I think people get too upset about this topic.

I think the term Northern Jane used "functionally stealth" is good and is sort of how I aim to be once everything settles.

I don't want to be shameful of my past or freaked out about getting read or any of that, but I don't see why the specifics of my past are anybody's business.  I think inventing some elaborate back story and constantly guarding "my secret" would be stressful as hell... but that's me.  However, I do not feel the least bit deceitful referring to my younger self as a "little girl," etc.  I was a little girl!  People just didn't know it at the time.

Tbh, I wouldn't even feel obligated to tell a man I dated about such details either, except I don't want to get murdered.  Most people who get close to me will eventually be told, the rest of the world... well, the less of a #$*% I give of what they think, the better off I'll be.

Anyway, just do whatever works for you, that is my basic opinion on this.

P.S. I also liked Matilda's post.. a lot.

Well personally I'm transitioning to be female (with a private past) not to be a transsexual, that is just something I am in the meantime.
To me stealth is just a word with too much negative connotations attached to it. To me it means not openingly advertising your past. Deep Stealth is based on lying and deluding oneself though.
Post-op I'll be doing what ever word that has no negative connotations attached to it that means "not openingly advertising your past".

Quote from: Jen on February 03, 2010, 07:41:58 PM
I think people get too upset about this topic.

I think peeps get too upset about this topic when they're told how to live their lives, but besides that I think it's a good subject for discussion

QuoteYour life is none of my business!

I've got a more direct message.  "My life is none of your business"

Quote from: Valentina on February 04, 2010, 03:48:40 PM
I think peeps get too upset about this topic when they're told how to live their lives, but besides that I think it's a good subject for discussion

Definitely.

Quote from: Valentina on January 02, 2010, 05:10:06 AM

My question for those that are stealth is: are you happy as stealth & do you feel that you're keeping a secret?

My question for the rest of you: would you be happy as stealth & would you feel that you're keeping a secret?

secret?  eeeek!!

Quote from: matilda"Stealth" suggests dishonesty.  "Stealth" implies that "I am deluding myself into believing that I'm a woman".  "Stealth" is a badly defined term & would be the correct one if I were something else (i.e., a man, etc} pretending to be female/a woman.  My "secret" would be that I'm not "really" female/a woman but something else disguised as female/a woman.  Totally untrue (in my case at least).  I'm not "stealth".  What I am is female, who I am is a woman, and no I don't feel obligated to tell people I used to be "something" I never was or felt myself to be.  Plain and simple.

I know that there are some people in the "transgender community" who believe that... those of us who are not "out"/those of us who have completely assimilated into mainstream society/those of us who "don't tell the truth" about ourselves... are being "deceitful".  It kind of makes me wonder what those people believe themselves to be and what their "truth" actually is.

It seems to me that any post-transition/post-SRS woman that would feel "sneaky", "untruthful", "deceptive", "fake", etc would have to consider herself to be... other than/less than/ different than... simply female/a woman.

this.

I still don't understand how stealth implies "false" or "fake" because the only thing the word itself means is concealed.

Can someone explain it to me please?

Quote from: Miniar on February 05, 2010, 07:06:47 AM
I still don't understand how stealth implies "false" or "fake" because the only thing the word itself means is concealed.

Can someone explain it to me please?

If a person can do it in such a way that they don't feel deceitful to themselves, then I don't suppose it is.  I don't think anybody else's opinion about whether they are being fake or not really matters much.

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Shakespeare, Hamlet

I wouldn't ever presume to try saying something better than him.

I'm for stealth.  I have to admit though, I am torn when I think about telling future partners. 

Do you think it is necessary to tell a partner your past?  If you do, why do you feel it necessary?

If you spent time in prison, would you tell the world?  If you were raped, would you tell the world?

I don't think so, unless they had a need to know, and then you make that determination.  The same is true about your medical past, and that is what we are talking about.

Some should take the lead and show the world that Transpeople exist.  But for others it is time to settle in to a peaceful life free of the pain and anguish.

I would just be scared to not tell, in case he found out later and reacted violently.

Ok - the questions posed by Valerie-Elizabeth and Janet specifically.

Yes personally I think telling a partner is advisable, in just the same way that you might wish to tell them of anything else about your past. True love is about sharing and honesty, it is about connection. A life partner worth having will be the one person in the world with whom you can be absolutely honest and most truly yourself. If you can't trust and connect with them enough to tell them the inconvennient parts, your dark side if you like, then it isn't much of a relationship.

In regard to public stealth however, that is a very individual decision.

For myself I chose to go fully open a while back because I felt that it was time that those around me saw that, postop, we can become successful and fully integrated in society. The measure of my success in that is that although many people around me are perfectly well aware of my past, and although I make no effort at concealment, new people coming into my circle very rarely realise or are told about it unless by me. In other words though many people around me do know, it has ceased to be an issue or indeed anything they consider worth telling anyone else. To put it another way they now accept that a woman with a trans history really IS a woman at the deepest and truest level.

So from my personal perspective it has not been a choice between peace and being an uncomfortable trailblazer, sacrificing my life free of pain and anguish for the greater good. My life is already as peaceful and comfortable as it can get. If it wasn't I probably wouldn't be so keen to be seen for what I am nor would I be on sites like this.

It is precisely because I am well integrated into normal society that I am keen for others on both sides (those with no experience and those with a full trans history themselves) to see that far from being isolated and considered freakish a postop CAN be known for what she is and yet accepted on equal terms with a natal female!

Ironically I sometimes think that it is actually more difficult for those in the trans comunity to accept that fact than for those outside. But it is true I promise. You CAN have it both ways if you really want to.

But as I say, it's an individual decision and not one which any of us has the right to criticise others over. Each of us must do it the way we feel comfortable with.

That is really awesome Jenny.  I am glad things have gone so well for you.  I also just want to say that putting yourself out there like that really does help us all.

So thank you .

Quote from: Janet Lynn on February 06, 2010, 12:57:15 AM
If you spent time in prison, would you tell the world?  If you were raped, would you tell the world?

I don't think so, unless they had a need to know, and then you make that determination.  The same is true about your medical past, and that is what we are talking about.

Some should take the lead and show the world that Transpeople exist.  But for others it is time to settle in to a peaceful life free of the pain and anguish.

I couldn't agree more!

ME too.
It really depends on how big of a deal you see it being, if you see it as being as big as getting a wisdom tooth removed then why share it, sure it was a huge ordeal for you at the time but it was to only change a small part of you.
If you see it as a big deal and something that changed your life on a grand scale then yeah you will probably feel the need to sit someone down and go through it in detail and make sure they're 'cool' with it.
Personally it currently is a big deal for me but I think post-op I"ll be like "I was once a guy??? oooh yeah that's right lol!".. "yeah I had to have an op to fix a little complication, but all is good now meh". Too much playing down?? *shrugs*.

Quote from: Muffin on February 06, 2010, 07:37:51 PMToo much playing down?? *shrugs*.

No, not at all. That time "before" is fast becoming just a bad dream to me, and like any traumatic event we have a tendency to just want to forget it ever happened. How can you fault someone with PTSD for never wanting to be reminded again of the trauma?

I can look back now and understand how so many of those things that I was confused about and things I did all through my life were directly related to the affliction of GID. I know I've always been female, and I've known it at least since the first time that little 4 year old girl tried to shamefully hide that awful thing between her legs and was reprimanded for it. My life has now become as clear as glass. Some here perhaps had it easy, others suffered unspeakably.

The good news is, we survived. But I will never, ever know what it's like to be "normal", to be happy in the gender to which I was born, or to grow up without the horrible knowledge that I am wrong and should have been born something else. There's no possible way I can ever know, because I've never known. So transitioning is doing a lot more for me than just correcting one mistake; it's correcting a lifetime of them. The past might have made me what I am today, but I don't have to let it make me what I'll be tomorrow.

Quote from: Muffin on February 06, 2010, 07:37:51 PM
It really depends on how big of a deal you see it being...

I don't think it is that big a deal either. But it is still nicer to be able to fully share the whole of your life experience with a partner.

And maybe I've been lucky with my partners but none of the four or five that I've had over my life has ever thought it was a big deal either.  But in a funny way the simple act of sharing and the fact that I was willing to trust them did actually bring us closer...

I dunno - I guess I'm just the sort of girl who likes to tell people about my wisdom teeth then.

I thought I'd share this:

Quote from: Lynn Conway's Career Retrospective, Part VI
Stealth was an essential phase in my life after the turbulent period of my transition. I had to enter stealth just to safely live and find employment back then. Even today most post-op women choose to quietly "woodwork" or "go stealth" after transition, in order to experience full personality integration and assimilation as women, and to build strong new relationships as women.

My emergence from long-term stealth as a fully assimilated woman has been refreshing and invigorating. After a period of hesitancy and uncertainty, I faced the fact that my past was going to be exposed, and that I had to take control of that process and inform people close to me about my past. This has been a process of discovery and a very new stage in my life. Fortunately my persona and my important relationships were well-enough established before I came out so that I've encountered few negative effects - and there have been many benefits,from being quietly out, as well see.

source

I don't see transitioning as anything more than a big pain in the wallet. Once upon a time I did, but now it's just an on-going annoyance in my life. I don't have any particular personal reasons to choose stealth (whatever level of it I might be able to achieve), or to be out. I don't have any problem with people that choose stealth, though I applaud people who choose to be out, for exactly the reasons Jenny described.

I like to fantacize that I am so gorgeous that the only thing that was keeping me from total stealth was my public political activities for transhealth issues. Everybody is a legend in their own mind including John Legend.  When one lived the first half of ones life with one legal identity, it is hard to destroy the paper trail, even if you look like Sarah Palin or Mariska Hargitay. You can't even go stealth if you write your talking points on your left hand. I may be too retarded to go stealth.

case in point, from earlier in Lynn Conway's life:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Retrospective5.html

Quote- - - during that period, I had several interactions with Michael Schrage  of the Washington Post, who wrote an article about me (see the 6-1-83 Washington Post clipping above) - - only just recently (in mid 1999) Michael told me that he'd done a routine background check on me back then, and had turned up something unexpected - - - a negative result of a type that I had not thought about when constructing and deploying my "stealth background" paperwork and connections - - - Michael had called Columbia University to do some backgrounding with my Professors there about the kind of student I was, etc. - - - ah, but he discovered that "none of them had ever heard of me", even though I was officially listed as in the Class of '62 - - - it didn't take him long to backtrack my records and guess what was going on - - - he'd discussed his findings during his workup of the SCI story with the Post's editors, and they pondered whether to "out me" or not - - fortunately, they decided that it wasn't relevant to the technological research story (whew!), realizing that DoD must have known anyways, etc., because of the requirement for a Top Secret clearance for such work - - - ( I learned a lesson from this: I wouldn't have made a perfect spy after all!)

Gosh, it has been a while since I have posted here. About Stealth, I see that more people could care less about being stealth, that was my opinion the last time I was here and most would say they were going to be stealth. You don't have to tell anyone about anything, it is all up to you. I'm post op about 7 years now and I don't tell anything but if someone asks I will tell them. Most people I know do know about me. It doesn't seem to matter at all. Most people where I work know and I work with children. Been driving a school bus for about 7 years now.