Transgender visibility is at an all-time high, with the great Laverne Cox being featured on the cover of Time, Janet Mock’s memoir Redefining Realness getting plenty of attention, and so on. This is all wonderful (though, as demonstrated by the troubling popularity of a deeply transphobic song on America’s Got Talent last week, in some ways, the cultural struggle to acknowledge the humanity of trans folks is still just getting started). But I worry that the images of transgender people that are getting exposure within the wider culture are overwhelmingly images of transgender women who have what might be referred to as “passing privilege.”

I’m deeply conflicted on the term passing privilege. On the one hand, no transgender woman is passing herself off as something she isn’t, which is the troubling connotation of “passing.” When a transgender woman starts being seen by others as a woman, it actually marks the first time in her life that she’s being seen as who and what she actually is. But on the other hand, I think that it is essential to acknowledge that being seen this way is, within the transgender world, a privilege, and one that will be forever off-limits to many transgender people. I say this not because I want any transgender people who have this privilege to feel guilty, to not embrace it and enjoy it, but because I worry that the experiences of transgender people who don’t have this privilege are far less visible, and that if the broader culture continues to be exposed largely to images of transgender women who have this privilege, there may develop a sense that transgender women with passing privilege are more legitimately, authentically women than transgender women without passing privilege. Actually, this sense has already been developed–you can see it by comparing the Youtube comments on videos by transgender women with passing privilege to the comments on Youtube videos by transgender women without it–and it needs to be actively challenged. The message needs to be loudly and clearly sent that all transgender women are women. 

Yes, this is a personal issue for me, because I am constantly reminded just how deeply we associate appearance and authenticity. When I appear in livestreams at work, a huge percentage of the comments that come in on chat are things like “Is that a dude or a chick?” and “Is that a tranny?” But even well-meaning people often cannot see past my appearance to just accept that I am the woman I am. One woman recently, in an attempt to playfully flirt with me–I think to suggest that she found me alluring and exotic, or something–made a joking reference to using the gender-neutral pronoun “xe” for me, and other people have told me that they find me beautiful not as a man or as a woman but as a person. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to occupy a space outside of “male” or “female,” but I identify very strongly as a woman. Yet if I judge based on the perceptions and reactions of others, I seem to be trapped between genders.

And this is hardly just about me. There are thousands and thousands of transgender women in this situation, transgender women who are as much women as any cisgender woman and as much women as any transgender woman with passing privilege, but who constantly have their femaleness questioned, doubted, or outright denied by others. As narratives about transgender experience become more commonplace in the broader culture, it’s essential that we have narratives about the experiences of all kinds of transgender people, so that we are all elevated by the struggle.