There Is No Behind Our Backs
April 5, 2012 at 9:00 am Natalie Reed

http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/05/there-is-no-behind-our-backs/

I get a bit frustrated on occasion with how much us transy types limit ourselves when discussing the issue of passing. We hold ourselves back from really getting into the thick of what it suggests and implies, how it operates, what it means about concepts of minority status and privilege in a general sense beyond just what it means for us, what it means in terms of cisnormative assumptions that "passing" is even really possible in the first place not just what it means that it is, etc. Complicated and loaded enough as it is, so much seems to get so regularly left out of that discussion.

One thing that I really wish we were a bit more willing to talk about is how while "passing" is an extremely important and perhaps much more central issue for trans people than for other oppressed groups, given how it impacts not only risk and discrimination but the validation of one's identity (similar to how the idea of being "out of the closet" means something entirely different in a trans context than it does in LGB contexts or atheist contexts), passing is nonetheless something that does operate along other axes of identity. Class-passing, passing as straight, passing as able-bodied, even passing as white, are all things that operate in the social dynamics of those respective issues and markers of identity.

Intersectionality is obviously important, and being willing to consider and educate yourself in how discrimination and oppression operate along other axes than just the ones that affect you directly is pretty fundamental to being a decent human being.