Stealth is on my mind!

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.

Empire Conference May 22nd, 2010- Day 3

Day 3 was far better. Some guys showed up and we did have a good conversation during the "Ftm Sexuality" discussion. It was really interesting how things worked out. Though the workshop only had about 6 men of trans experience I feel the discussion was awesome and enlightening.
I have been networking and meeting new people. To be honest when I first got to the conference it reminded me a lot of SCC. Some of the reasons why were:
1) Predominantly organized and attended by (Self Identified)Crossdressers
2) Held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (Scc is held at the Crown Plaza Ravinia in Atlanta and this conference was held at the Crowne Plaza Albany).
3)People shocked to meet a transitioned man

I will say that though there were NO other POC and very few men I felt more comfortable getting to know the caucasian Crossdressers. Everyone I spoke to was nice, friendly and respectful. While at SCC the past 2 years I went there was definitely a lot of "separation".

I feel that this conference gave me the opportunity to be in a trans/gender variant space and be a provider. I only disclosed to the transmen in the workshop about FTM sexuality and everyone else knew nothing of my trans history. Though there was opportunity for me to disclose to different individuals in the context of conversations that it would be relevant I still found myself feel fine not disclosing. I felt like it would be weird not to disclose because I have been tyring to find a way how to balance my "stealthness" and being an activist. I feel like this gave me the opportunity to practice that balance and I feel I was successful.