support group, mentored glbt youths, spoke at colleges and various GLBT groups… So please don’t think I’ve lived some male privileged stealth life. I’ve done a good deal for our community, but I finally reached a point where being “out” was no longer a viable option for myself.
I think the biggest thing I can say to the O.P. though, is as you get older… at least for me… being trans seems ever so unimportant. It’s a part of me, but not all of me and it never defines me. As I’ve grown up (I transitioned at 17 and I’ll be 34 this year) my parents have learned that fact to be true. Being trans doesn’t make me a better or worse person any more than my eye color does. It’s just another part of my journey and what makes me, well, me. It’s your choice to disclose or not to disclose… not your Mother’s. Just like she has a choice as to what she chooses to share with the world and you have that right as well.
Good luck to you in your journey, it’s a wild ride, but worth the price of admission.
“being trans seems ever so unimportant. It’s a part of me, but not all of me and it never defines me” I sincerely hope that each and every one of who happen to be trans as well as our loved ones, friends, peers, and allies will eventually realize this truth!
Cheryl