Well, I don't think I have a choice whether to be stealth or not. I'm deaf. I enjoy going to deaf events and conversing in sign language, because I really understand the conversation. 95% of our friends are deaf. I used to be that person who had "hearing complications" and didn't know sign, and I was so miserable and angry and suicidal because I felt like no one understood me and I couldn't understand them (literally). I didn't know there was a deaf community until I went to a deaf residential school in my teenager years.

You know the saying "It's a small world"? That can be used to describe the deaf community, perfectly. I'd meet someone new and we chat, come to find out s/he is the best friend of my sorority sister and also knows several of my other friends. It's really an complex web of connections that is unavoidable.

But I'm okay with this. The deaf community has a great group of MtF role models but less than 5 "visible" FtM role models for the kids. I say "visible" because they don't hide the fact that they're trans but they aren't really being advocates. "Yeah, I'm trans but leave me alone. Oh, you're facing discrimination? Go to a support group, not my problem."

The reason why this is important to me is because many of these kids has hearing parents who don't even bother to learn sign language, so they are always "a step behind" in learning about ... everything. Sometimes, the things they learn can be very Phobic-Everything because their resources are very limited. We can't even watch that many videos on YouTube because the captioning SUCKS big time. Turn off your audio and turn on the captioning, if it's available. The deaf schools, the politics sometimes can be so bad that it's basically taboo to talk about anything related to gender transformation and sexual orientation. Staff and faculty could lose their jobs and their future job prospects could be damaged because other deaf schools will know what happened.

So yeah. In a way, I'm "forced" to be public but I'm really okay with it. I don't want to be the one standing on the pillar, being VERY public but I want the deaf community to know and understand that being trans is okay. Especially the kids.