How trans shame turns to pride: Stephanie Lynnette's story

What does it mean to live stealth as a trans person?

Living stealth means going about your life without telling people you are trans, so that nobody at work, in your friendship group or on a date knows. Plenty of trans people choose it, and privacy is a perfectly good reason to. Stephanie's reason was different. She came out at 13, transitioned through secondary school in rural Cornwall using children and young people's services, and from the age of 18 until about 2021 she lived entirely stealth. Her goal, she told me, was to be a stealth trans woman, and she was "deeply, deeply ashamed of being trans" for a really long time.

Being private about your history and being ashamed of it can look identical from the outside. Stephanie is clear about which one it was for her, and that clarity is a big part of why her story is useful to hear.

Where does shame about being trans come from?

Stephanie described two sources. The first was society: people telling her that her identity was wrong, or that who she was was sinful. The second came from inside. She had finished her medical transition at 22, and part of her had always assumed that afterwards she would no longer be trans, that in society's eyes she would simply be a woman, and that this was the whole aim. The trans young people she had gathered around her shared that goal, so nobody was questioning it.

Both sources are learned. Nobody is born ashamed of being trans; the shame arrives through what people say and what they leave unsaid. I put it to Stephanie that every one of those words, "weird", "abnormal", "wrong", "sinful", takes, in my words from the conversation, "a little tiny peg, a little bit deeper, a peg of shame". That is Dr Helen Webberley, Gender Expert and Medical Educator, describing how it accumulates. It is also why it can be unlearned: if shame was put there by other people's words, different words and different people can start taking it out.

Why does trying to conform make trans people unhappy?

Because conforming means performing somebody else's idea of who you should be. Stephanie is not describing a problem with her transition, which was right for her. She is describing the idea that transition has an end point after which you stop talking about it, and that the end point is a particular kind of woman. Growing up, she did not see political activism, she did not see the beauty in gender expansiveness (the full range of ways people live their gender), and she had few non-binary friends. Transition looked like a binary with a finish line.

Her verdict on trying to meet it is blunt: "I've never been more miserable" than when she was trying to conform to society's version of what type of woman she should be. Along the way she discovered parts of her personality that were worth shouting about and advocating for. She now identifies as a queer trans woman, and she is proud of both words.

If you are exhausted by trying to be the right kind of woman, man or anything else, whoever you are, the exhaustion is telling you something about the pressure, not about you.

Is shame something everyone feels, not only trans people?

Yes, and Stephanie finds something unifying in that. She pointed to bedwetting in children, shame about periods in young girls, not getting the grades you wanted, not following a career your parents admire. In adulthood it carries on: sexual orientation, but also a heterosexual person dating someone of a different race, or someone who is deaf or blind. Society has unspoken rules, and we all learn them young.

Seen that way, shame about being trans is shame about breaking an unspoken rule. It is not evidence that you are wrong. Stephanie calls shame "quite a beautiful thing" precisely because everyone has felt it at some point, which means there is always somebody who understands the feeling, even if they have never felt it for this reason.

How did Stephanie know she was trans at 13?

She had language earlier than most. As a very young child she knew someone who transitioned: the spouse of a next-door neighbour, in a large, close-knit, low-income part of Cornwall. The community somewhat shunned them, but Stephanie learned that it was possible to change from male to female. Trans characters on television added to that, even when some were caricatures. She was also a very feminine boy who was constantly told so, and people assumed she would grow up to be gay.

When she started secondary school she received counselling because she thought she was homosexual, since that was what everyone had told her she would be. It was through student support services that she gained a greater understanding of gender dysphoria and gender incongruence, the mismatch between sex and identity. In her own words, she was a boy until she was 13, and then she was a girl. She referred to her younger self as a boy, using he/him pronouns, and stressed that this is individual to her and that other trans people would answer differently. It took time, she said, and there was no in-between period in her mind.

People often tell me the first thing that helped them was simply having a word for it. Stephanie's story shows how much a single neighbour, a television character or a school counsellor can mean when you are young.

Is it okay to ask a trans person questions?

Yes, if the question is well meant. Stephanie believes the biggest excluder facing the trans community right now is fear of asking questions the wrong way. Trans people are a small share of the population (she put it at about 0.5 per cent; I can't point you to a specific source for that figure, so take it as her estimate), so most people do not know one well. Curiosity is natural, and meeting it with hostility closes down the very conversation that builds understanding.

Stephanie said it is not any trans person's job to educate people, but she is comfortable answering well-intended questions, and that is why she went into the work she does. When we talked she was happy to be asked questions in imperfect language, which is how most people ask them. Two things follow. Ask the person in front of you rather than expecting one answer to speak for everybody, and take what they tell you as theirs. And if you are trans and tired of being asked, you do not owe anybody an explanation.

What changes when trans shame becomes pride?

The goal moves. Stephanie began with the aim of disappearing into the expected shape of womanhood, and she is now somebody who, as I told her, "beams from every part of you", not just inside pride but broadcasting it so that other people can see. For her, that came from advocacy and from the gender expansiveness she had not seen as a teenager, not from a better disguise.

That will not be everyone's route. Some people are happiest living quietly and privately, and that is just as valid. What Stephanie's story shows is that the shame is not part of being trans. It was put there by other people and by an impossible standard, and it eased once she stopped measuring herself against that standard.

The facts in this piece come from my interview with Stephanie and were last checked in November 2026.

If there is a topic that you would like me to cover, just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley, Gender Expert and Medical Educator