The Privilege of Passing

A couple walks down the street, hand in hand. They’re giggling, hugging, and engaged in the moment. While it may look like a normal, healthy, heterosexual couple from the outside, they’re anything but that. What you don’t see under that exterior, is all the issues that occur within a queer existence, and the teamwork it takes to tackle them, while still trying to look acceptable. In LGBT spaces, we can risk looking foreign, unwelcome, or like we’re not queer enough, and wind up ostracized despite very much fitting within the group.

Passing is something that I’ve only ever been questionably good at. I prefer my hair to be short, often referring to myself as a cockatoo when it’s styled. I like things that show off my broad shoulders, and while it’s hard to find things that don’t accentuate my butt and hips, I will often dress with more masculine styles. I like wearing a lot of large heavy jewelry, and my child calls me an “elder goth” which I know makes me stand out. I balance it all by enjoying wearing makeup, which I feel like creates a strange sort of androgyny that doesn’t claim being neither masculine nor feminine, but both at the same time in a strong way. It’s how I affirm my gender, or lack there of in my case.

I happen to have never grown a gender in my lifetime, which took me a good amount of time to figure out. For the longest time I just thought I was weird, and was fine with that. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I looked at a lot of the thought processes that had occurred in my life from a more objective view, and contemplated the idea of gender more closely. As soon as I put the pieces together, and realized that I was nonbinary, more specifically agender, and told friends, they simply agreed with how much sense it made. Over time, as I accepted being transgender, and everything to come with that, I found comfort and happiness in it. Luckily, my body shape holds the same sort of androgyny that my outward appearance often does, which doesn’t create a lot of dysphoria. What’s better was that as I continued looking at my body as a “person’s” body, rather than a “woman’s” body, the happier I was with it, because it didn’t fit the societal standard of what would be considered beautiful or sexy.

There’s certainly some amount of physical transition that I would prefer to make with time. I’m waiting for a safer climate, but in the meantime, I’m weird but generally pass as cisgender. That makes things far easier when standing next to my cisgender male partner, at least in public. In many ways, he also needs to worry about passing when we’re in certain spaces.

Generally he manages to visually pass as straight more often than not. While he enjoys some softer imagery, overall he dresses like most straight cisgender men who happen to be a little goth. He keeps his hair and beard long, which is normal for many musicians. Not venturing too far from jeans and a shirt, usually the only thing that might look odd is the amount of jewelry he wears. He tends to prefer larger, more masculine looking jewelry though, so it doesn’t get too much of a second glance. Walking down the street you would never guess that his sexuality has been something he struggled with a portion of his life. At least until you interacted with him for fifteen minutes, but that’s not as much the point.

Luckily, he happens to find androgyny attractive. Usually that takes shape in sitting right between masculine and feminine, but he enjoys my stomping on both ends of the spectrum just as enjoyable. He celebrates my gender discoveries, and the ways I feel affirmed, because he’s attracted to me, rather than the fact that I was assigned female at birth. He’s also just as fond as I am of the incredibly nontraditional relationship structure we happen to have, which most men would not be even remotely comfortable with.

Still, when we walk down the street, we largely look like a straight couple. The people who go through, without a second glance, and we’re aware of it. We don’t get looks of disgust when we kiss in public, or go on a date together. Never will we be banned from staying in a hotel due to being an openly gay appearing couple. People who don’t know me, won’t be likely to try and take my child out of their home claiming that it’s some form of brainwashing to be around someone who isn’t heterosexual or cisgender. We, as a widely affectionate straight passing couple, are welcome everywhere. We are celebrated, and we are careful.

There are many places where we don’t even chance going for the possibility of being found out. While out of the home, we try to be mindful of the language we use with each other, to keep each other safe. I will often be careful of how I balance my gender expression, so that I’m not leaning too far into the masculine when we’re going somewhere new, or to different neighborhoods. We have to think about the inside jokes we make about each other depending on where we are, so that the wrong person doesn’t put two and two together. If we’re in public and someone manages to see that we’re only passing, it could mean bad service in a restaurant, or listening to some ill comments, but it could just as easily mean my partner is in actual danger if he goes outside to vape alone. It could mean I get attacked after mentioning looking at bottom surgery a little too loudly.

I’m well aware of the privilege that exists in our relationship, our family, or our future marriage. We get to straddle the line of having the freedoms of straight couples, while juggling the concerns all queer couples share. I also know plenty of other people in the exact same relationship structure that we have now. So, whether you’re walking down the street and think you see a couple like any other, or are at pride and see a couple that you feel doesn’t belong, know there is more to them than it may seem. They could be any wonderful and fascinating combination of humans within the world, and trying to navigate their own struggles within that.