After blogging about attending a Trans conference and not disclosing my trans history but being seen more as a "provider" and "ally" as opposed to a community member the wheels in my head began to turn. I have been thinking lately about how stealth I want to be/ will be since I do have an infant daughter and I need to think about me as a transitioned man and how much of my history I want to disclose to her if any as well as a whole sort of other stuff.
I guess what I am trying to say through my ramblings is that the label/ identity/ word STEALTH has really been on my mind. I decided to look it up just for arguement sake and I found on wikiepedia the following:
Stealth
The term stealth is used to refer to a person who passes as their desired gender at all times, and who has broken contact with everybody who knew their gender history. Thus, everybody around them is unaware that they were not always of the gender presented, and they are effectively invisible within the population of their current gender. In order to live in stealth, an individual has to be extremely passable.
By this definition I am not stealth and neither are most of the people I know who self-identify as stealth. This leads me to believe that there might be a need for new language or a redefinitiion of what "stealth" means. For me I feel like I need to stop calling myself "stealth" due to languagea not being fitting. I generally don't call myself a "transman" or "trans" either but more a "man of transexperience". So for me a better fit in terms of language might be for me to say, "I'm just a private person" which those who know me long enough know is true. I am private about many things not just my transition/ medical history.
More thoughts floating through my mind.
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Being extremely private is a way to go.Only a chosen needs to know your personal life although on the other hand you are one of the leaders that others like to look up too for assitance. IDK, just live life.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kim. Also I am glad you've enlightened me on the stealth definition. Who knew? We must come up with a new word.
ReplyDeleteAll you can do is your best.
Well instead of labeling myself with another arbitrary term and put myself in another box I will just consider myself a "private person" and just live life. Who I want to tell I will tell and who I don't want to tell I won't. No stress about it. Anyone who decides they want to tell for me obviously doesn't respect me or my personal information and they will be immediately cut off without question.
ReplyDeleteI like private as opposed to stealth. Stealth implies sneaking which I don't really like as a personal identifier. And Private is just more generic and applies to just about anything.
ReplyDeletei use the term "undisclosed." it's a lot less sneaky sounding, and i think it really gets to the point. i.e.- i'm undisclosed at school/work/whatever. because for me, it's more about not sharing when people don't solicit your trans history, dig? therefore, i don't disclose.
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