You are living your life with as little interference from teh tran as possible. This is a good thing. It does, however, widen the disconnect between you and alot of your past, which is not such a good thing (as it causes you to stress out over stuff like this).

Given your experiences of what happened when the tran did touch your life, yeah, I’m seeing why you would be as protective of your privacy as you have. But I think there will come a time when you will want to reconcile your memories with who you are. You are aware of the burden that knowledge of the system is, and have dealt with it by bringing up walls around not only that knowledge, but around yourself as well.

as i often do, i will let someone else’s words say it all for me.

I must admit I’ve been coming to the same conclusion as you, over the years. I don’t consider myself stealth, I just feel no need to confess to all and sundry – pretty much only health professionals and sexual partners. I’ve always worked on the assumption that I stick out like a sore thumb, and had the attitude, etc. to go with it. Yet I keep on having experiences that show me the only likely way I’m going to be outed is by association. For example, last time I changed doctors, they asked what prescription meds I was on, I described them, they said “those are very high doses” “I have no ovaries” *goes away to read notes* “Ah – ok”. Even that probably only happened because I’m on quite a high dose still. Some guy I worked with for years, had vehement technical arguments with, where I’m sure my voice would have dropped fairly deep, was of the adamant opinion that one day I’d change my mind and get pregnant. One of my girlfriends is a bit of a newb, however, we all went to a party with her new girlfriend, and afterwards we heard through the grapevine that no one could tell, and were thinking about it just because of association. Sometimes, even association isn’t enough – I was once in the loos at a club, and heard some girls talking about the friends I’d gone with. “Have you seen those trannies” “Which ones?” “The ones near the butch dyke with a mohawk” >_<

The thing is, I know on an intellectual level that it’s bloody stupid to think anyone knows. If you dye my hair brown and straighten it, I’m basically a carbon copy of my sister, except I’m thinner (I still have the widest hips in my extended chosen family by a long chalk, and we’re not all trannies), very slightly shorter, and have a higher pitched voice, almost exactly the same as my mother. It’s just not enough to overcome that lingering bit of paranoia.

I guess I’ve not escaped that “safe bubble”, but that’d basically mean leaving all my partners and my long term friends (which is most of them), and that’s not something I’m willing to do.