Testosterone Does Not "Work Better" than Estrogen

Hang around with trans people and you're bound to hear it. Testosterone, it's said, is more powerful than estrogen. It makes for a faster and more robust gender transition, while estrogen works a more subtle form of magic.

According to this reasoning, "trans men 'pass' better than trans women" because we win at hormones.

This is a load of hooey.

As trans people, we are fundamentally opposed to classic biological essentialism. According to classic binary sex essentialism, a person born with XX chromosomes is ever and eternally female, and a person born with XY chromosomes immutably male.  (Biological essentialists tend never to consider nonbinary genotypes like XXY or intersex people generally, because they're all about the ideology of the sex binary.)

Those who gender transition must reject chromosomal sex essentialism.  We live by the tenet that it is gender identity that determines who we really are, not our chromosomes.

But a fair number of binary trans people actually cling to a variety of sex essentialism--specifically, a biological essentialism that centers hormones, not chromosomes or genitals.  Hormone-replacement therapy is the most common medical transition service we access, and we are raised in a culture that treats biological sex as "more real" than gender identities or gender expression.  So many find comfort in framing both their bodies and their psyches as rewrought in nature by testosterone or by estrogen and testosterone-blockers.  Obviously, HRT has visible effects. Our body hair grows more robust or more fine.  Voices drop or breasts bud.  Our faces are gently transformed by the loss or addition of subcutaneous fat and the bulking or shrinking of facial musculature, rounding the cheek of the estrogen-employing, and chiseling the jaw of a person using testosterone. When you've been living with gender dysphoria, these physical changes are very welcome.

I've met my share of people who overgeneralize from the celebrated physical changes of hormone therapy into hormonal essentialism, attributing every change they experience to sex hormones. "Testosterone has made me less interested in talking, talking, talking." "Estrogen has made me a lot better at matching colors."  But sex hormones don't make us more or less verbal, or improve or deaden our color vision.  Those are social effects, and they are culture-bound.

That doesn't make them any less "real," mind you.  Just like hormones, socialization is a powerful thing.  Living as a woman in our society means receiving constant cues about appearance that unconsciously shape behavior, just as living as a man in our society means receiving social deference that makes a person act more boldly.  And these things affect us even if, consciously, we challenge them.  Estrogen doesn't make a person a better parent, nor testosterone make a parent a less-engaged one.  But caring behavior is so intensely socially reinforced in people living as mothers, while those of us living as fathers receive so many messages that we're not expected to know how to braid our kids' hair and should prioritize work obligations over family ones, that we are inevitably shaped by these socializing messages without our realizing it.  We can resist those pressures of which we are conscious, and socializing forces are experienced differently when one's gender identity conflicts with one's perceived sex, but nonconscious socialization is a real and powerful and ongoing process. From the moment we begin a social transition, our behaviors and inclinations are impacted strongly by socialization, which changes our perceptions and our behavior.  (This is one of the things that transphobic radfem "gender crits" get all wrong.  They treat socialization as something that happens when you are young, and then stops, rather than something that is happening to all of us, every day of our lives.)

But taking a shot or a pill seems much more real and concrete to people in our society than does being (re)shaped by social cues.  And one way this manifests that I believe is particularly damaging is in the belief held by many people that "testosterone works better than estrogen."

Here's the thing about gender transitions: it's indeed true that most trans men transition more smoothly and swiftly than most trans women.  But this isn't because testosterone "works better" than estrogen.  It's because of how gender policing works in our society.  Our culture values masculinity and the male while it devalues femininity and the female.

Let's examine how this works through the lens of facial hair.  I've often heard people use as "proof" of the greater efficacy of testosterone the fact that taking T makes a person grow facial hair, while taking E doesn't make a beard go away.  But it would make just as much sense to say that estrogen is more potent an agent of transition, because it makes a person grow breasts, while taking T doesn't make breasts go away.

Let's consider facial hair and transition in greater depth.  Often before even starting hormone treatment, transfeminine individuals seek facial hair removal via electrolysis and/or laser treatments. And many experience ongoing anxiety because some hair may be left behind by these procedures, leaving a trans woman constantly worried that she may have some stubble, as the social consequences of being seen as a trans woman with a beard shadow are high. Those who transition using testosterone, on the other hand, have a much less anxiety-ridden experience in the facial hair arena. Sure, most trans men wait anxiously for their peach fuzz to materialize, and for some, peach fuzz is all they'll ever grow.  But every whisker is celebrated--and not just by us, but by society.

Think about it.  For a trans woman, a few whiskers are seen by a cissexist society as belying her gender identity, and the stubbly trans woman is a figure of mockery. Meanwhile, for a trans man, a few whiskers are all it takes to get a pass from the gender police.  If there were actual parity in treatment, the gender police would be imposing some sort of 50% standard on either side of their gender binary.  But instead, a trans woman must remove 100% of her facial hair to avoid harassment, while a trans man only needs to be able to grow 10% of a full beard to be treated as one of the brotherhood.

It's not testosterone that is working so well to benefit trans men.  It's patriarchy.

Our society trains people, especially cis males, in patriarchal binary-gender-policing from an early age.  Here's how we can imagine the "logic" of this system as operating: (1) immediately upon seeing a person, classify them as male or female.  (2)  If you can't immediately do that, this is a PROBLEM and must be addressed.  (3) When your initial glance leaves you in doubt, always treat the person as male.  Calling a man "she" is a terrible insult--and is dangerous, since a man whose masculinity has been insulted may feel compelled to prove his masculinity by doing violence to your person.  Calling a woman "he" is actually a sort of compliment, since it confers status.  And if a woman is insulted or has her feelings hurt, it's not likely that she's going to punch you in the face as a result, because that would make her look even less feminine.  Anyway, she should work harder to appear feminine and attractive to men.  (4) Now that the immediate snap judgment about whether to say "sir" or "miss" has been made (when in doubt, say "sir"), study the person to figure out what's wrong with them.  Not being instantaneously classifiable into an M or F box is an affront, but maybe it was the last thing the person wanted (it's some really short cishet guy who is sensitive about his height).  Maybe it was "negligence" (a straight cis woman who isn't doing her duty to be attractive).  Or maybe it was intentional (the individual is an "effeminate" gay man, a butch lesbian, a genderqueer "he/she" weirdo, a transsexual).  Intentionally breaking the binary rule of the gender police means that the offender should be punished with disdain, mockery, harassment, or even assault/sexual assault.  And the harshest punishment is to be directed at those who could have had male honor, but are traitors to the brotherhood--the "swishy faggots" and "trannies" and "shemales"--dishonorable freaks all.

So those are the rules of gender-policing engagement.  Now, combine them with what we discussed earlier--the high standards for inspecting the suspected transfeminine body combined with the low standards of inspecting the suspected transmasculine one. Interactively, they produce a situation in which gender policing affects those assigned male at birth much more strongly than those assigned female at birth. Of course, this is counterbalanced by the fact that people perceived as female or feminine (whatever their gender identity or physical status, really) win as a prize the joy of being catcalled and sexually harassed. But think about it.  This means that for a trans man, once you've crossed that scraggly chinpatch threshhold, chances are good you get to avoid both catcalling and gender-policing harassment. The path to male privilege is pretty short. For trans women, the path to freedom from constant misgendering is much longer, much more fraught with danger, and doesn't end with the prize of relative freedom.

I know that nobody is safe from male street violence, even those deferred to as masculine men, but there's a huge difference in the regularity of the onslaught.  And believe me, I understand that the safety experienced by trans men is conditional, and that if we are discovered to have breasts and/or a vagina, the best outcome is usually disgust, and the worst assault or reparative rape.  But most of the time, these body parts are not seen.  Transmasculine individuals just need to show up sporting that minimal evidence of beard stubble (or its inverse, the receding hairline), wearing moderately standard guy clothes, with chest bound or bundled under a sweatshirt, and the gender policing inspection stops. Not for us the unavoidable requirement that every body part be inspected for "questionable" hand size and foot size, adams apple or hairline.

So, please, let's stop spreading the lie that testosterone works better than estrogen, and that this explains trans mens' advantage over trans women.  Patriarchy and the male privilege it produces explain the transmasculine advantage.  And as long as we naturalize this transmasculine advantage, we do our transfeminine siblings a disservice. What we should be doing is fighting gender policing, not treating it as a fact of nature--and doing that fighting from a position that acknowledges it affects trans men less severely.

Some Advice to Allies Following the Suicide of Leelah Alcorn

Having listened to a bunch of conversations about Leelah Alcorn's suicide, I wanted to provide some advice to cis gender allies who would like to help advocate for children and adults who wish to gender transition.

Leelah Alcorn committed suicide because, rather than respecting her gender identity, her family rejected it, isolated her from friends and the internet, and sent her to "Christian therapists" who told her a trans identity is a sickness she must cure by faith and prayer. Her despair was built of familial rejection, societal transphobia, the pain of not being allowed to live in her identified gender, and a lost hope that she would be able to transition before puberty and her body's masculinization.

It's this last item that I want to talk about with you. Like other trans-identified children, Leelah wanted to have access to puberty-blocking drugs. (Yes, they are considered safe--doctors regularly prescribe them to children who don't identify as trans, but are experiencing "precocious puberty" at a young age. And yes, all they do is postpone puberty, which will resume if they stop taking the drugs. The fear often cited by those unsupportive of allowing children to live in identified genders other than that they were assigned at birth--that it's just a phase which they may grow out of--shouldn't justify denying trans children access to puberty-delaying medications, because if a child actually did decide not to transition, they could just stop taking the meds and their puberty would resume.) By using hormone-blocking meds, a trans child can avoid experiencing their body changing in ways that undermine their sense of self--something most trans people alive today have experienced, and can tell you is very painful.

I have heard some very well-intentioned allies arguing for trans children's access to transition services--supportive therapy and hormone-blockers--in the aftermath of Leelah Alcorn's suicide. I appreciate that advocacy a great deal. But there is an aspect of some of what I've heard that I've found very problematic, that I want to raise with you here, and that has to do with discussions of "passing."

First of all, the term itself is one I find highly problematic, as I have addressed before on this blog. In short, we usually use the word "passing" to refer to a person hiding their true identity. I am not "passing" as a man. I am not "really" a woman who is performing a successful deception on the public. I *am* a man. By reiterating the term "passing," well-intentioned cis allies re-entrench cissexism--the belief that cis people's gender identities are authentic and unquestionable, while trans people's gender identities are a performance open to question, and in some way fundamentally deceptive.

It is true that most people who identify as trans men or trans women would like to have bodies that conform to our society's ideals of what men's and women's bodies look like. Those ideals are currently based on cis bodies. Binary-identified trans people typically wish to have bodies similar to cis people's for one or both of two reasons. The first is internal--the thing we call dysphoria. People who identify as women, whether cis or trans, often feel uncomfortable with having substantial amounts of facial hair, for example, or with having only one breast, and would feel the same if they were living alone on the proverbial desert island. They want their bodies to conform to some basic female norms--again, currently defined around idealized cis female bodies. Thus, a trans girl who starts to grow a beard at puberty is very likely to experience psychological discomfort with that. That's bodily gender dysphoria.  And just as when a cis woman has a mastectomy, we view surgical recreation of the missing breast as a medically-justified reconstruction rather than cosmetic, we should view removing breast tissue from a trans man's body as medically-justified, not cosmetic.  It's a way to treat internal gender dysphoria.

But another reason most binary-identified trans people today wish to have bodies similar to those of cis women and men is social: the huge impact on our lives of transphobic gender policing. Visibly trans women in particular are subjected to huge amounts of social stigma, street harassment, job discrimination, bathroom panic, and sexualized violence. This social mistreatment of trans women is transmisogyny, and it is intensified in interaction with race/ethnicity, and with other characteristics such as disability. But even those of us with the privileges of being white and male suffer disrespect and sexualized violence when we are visibly trans gender. Wanting to avoid disrespect, discrimination and violence is rational, and we're told the way to do this is to gain access to hormones and surgery and voice training and other services so that our trans status will become invisible. We're told that we must "pass" as cis people to avoid transphobia.

Now, it is true that Leelah Alcorn wanted access to testosterone blockers so that her body wouldn't masculinize at puberty, and as an adult trans woman, she could have a body that would look like that of a cis woman. Probably, she wanted that both due to internal gender dysphoria, and to avoid social gender-policing shaming and violence. As an ally, it's fine and right that you should want to voice support for Leelah and for trans kids everywhere, and to explain why access to puberty-postponing medication is important.

But please, please, don't do it by saying something like this: "A trans person needs to pass in order to be successful. If they don't pass, their lives will be horrible. So they need all sorts of medical treatments starting before puberty."

Please bear in mind several things. First of all, the vast majority of the trans people you'll encounter today have had no access to puberty-postponing drugs. So most trans men you'll meet developed breasts and hips, and most trans women you'll meet had their voices change, their shoulders broaden, their facial hair start to grow. If you say "unless you start transition before puberty, your life will be pathetic," you're consigning all of us to a dustbin of gender tragedy.

Secondly, bear in mind that violence and mockery are not "caused" by being visibly trans gender. They are caused by transphobia. The end goal of reducing the appalling rate at which trans people attempt suicide will be met when we embrace visibly trans people of all genders. Normalizing the idea that only those who live in a binary gender and appear cis gender by valorizing "passing" is counterproductive.

I am certainly not asking allies to stop acknowledging the extreme stigma aimed at visibly trans people, especially visibly trans women of other marginalized statuses, such as trans women of color. What I'm asking is that you frame that stigma and violence as problems rather than as facts of nature. Don't naturalize the idea that trans people must "pass" to be "successful." Instead, acknowledge the force of gender-policing violence in our society, but frame it as a problem we as a society must fight. Our goal should be to live in a society in which trans bodies are not seen as deviant, ugly, lesser, or in need of massive medical revisions. A visibly trans body should be embraced as no less valid than a cis person's body.

Yes, it's good to advocate for trans children's right to be treated with love, respect, and medical transitional support. But I would frame this in terms of reducing internal gender dysphoria, not in terms of some requirement that trans people get tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical interventions if we are to be respected.

I appreciate the advocacy of all of our allies. And as my allies, I hope you will work to dismantle the ideology of "passing" rather than entrenching it in your advocacy for our access to transition services.

On "Passing"

I hate the term "passing."

It's used as a euphemism for death: “All were saddened at his passing.”

I'm told I should be happy about “passing.” When used to refer to trans people, “passing” is defined as being accepted by others as a member of one's identified sex, on the basis of appearance, mannerism and voice. Ever since my voice changed and my facial hair came in, I've been congratulated by others (both cis and trans) for being able to “pass,” despite my height and frame (I'm a mighty 5'2”). I'm told that I “pass pretty well” as a man. It always makes me very uncomfortable.

I've listened to so many trans people express huge amounts of anxiety about not being able to "pass," and I empathize utterly with their fears. People who are obviously trans--especially those who are perceived as "men trying to be women" by the transphobic--often face virulent bigotry. People stop and point and stare when we walk down the street in middle America; adults pull their children away from us; insecure, hypermasculine types jump us; hysterical people call the cops on us when we use a public restroom. In much of the country, people who are obviously trans face being fired from their jobs and often find themselves being treated as criminal suspects by the police. It's scary stuff, and who would not want to take a pass on that?

But let's think more about the term “passing.” It's a term with a weighty history, referring to concealment of one's marginalized true identity, in order to avoid violence and discrimination. In the U.S., it's often used in the context of race, as in the case of the fairskinned Anita Florence Hemmings, who passed as a white woman in order to attend Vasser College in the late 1800s. She's now celebrated as Vasser's first African American graduate, but when her “colored blood” was discovered in 1897, five days from her graduation date, it was a great scandal, and the school was outraged at Hemmings' “deceit,” living in the dormitories amidst unsuspecting white “women of quality.” Hemmings, an excellent student, was given her diploma but sent home in disgrace, her classmates cutting off all social contact.

Hemmings passed as white in order to gain access to privileges unfairly denied to women of color. Sometimes the motive for passing is more urgent—a matter of life or death. Consider the case of Edith Hahn Beer, a young German Jewish women who escaped from a train taking her to a concentration camp, and used the identity papers of an Aryan Christian schoolmate to establish herself as a “respectable” German nurse. She met and married a Nazi soldier, avoided any close friendships for fear of revealing her secret, and survived the war while her family died in the camps.

The actions taken by Anita Hemmings and Edith Hahn Beer to pass as white or as Aryan are totally understandable. But they also illustrate why the idea that trans people should be encouraged to “pass” is highly problematic.

First of all, one passes as something one is not. Hahn Beer was a Jew, and after the fall of Nazi Germany she stopped passing as an Aryan and returned to her name and religion of birth. By this logic, if someone tells me I am “passing” as a man, then I am being framed as “really” a woman. I am being complimented on an excellent deception. Thus the term “passing” undermines the fundamental fact of a trans person's life: that we transition to our true genders. For many years, I passed as a woman, having been assigned female at birth, and it is only now that I have transitioned to male status that I am displaying my real identity, my truth.

To think of a trans man as a “fake” man is the essence of cissexism. This is why every time I listen to one of the many people I've met who are afraid to transition cry, “I can't—I'll never be able to pass as a man/woman,” I sigh, because I know that the real battle they face is not their bodily structure, but their internalized cissexism, which tells them they don't have the right to claim their true gender identities because their bodies trump their inner truth. Cissexism holds that appearance is all, and that trans people who don't conform to binary sex ideals are fakes, freaks who deserve to be mocked and harassed. As if cis men never looked down at their bodies to find themselves short, or sporting moobs, or sparsely haired. As if cis women were never tall or flat-chested or strong. As if people were never born intersex, like me.

The pressure on trans people to “pass” creates a spectrum of privilege among trans people, depending on how closely our bodies conform to binary gender ideals for our identified genders. This is similar to other dimensions of identity—for example, the way that African Americans still gain privilege from having lighter skin and straighter hair. It's wrong that an African American born with darker skin is likely to grow up to have an income substantially less than an African American born with lighter skin, and it's wrong that a trans woman born with a slighter bone structure faces less harassment than a trans woman whose body is taller and stronger-boned. It's an unfair, common pattern of bias and marginalization. But what makes it truly painful, in my mind, is the way we on the margins internalize it. Consider the term “good hair,” long-critiqued by African Americans, but still employed in the community to refer to hair that is lighter and straighter, which reflects a devaluation of African-looking hair. Among trans people, it's “passing” that is spoken of in ways that reflect internalized selfhatred.

A reader of my blog commented on my last post, “When I first started down this road, I had a support group that I attended every month. It was here that I first saw the dividing line. Outside of the group, those who 'passed' well socialized exclusively with the others who also 'passed' well. One of my 'friends' was very direct about this. She said that one of us on their own might not draw any attention, but two or more of us in a group will get all of us read. Thusly, she only socialized with the 'passes well' group.”

I despair of the dynamic in marginalized groups in which those with somewhat more social privilege try to build themselves up by further marginalizing those with less privilege.

By now you may have come to the conclusion that I think trying to “pass” is evil, but that's not the case. Think again of the historical instances of “passing” that I raised. Hemmings and Hahn Beer protected themselves by “passing.” True, they saved only themselves. Today, some people tend to look back and cluck that they acted immorally, but I disagree. To save oneself from violence is a moral act. In the Hebrew Talmud it is said, "Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." In passing as an Aryan German, Edith Hahn Beer saved her own life. Anita Hemmings did not face death camps, but she faced brutal treatment, poor schooling, segregation, and a life where she would be expected to work in menial jobs instead of developing her talents. She tried to save herself from this fate by passing for white. We'd find it more uplifting to hear that she risked herself to help her community rather than denying she was a part of it, but we cannot demand self-sacrifice.

A person who saves only himself from a fire and not others is not acting immorally. We can't insist that people be heroes. But a person who walks over others to increase her chances of survival is another matter. And there is an uncomfortable element in Hemmings' story of “passing.” After being sent home in disgrace by Vasser, she married the fair-skinned Dr. Andrew Jackson Love, a graduate of the “negro” Meharry Medical College, and they moved to New York, where Dr. Love claimed to have been educated at Harvard Medical School, and where they took up lives as a white couple. They raised their children as white, sending them to prestigious all-white private schools and summer camps. To avoid being “outed,” Hemmings refused to have contact with her parents, and when her mother insisted on a single visit to New York to meet her grandchildren, Hemmings made her use the servants' side entrance. And yes, the Hemmings-Love family had black servants, and did not share their secret with them. Perhaps they treated their servants more kindly than did their neighbors—but perhaps they did the opposite, in order to underline their position of racial privilege in the eyes of the members of their white social circle. We don't know. But this issue is important in the lives of people in many marginalized groups, including trans people.

To address the question of whether “passing” is a morally good act, a morally neutral act, or an immoral act, we have to break down the term more carefully and consider its components in context. When people speak of trans people “passing,” in fact they may be referring to any one of a series of things. They may mean “this person has made changes to their body and/or dress to reflect their gender identity”--in other words, that the person is gender transitioning or has transitioned. They may mean that the person embodies the binary gender ideal of their identified sex closely. Or they may mean that the person is living a “stealth” life, hiding the fact that they have gender transitioned, as Hahn Beer hid her Jewish status and Hemmings hid her ancestry.

At the center of trans gender ethics is the belief that gender transition is a moral good, because it allows honesty. When we come out, we cease to lie about whom we really are. I think using the term “passing” to mean “taking steps to reveal one's true self” to be a very poor choice of terms, but the action itself is good. I'd simply call it “transitioning.”

The second usage of the term “passing,” to mean “how closely a person embodies an iconic, binary, cis sex ideal” is morally neutral. It's like having blond hair and blue eyes: it conveys a social advantage, but there's nothing inherently superior (or inferior) about it. By the luck of the genetic draw, some trans women are born slight of form, and some trans men tall and robust, and to hold that against them would be ridiculous. But what is truly immoral is to for anyone to treat a person as inferior because they didn't win the social privilege lottery, and were born with dark skin, a Jewish nose, or a lot of body hair. What is also unfair is that, to a certain extent, embodying physical ideals is something that can be purchased. The wealthy can afford to sink the price of an average home into plastic surgery, but most of us cannot. Any while people of any background can gain social privilege through plastic surgery, the costs of not being able to afford surgery (or hormones or a new wardrobe) are much higher for trans people, for whom the changes are not merely cosmetic. Not being able to afford medical transition services sets up legal barriers to our transitions, limits our activities (you try swimming in a midwestern public pool as a trans man without having had top surgery), and leaves us at constant risk of physical violence from transphobic individuals who despise our bodies.

Now let's consider the implications of the third usage of the term “passing,” to mean living a “stealth” existence, in the closet about one's gender transition. What the term means here is “passing as a cis person.” In the early days of medical transition services, agreeing to hide one's pretransition past was a requirement of treatment. A person who leads a stealth life is able to avoid stigma and violence, to get a good job, to be accepted into a cis gender social circle. And to want a good, safe life for oneself is perfectly understandable. But just as in the case of passing for white or Aryan, it's a life of high risks and costs. There's an everpresent fear of discovery, the loss of ties to one's communities, and the temptation to bolster one's privilege by ill-using other trans people.

To assess the morality of living a stealth life and passing as a cis person, context is all-important. Consider the difference between Edith Hahn Beer and. . . the numerous antigay politicians and religious leaders who have been caught having secret same-sex relations. Hahn Beer would have been killed if her Jewish status were revealed, while the antigay hypocrites have built up their already plentiful social privilege by abusing others like themselves. Obviously, these are extreme cases, one of moral rectitude and one morally despiciable. In the U.S., trans people aren't rounded up to be sent to death camps, and I've never heard of a single case of a closeted trans person trying to gain political power by running on a platform of anti-trans policies. But for some people, revealing their trans status would put them at immediate serious risk—for example, of physical violence or loss of child custody—and under such circumstances, keeping their gender transitions a secret is not morally wrong. It's like Anita Hemmings' choosing to pass as white to attend Vassar. It's risky, and it doesn't help other trans people, but it protects important life chances.

The question I wrestle with is how to morally evaluate the decision to live stealth lives by trans people who face more moderate risks. If you are a trans person who by luck of the draw and/or personal resources has a body strangers don't notice to be trans, and you keep your gender transition a secret, you have access to privileges most trans people don't. People may draw the analogy to, say, a gay man who has not come out of the closet, but the analogy is off for two reasons. First, the risks today are a lot higher if one is known to be trans gender than if one is known to be a gay man—there's less social acceptance of trans people, more harassment, and less legal protection. But secondly, any gay man can choose not to reveal his gay status and stay in the closet, while the majority of people who gender transition cannot hide the fact that they are trans. We can decide never to transition, but we can't decide to “go stealth” in our identified genders, just as most African Americans could not decide to pass for white as Hemmings did.

What I return to is the thought of Hemmings refusing to acknowledge her own mother. Passing as white to get into Vassar didn't hurt anyone, it just didn't benefit other African Americans. But living a stealth life often winds up involving stepping on others like oneself to raise one's privilege. I know of too many stealth trans people who would cross the street rather than walk next to someone who is obviously trans. I'm sure there are trans people out there who laugh at transphobic jokes to preserve their secret.

I try not to live a life of judgment. I know I benefit ever day from what gets called “passing privilege”--the ability, with my gender presentation going unchallenged, to go get some groceries without people nudging and staring, the ability to walk into a professional meeting and to just have people listen to a presentation I give, rather than treat me like some sort of freak. Personally, even if I could live a stealth existence, I wouldn't, because I'm fortunate enough to have job security and a loving trans spouse and a supportive kid who's old enough that I don't have to worry about her being taken away from me by child protective services because some neighbor places a call complaining that my home environment can't be safe for a child. Given my relative security, I feel a duty to the trans community to be out and open and to educate others. Still, I am grateful that if I bind and dress carefully, on most days, most people don't question my male status, and I can choose to wear a bunch of trans buttons or not. I can choose to reveal grand genderquerity and prance around in a beard and dress at a party—and then I can take off the dress if I choose and walk home in a pair of jeans without fear of harassment. I certainly don't think that people have a responsibility to always be out, in all places, at all times.

But I know that others don't have the privilege I do. Their trans status is always visible, written in their bodies. And it really burns me up to see other trans people with “passing privilege” distance themselves from them, or worse, blame the visibly trans for their victimhood when they are mistreated by transphobes.

I've heard trans people living stealth lives say that there is a split in the trans community between people who just want to get through their transitions and move on to live normal lives as women and men, and people who are too political, and angry, and “into” being trans for the drama of it all. According to this narrative, after one gender transitions, one is no longer trans, but a “real” man or woman, and people who don't live mostly stealth lives are exhibiting some sort of arrested development. Stealth living is presented as a matter of personal maturity, rather than of having the luck and resources to have a body that meets cissexist expecations, and of making the decision to avoid risk by choosing to conceal one's trans status. Thinking all the time about the oppression of trans people is presented as being obsessively political or overly dramatic, rather than the consequence of constantly facing oppression because of how one looks.

I abhor the argument that the suffering of other trans people is irrelevant to a post-transition person who “passes,” because they are no longer trans men or women, but “just” men or women. I agree our genders as trans people are no less real than those of cis people—and I think that dropping the “trans” adjective in fact suggests the opposite. A person who says they're no longer trans is saying that trans people aren't really their identified genders. I am a trans man, just as I am a Jewish man and a queer man. Anyone who says this makes me less of a “real” man is revealing their biases.

I am not passing as a man. I am a man. I do not wish to live a life hiding who I am and how I got here. I empathize with those whose life circumstances are such that they feel they must. But I am deeply pained when privileged trans people marginalize others already suffering because their trans status is visible to others.

Save yourselves, when danger presents itself. But don't step on others to do it.