Can You Integrate?

This is something that I have been saying and it is a hard word to avoid using, there really are not many other words that you can use, I have been using integrate instead of passing. Most of the time I am integrated into society, I go about my business and no one knows that I am trans.

Op-ed: I'm a Trans Man Who Doesn't 'Pass' — And You Shouldn't Either
To paraphrase Janet Mock: Trans people aren't 'passing' as men or women. We're being.
The Advocate
By Aiden James Kosciesza
May 20 2015

Out of all the words in the transgender lexicon, “passing” is the one I hate most. And that’s no small feat.
[…]
The term “passing,” when applied to transgender people, means being perceived as cisgender while presenting as one’s authentic gender identity. There’s a lot of power in that. When people meet me and assume that I am a cisgender man, I am afforded the privilege of choosing whether I disclose my transgender identity, and when. Many trans* folks pursue this power through clothing choices, hormones, surgery, voice training, or even etiquette lessons, and I’m all for that.

For a few trans women they are fully integrated in to society as a cis woman, for a lot more trans woman they are integrated into society most of the time except when they are under close observation then there are some thing that identify them as trans. It maybe their voice, their body size or type, little clues that categorize them as male. I joke if you can't tell I'm trans, then you need glasses and a hearing aid. While for others they are constantly in the spotlight.

For many of us, the goal of transition is equally balanced between feeling comfortable in our own skin and showing the world who we really are. The problem is that when trans* people use the word “passing” for what we’ve achieved, it diminishes everything that we’re fighting for.

To “pass” for something immediately connotes deception and untruth. Think of plagiarists passing off someone else’s work as their own, a look-alike cousin who could easily pass for his relative, or the mocking lines of Shakespeare’s Portia in Merchant of Venice: “God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.”

To look at trans* people expressing their authentic selves and say that they “pass” for men or women is to diminish their identity by implying that it’s an act. Telling a trans* woman that she “passes” is like saying “You’re not a real woman, but good job faking it.”

It is hard to get away from using “passing” as I write this I am trying to think of another way of saying “Passing Privilege” and I draw a blank, so I tossed it out onto Facebook to see what others come up with.

I know that some trans people will not get this and feel the it is nitpicking, but words have power. It is as the author said “they 'pass' for men or women is to diminish their identity by implying that it’s an act.” I am not passing, I am a woman. I am a woman with a unique history.