We Wear the Mask Review

This week's book is We Wear the Mask: 15 Stories of Passing in America, a collection of personal essays from people who "pass" in different ways.

I came into this book with an understanding of passing that came mostly from my trans friends.  My trans-men friends who look stereotypically male don't get as many micro-agressions when they walk down the street.  People don't openly stare at them when they ride the bus.  Strangers don't stop them and ask about their genitalia.  People don't freak out as often when they use the restroom.  People assume they're cis-men and grant them the privileges (which here translates to "basic human decency") that cis-men enjoy.  I also had an understanding that light-skinned brown people can pass as white for access to the privileges that white people enjoy (again privileges that everyone ought to have.)  My son is white-passing, and he's going to have the privilege of not getting searched at airport security the way my husband is every single time he flies.

I viewed passing as access to the resources and respect that everyone should have in the first place.

So I found the forward of this book to be jarring when Brando Skyhorse is quoted: "Passing is when someone tries to get something tangible to improve their daily quality of life by occupying a space meant for someone else."  So the space "meant" for cis-men isn't "meant" for trans-men?  The space for white people isn't "meant" for brown people?  I am bothered by this.

I was thinking of it as punching up, because while I think anyone who wants access to white spaces should have access, I don't think anyone who wants access to, say, Native American spaces should be granted access.  And that's where Skyhorse is coming from.  His parents were Hispanic until his mother decided she was Native American and raised her son that way.  It's a fascinating story, and it didn't fit with my understanding of passing.

This anthology has a number of essays from people of color passing as a different ethnic group.  Achy Obejas is a proud Cuban, but while living in Hawai'i, no one had any concept of where Cuba was or what it was like, so they would say, "That's like Puerto Rico, right?  So you're Puerto Rican."  

This is one of the main take-aways of this anthology: there are two parts to passing.  One is altering your appearance or actions in order to fit better with a group, and the second is that how well you "fit" is decided by other people making assumptions about you.  Sometimes you don't have to alter anything about yourself for people to assume things, like when Patrick Rosal is mistaken for a waiter at the National Book Awards.  If you fit into someone's stereotype of a group, they'll mentally put you in that group without you having any say in the matter.  On the other hand, Rafia Zakaria, a Muslim American, talks about how she passes through US customs and Pakistani customs by changing her clothes, one to emphasize her American-ness and one to emphasize her Muslim-ness.  She's working her knowledge of what other people expect, what other people want to see.  She's not lying.  She's both American and Muslim.  She's just pushing the aspect that will help ease the experience and thereby passing.  

There is also talk of how if you don't fit into someone's stereotypical box, their ideal of what a group is like, they get angry.  Strangers angrily ask about my non-binary friends' sex, because they don't fit in the neat boxes that people have created for "man" and "woman."  People in Hawai'i didn't have a concept of Cuba, so they put Obejas in the Puerto Rico box.  I'm reminded of my mother-in-law's story about visiting the US back in the 60s.  While she and her father were taking a train, the white conductor told them to go sit in the "colored" car.  They moved to the colored car, where the black conductor told them to go back and sit with the white people.

I'd like to end with a quote from Gabrielle Bellot's essay about her experience as a trans woman.

"And it can be difficult, though it is necessary, to learn that passing is not our goal if we identify as binary transgender women, as I do.  We are women, no matter what we look like, even if not all of us can pass for a woman by the statistical norms of what cisgender females look like.  There is nothing inherently wrong with wishing to pass visually, aurally, or otherwise as cisgender; but we do ourselves an intellectual disservice if we fail to realize that the language of passing implies both temporariness and trickery, and aiming to be recognized as women, regardless of what we look like, is  much greater goal."

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