Passing, revisited

January 8 2010, 1:01pm

A few years ago I came out to a friend of mine in the queer community about being trans.  I’d held off telling her for quite a while, as I honestly wasn’t sure she’d be very positive.  Her immediate response was that while she didn’t know I was trans a few of her friends had asked her.  She then launched into a discussion of why or why not people would think that, but I’d already made up my mind.  I emailed her back that I didn’t see us going far as friends, and left it at that. There was a time earlier in my transition when the discussion of whether or not I had passed as cis would make me nauseous.  To not pass, as I apparently had not done with her friends, was the most embarrassing, shameful feeling I could imagine, and one with which I had strong motivations to self-harm .  I had been taught by the culture I grew up in, by Doctors and counselors, and by other trans people that I must do one thing, and that was to pass.  To not do so was failure, something for which I should feel shame.  How glad I am, then, that I don’t believe that b******t anymore. Passing is perhaps the central component through whether trans lives are considered ‘successful’ or not, and as such it is the central component of trans oppression.  It is the part of our lives always up for debate in public, and by which cis people mark trans individuals as ‘other.’  I’ve written about this before, as a response to the cis belief that places self-erasure as trans people’s greatest fantasy, and my attitudes about passing remain the same: Passing is a system used by cissexist cultures to control trans people, to ostracize, and to justify violence perpetrated against them. Although passing is presented as a trans endeavor or desire, the truth is it is a system for cis people to identify trans people and to alert other cis people to their presence.  Whether used to mollify trans people with suggestions that other cis people don’t know about their trans status, or to shame them because other people do, it is centered in the cis person’s perspectives and assumptions.  It is the constant reminder that in the power relationship between cis and trans, cis dominates. I transitioned in my early twenties into a medical system that elevated the young, the straight-identified, and those who cis people might not mistake for being trans (all things I was back then), and the value placed on passing was made clear to me very early on.  The first time I ever reached out to the medical community for support (because before the era of radical trans self-empowerment that was the only system I knew about) I made an anonymous phone call to the Clarke Institute to ask for information.   At the end of about 20 minutes of trying to scare me off the woman on the other end of the line finished with “No one passes 100%, how are you going to deal with that?” How indeed?  While I thankfully did not end up at the Clarke, my experience with Vancouver General Hospital was – if gentler – no less focused on transition as a process to be judged against cis ideals (of which passing is central).  This accomplishes a great deal for cissupremacy.  It sets up a paternalistic, gatekeeper relationship in which trans people are subjugated to cis “caregivers” as it makes erasure of transness the primary goal.   As a trans person you are constantly under the scrutiny of cis eyes, reminded that should you fail to meet cis-centered ideals of gender you will not receive the support or treatments you seek. The lethal catch-22 of passing is of course the ‘deceiver ‘role into which trans people and trans women especially are framed.  Whether used by aggressors to justify anti-trans physical violence or theorists to justify theories of anti-trans rhetoric, to pass and be discovered could cost you your job, your position in community, or your life.  The justifications of both the killers of trans women and exclusionist feminist writers are coldly similar.  It quickly becomes clear one simply cannot be trans, passing or not, and expect to not experience violence for what you are. I spent a good portion of my twenties living in quasi-stealth:  While I told a very few people I was close to (such as lovers) I otherwise actively worked to distance myself from my past.  Rather than being empowered in approximating a cis experience, however, my transness was a constant source of shame.  The stress of living a life while constantly looking over my shoulder took its toll on my health, despite appearing on the surface as one of those trans lives which were ‘successful’ from the cis-dominant stance.  As I got older and began to question assumptions I’d made about my sexuality (my experience of heterosexism in trans medicalization is a post in itself), then, I was very ready to ask questions about my own gender, my relationship with being trans, and my relationship to this system I’d apparently done well at but was nonetheless still feeling shame for.  This questioning brought me to a process of finding comfort in my gender in ways that were never served by the cis focus of passing, and often actively worked against it. I began feeling more empowered by choosing not to pass, or at least by not trying to pass. How then do we dismantle this system that declares the trans identity of individuals is public property?  It seems to me a lot of that has to do with coming out, not coming out, and the role of conversation at the personal level versus the community.  Simply put we must stop acting like it matters.  To that end, some things to consider for cis people:

Don’t bring it up first. It’s up to the trans person, and you should never expect that eventually having that conversation is a guarantee, no matter how well you know the person you think is trans.  Really, if having that knowledge was so central to a friendship, maybe be friends with people you’re not trying to apply labels to.  Bringing up a person’s suspected trans status – to them or to another – is wielding the cis-supremacist tool I’m talking about here. If a trans person outs themselves to you, don’t assume that means the conversation is about whether or not you knew. When I tell someone about my trans-ness, I do so because I want to make it clear I consider them someone I trust to know me in a more significant way.   I don’t care if you knew or didn’t know or who you think knows, and if the example at the beginning of this piece is any indication I probably will regret having brought it up with you. Your perspective is not universal. This is a difficult one for many people, it seems, especially families and friends with an investment in a person’s pre-transition gender.  Gender perception varies with individuals, cultures, and any number of factors.  While some might be 100% certain the world must see a trans person’s gender the way they do, this is cis chauvinism.  In the process of making my own gender less clear I have grown used to being confidently sir-ed or ma’am-ed, often within seconds. Defer to the trans person’s wishes as to how open they want to be. Seriously, it astounds me how this eludes many people, especially LGBqueers.   Outing someone can get them killed!  Combined with a strong sense of entitlement to ignore point #3 because they’re queer, this behavior is infuriating and dangerous.

Ultimately, in a culture where the prefixes cis and trans led to equality as groups and equality as individuals the conversation would not be needed as the concept would be pointless.  It would be distasteful and irrelevant to force one’s cis or trans status into conversation.  Finally, then, it would stop being a tool used against trans people, and there wouldn’t be a need to re-center trans experience against cis lives. THE END DISCLAIMER, or “Don’t try to shoehorn what I said into your radical ideas that gender doesn’t exist or anything else that places your theory above lived trans experience”:  While my own process of finding empowerment against the passing-focused narrative of trans experience led me to a less-binary, more androgynous presentation, that in no way means my gender is more radical, sophisticated, or queer.  There are many trans people whose self-identity presents in ways that lead cis people to mistake the trans person for being cis, but that does not mean they are living up to cis ideals, it merely means the cis person has made a cis-centered assumption.  Further, there are many who choose to be stealth or make other choices which lead to passing, and I refuse to be critical of that.  Being trans can be a death sentence in most cultures, and I won’t criticize other trans people for doing what it takes to stay alive.