#going stealth

[transmascpolls]

Transmascs: are you ‘stealth’ presenting as a cis man and would you/do you want to be?

Yes, currently stealth, this is my ideal

Yes, currently stealth, this is not my ideal but as close as possible

Yes, currently stealth, not my ideal but necessary due to external factors

No, not stealth currently, but want to be as it would be ideal for me

No, not stealth currently, but want to be as it would be closer to ideal for me

No, not stealth currently, but want to be due to external factors affecting me

No, not stealth currently, don’t know / undecided if being stealth is wanted

No, not stealth currently, don’t really want to be

No, not stealth currently, ABSOLUTELY NEVER want to be

Uncertain if my situation counts as ‘stealth’

Other answer / it’s complicated

See results / not transmasc button

Voting ended onMar 16

[trans-rage]

[mordcore]

making my own post actually

ID: tags that say

oh yeah also something i never see ppl talk about

i went stealth once

and it kinda?? sucked???

like i was just tryina avoid transphobic violence and that kinda worked but

man i do not want to rejoin the cis mans world anytime soon i hate it there

End ID

feel free to reblog and add experiences! i'm tryina open a conversation

like. being treated as a Real Man was cool when my friends did it but they did it already knowing im trans bc cool people dont care

but being suddenly treated like a cis man by . less kind people was Big Yikes. suddenly i was expected to perform masculinity correctly. i got weird comments about doing crotchet. people felt comfortable being sexist or racist when i was there with them. the first time i was so taken aback that i didn't even know what to say.

im glad i got the heck out of that space and haven't had to enter it since. if i ever have to go back to psychiatry i'll be more gnc and not try to hide myself so i dont even get confronted with these expectations. weird toxically masculine cis men can stay the fuck away from me.

but yeah! anyone else who has gone stealth, what are your experiences?

[potatobubblewrapnightmare]

Going stealth

A little bit about my experience as going stealth yesterday! 

(For anyone who doesn’t know going stealth means when trans people pretend that they are cis-whatever they identify as) So I have a friend by association who goes to the same school as me and I pass him in the hallways and we chat on instagram about art and things and he asked if I’d like to go to the mall with him so we could buy art supplies. In the group chat that I’m in with him I’m known by my preferred name because I asked a friend to introduce me with that. As far as the art kid is concerned, I’m a cis guy. 

It was epic. A few of his other friends tagged along (all guys) and we got subway and went into Zing which is pop culture shop that we have here and all the while we were ‘the boys’. 

For anyone planning to do something like this, use the bathroom before you go, especially if you’ve never used the mens/womens/neutral before and don’t want to be questioned going into the bathroom of your AGAB. Also have confidence and mimic the common behavior. 

TL;DR I went stealth with a group of friends and succeeded 

[mocksyoucondescendingly]

Can't wait to be able to be stealth someday like trans ninja or some shit

[sampersander]

My contract isn't getting renewed so I need to find a new job in two months and I'm strongly debating going stealth. I never thought I would but I've just noticed at my previous jobs where I couldn't be stealth bc I didn't pass people never treated me like a man. They also didn't treat me like a woman. I just was mostly ignored which didn't feel good. I'll see how being stealth feels but I don't think I'll get out of the closet from the get go. I'm a little sad about it but also strangely a bit curious to see if people treat me differently at work. I've noticed a significant change in the way strangers treat me since I started passing

[queertheoryreader]

“Even as Manning’s action and testimony focus on those harmed by U.S. military and government practice, a persistent exceptionalism – assisted by the continual return to her personal narrative and individual experiences – mutes their potential to erode public trust in state institutions. When Manning’s navy psychiatrist testified about her pretrial confinement at Quantico, his claims that the isolation conditions “were more severe than [those] of death row inmates” conveys the severity of Manning’s treatment by distinguishing her from those implicitly understood to deserve that treatment. Captain Dr. Hocter, the psychiatrist who had treated Manning at Quantico, testified about the extended time that Manning spent under POI status: “Even at Guantanamo Bay my recommendations were implemented much faster than at Quantico. [Manning] spent an unprecedented amount of time under precautions.” And Manning’s father, in a television interview, likewise used Guantanamo as a reference point for her pretrial treatment: “They worry about people down in a base in Cuba, but here they are, have someone on our own soil, under their own control, and they’re treating [her] this way.” … These claims suggest that Manning ought not be treated as prisoners on death row or at Guantanamo are, not because this treatment is unacceptable on its face, but because Manning is a well-meaning individual rather than a nameless criminal. Contrary to Manning’s own narrative of her actions – her concerns about “people down in a base in Cuba” prompted her to leak the Guantanamo files, after all – these arguments further normalize ongoing incarceration practices in order to depict Manning’s treatment as a contrasting singular wrong…

The viability of this script depends at least in part on recourse to whiteness and U.S. citizenship. Manning can be depicted as a singular case not solely because her whistleblowing or transgender identity make her different, but also because whiteness offers a claim to individuality not readily available to people of color. In this way, whiteness is “atomized into invisibility through the individualization of white subjects” and, accordingly, Manning’s whiteness goes unmarked in the trial and media coverage. Moreover, these narrations of Manning as individual follow what C. Riley Snorton and Jin Haritaworn describe as form of value extraction in which violence against and death of people of color serve as “raw material for the generation of respectable trans subjects.” Their argument helps illuminate the ways that the Manning Trial and related media discourse use Guantanamo detainees, prisoners on death row in the United States, and those enduring armed conflict with the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan – whether transgender-identified or not – as broad, nameless groups that make Manning’s individuality possible.”

Beauchamp, Toby, Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices (Durham and London: Duke University, 2019), 126-128.

[queertheoryreader]

“At the 2001 congressional hearings on biometrics, Joseph J. Atick testifies as an industry expert on behalf of Visionics Corporation, a major developer of facial recognition technology. His statement carefully delineates between surveillance of terrorist or criminal bodies and maintenance of privacy for citizen bodies: “The concern for privacy has to do with the misconception that this is an ID system that is identifying every one of us. This is not a national ID system. It does not identify you or me. It is simply a criminal or terrorist alarm. If your face does not match one on the database, on the watchlist, there will be no alarm.” This assurance assumes an easily recognizable difference between the criminal and “you or me.” It invokes a solid boundary between citizenship and and criminality, yet it simultaneous demonstrates how that boundary shifts, for the facial image captured by Visionics are legible only through a particular frame of reference. Atick’s statement implies that this team is neutral, but his own face helps illustrate its subjectivity: a 2002 New York Times profile features his work and photo as “The Face of Security Technology,” a phrase referencing his facial recognition software and positioning Atick - and his face - as exemplary of security and good citizenship status. At the same time, US media and government discourse repeatedly employ the phrase “faces of terror” to describe images of those involved in the attacks on 9/11, bodies marked as utterly outside whiteness and Americanness. The repetition of paired visual and linguistic references to those opposing faces - once connotations security, the other threat - helps create the common sense frame through which other faces can become legible in terms of risk.

Likewise, the shared common sense perception of transgender women as deceptive men makes possible a continuity between the “man in a dress” rhetoric justifying bathroom bills as safeguards against deception.”

Beauchamp, Toby, Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices (Durham and London: Duke University, 2019), 104-105.