So, for some count of years I have lived as a female and that’s all people know. IT wasn’t a conscious decision or done to please anyone, it just best fit who I am and how I wanted my life to work.

The very scholarly writing of whoever wrote this article is just another tactic to fragment transsexual people. You need a university degree just to understand it and it is written that way intentionally. I find that sad.

[What is equally bothersome about Cristan Williams’s piece, “A rant about MTF stealth,” is its propensity for victim-blaming those who consented, some under institutional duress, to a “stealth” existence for their own lives as trans people, as a precondition for their welfare. It also blames by association any trans person who lacks the situational affordance to live openly as trans, where forcible disclosure can be extremely hazardous, and where involuntary disclosure can jeopardize other basic securities. Further, one’s personal decision to not live openly as a trans person is not a tacit endorsement of “stealth” prescriptivism — a distinction which isn’t made in Williams’s essay.]

First of all, you chose to not define what I meant when I used “stealth” to your readers. The piece makes it painfully clear that in the context of this piece “stealth” means 100% completely closeted. In this piece, the “stealth” I’m critiquing is the type where you lie to your husband, where you get your parents to lie for you and where you lie to all of your doctors. I am excruciatingly clear that I support privacy and controlling who has your information because it empowers you while positioning yourself in the closet takes that choice away from you. Once in the closet, you no longer have the option to give and withhold information; you must withhold it at all costs or risk the life you built upon the lies. You’re characterization of what I’m critiquing is false; you’re equivocating.

How does your characterization square with the following quote taken directly from this piece?

[Being completely closeted – being stealth – takes away your freedom of choice. After a while, you’ve constructed a life whereby you can no longer enjoy the freedom of sharing your history with the people you care about because to do so would risk the very relationships you so value. Choose to give yourself the power of choice. Be judicious about who you give this very important piece of yourself to. Privacy is a good thing in that it’s empowering; preserve your right to pick and choose who knows your history. Choose the power of choice and use it to give yourself the best possible shot at a happy life.]

The piece is certainly a polemic against being closeted. You might take issue with this being a polemic instead of a academic refutation, but at least critique what I actually said instead of creating such a blatant misrepresentation to critique.

I liked what you appeared to be driving at, but a lot of the people you are, in fact, aiming for do not have academic backgrounds. Our brothers and sisters (trans men, women, gnc persons) are often not the products of arcane courses of study. But, to reach them seems to me to be of great importance.

I can’t imagine an urban, white trans woman who trades in her body in a cheap motel giving much time to your arguments. Yet, I can imagine that your arguments could be very important to her life and well being. See what I mean?

One of my sheroes is Dorothy Parker. She was nothing if not educated. But, she was simple and concise. With remarkably little knowledge of her milieu a reader would be well aware that she had just skewered some pompous ass. H.L Mencken could do the same. Both used “big words.” But, occasionally, not one per sentence. Maybe four in 1000 words.

You have important things to say. Things that can encourage others to talk to one another, and to you. You can still be academic when you wish without prolixity and being muddled.

But, I’d simply encouraged you and your compatriot to remember that a writer’s job is, first, to communicate with her audience, or possible audience. Then she might look to impress.

Best of fortune with the blog.

I write depending on venue, context, and audience. This piece is, as you felt, written in the context of an academic critical analysis. That is an important part of the work done for the Cisnormativity project.

I am also aware of my audiences when I write in other capacities, and I accommodate for that. These have included advertising, technical copy, storytelling, and other means.

In short, if I understand correctly, your grievance with this piece is its arguably bad form, not its function.

Geez, is there any possibility that writing could be returned to something concise, informative and accessible rather than a goobledy-gook of pseudo-sociological and pseudo-psychological catch phrases, internet-inspired “memes” and essays that appear to be paid for by the pound rather than by their ability to communicate important notions about life in these States?

I think that all of us have what amount to upper-class, white, university-educated (somewhat) word-troves and severe infatuations with the meanderings of our own minds. (For instance, when one “analyzes” Suzan Cooke’s or Christan essays it’s perhaps better to analyze the writing than the deep psychological implications of her essay. In reading it struck me that the author was basically playing with her own reactions and hadn’t the self-awareness to see that.

What does “situational affordance,” mean? Could it be “able to afford.” yeah, that’s what I thought. (That was simply the most egregious example of trying to heighten language that’s perfectly serviceable for communication without prolixity.)

For our words to communicate we need to focus on communicating. Otherwise I am simply trying to baffle folks. I thought some of your ideas were useful for folks to discuss, but wasn’t sure I was understanding any of what you said.

I used to teach grammar and writing to college freshmen. I value creativity and using language in striking ways, but “memetically-speaking” ;) the most creative uses I can make of language are enmeshed in others understanding and thinking about what I’ve written.

All the newest catchphrases in Academe cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Another problem stems, IMO, from applying the terms “out” and “stealth” (or closeted, if you like: it’s not like it hasn’t been used, too) to the trans/cis -pair.

Firstly, the terms come from an understanding where (cissexist) trans/cis -status is more or less permanent. They imply “once trans, always trans”. I don’t find this to be the case. While people may well identify me as trans, I sure as hell am not trans in the same sense I was, say, twenty years ago. I don’t fulfill the clinical criteria any more. I don’t have any persistent “cross-gender desires”, whatever the fuck that may mean. I don’t wish to be taken for another gender. In a sentence: I am no longer trans in a clinical sense. I am trans in a sense, if “trans” is taken to mean “has rebelled/is rebelling against the gender assigned at birth”. But does the word “trans” mean that to average cis person? The heck it does. “Trans” still means anything from “perverted” to “sick” to “weird” to “ooh, interesting” to “may I see your crotch, no, really, what’ve you got in your pants” – all of which I find totally objectionable and objectifying.

Secondly, since I am in the position to keep (uninteresting to me, but, it seems, very, VERY interesting to some people) bits and pieces of my past undisclosed, I do. Yes, this requires oodles of privilege. I’m white, professional middle-class, educated, live in a very well-off country in the EU and can afford some private health care (that’s the way you keep the public health from being too nosy, but even private health care can be bad). Yes, it sucks: that privilege is required to do this is wrong. Anyone should be able to access decent health care with no unnecessary prodding into one’s life. Anyone should be able to enjoy privacy, respect and peace – without the need to control what you say to whom about your gendered past, or present. But that’s not the way it works now, and you can’t live in the future. You and I live in the now, and now sucks badly.

Thirdly, there’s the question of what to do about now. Cissexism needs to be fought, and dismantled, along with the rest of the kyriarchy. I’m questioning just how much just “being out” (as in, will wear the badge of trans voluntarily) helps. I fail to see how it changes anything much: the medical gatekeeping is still in place. Workplace discrimination is rife. Pity hasn’t built houses for the homeless. Many, many trans-identified people still eat or drink themselves into oblivion. This still isn’t a very nice world in which to rebel against the gender assigned to you at birth, and I don’t understand how painting a big bullseye onto my fat arse would help in any meaningful way. If I were to fall onto my figurative sword and come “out” and tell the cis-identified people that:

- hey, your system is fucked and really, I’d rather see it all go. I demand you all relinquish all legal and medical and biological and what-have-you gender.
- yes, I hate with a passion the things you bastards did to me – yes, including the Nice, Understanding Lefty Queer Feminist People who still wanted to put me in a neat, little gendered box of their choosing.

…would it help? And how much of chance I’d have of making a difference? Fuck all of a chance. People don’t respond to hate well, and I hate this cissexist kyriarchy with a passion.

On the other hand, I do chip away at the kyriarchy by telling my story to people I know, love and trust. There’s more of them every year. It’s slow, invisible work, but I work like the seasons – I gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) erode away the fear and maybe, just maybe make cis-identified people see the error of their ways. Some of them will probably repent, too, and start making amends. It just isn’t very visible, and neither is it “out” in any traditional sense. It sure isn’t “stealth” or “closeted”, either.

In the end, seasons level mountains into plains.