Welcome To Our World

Oppression is directly proportional with how well you blend into the dominate society. It does not matter if we are talking about race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation or transgenderism it all relates to if you can integrate into society; what we call going stealth.

When you get “read” as “other” that is when the trouble begins; when a cisgender woman is taken for a trans-woman she learns what it is like to be trans*.

Mistaken For a Trans Woman I Got Initiated Into Sisterhood
Huffington Gay Voices
By Victoria Bond
Posted: 02/17/2014

"Stop looking at my little brother!" a voice demanded. I turned to my left and then right. A small, dark haired boy wearing coke bottle glasses sat beside me. That was the first I had noticed him. I guessed he was "the little brother."

In sagging jeans, a baggy leather jacket and a bulky black cap, this person verbally aggressing on me looked as if their clothes were swallowing him whole. "Yeah, I'm talking to you," he followed up. "You freak!"

His hostility pierced. I tensed. For more subway stops than I knew I had been an object of disgust. Given I am a bisexual woman married to a man I found my sexual identity being visible at all rich. I am pretty sure this man saw a trans woman when he looked at me. Maybe he didn't; maybe he saw something else. There's no way now of being absolutely sure (and in that moment I wasn't anxious for him to identify his trigger). And frankly, it doesn't matter. He identified me as LGBTQ even if I can't draw a direct line between his malice and the specific group in our community.
[...]
"I should stab you for that." He cocked his head but otherwise remained still leaning against the double doors. I stood slowly and walked toward the doors at the other end of the car. What sense would it have made to engage in a confrontation verbal or otherwise? Especially since he might have actually had a knife. Thank goodness the train pulled into my stop. A man with salt and pepper hair also exited:

"I don't know what you are, but that guy seems crazy."

She stood out of the crowd; he had marked her as “other” and that is the root of all oppression, to punish people, sometimes with violence who are different from us. She goes on to write,

The irony of it all made me laugh uncontrollably. Uncomfortable, the middle-aged man quickened his stride up the platform. I don't know what you are. The phrase struck deeper than the other stranger's knife threat. Earlier in the evening, strutting down a runway, I was quite literally a model woman. On the subway after midnight, the antagonistic homophobe interpreted me as a sexual threat. The less openly hostile passerby only reiterated the fear my body gave rise to. Beside my big hair, the heavy make-up and my thinness the other factor that scripted me as a target in a public space -- rendered my humanity unrecognizable -- was my brown skin.

For gay men if they blend into society and can pass as a straight man they do not face the pressure that society places on the “other” but if they gay man has feminine mannerism he become that target of hostiles. When Ms. Bond was thought to be trans* she became a target.