Deborah Ballard’s Living in Stealth: Undercover is a book that refuses to soften the truth of what it means to grow up transgender in a world that denies your existence. It is not a story about transition or the hopeful arc of becoming one’s authentic self. Instead, it is a haunting exploration of what happens when a girl is forced to live her entire life undercover, wearing the mask of boyhood, hiding the truth even from those closest to her.
At the heart of the story is Rex, a child who could not hide the girl inside no matter how hard he tried. His secret was impossible to share, even with his parents, who, though they knew, were powerless to offer real help. Trapped in a role that never fit, Rex learned what it meant to live with gender dysphoria unrelieved and unacknowledged. Ballard pulls no punches in showing the raw consequences of this forced concealment. The book captures the gnawing pain of dysphoria, the fear of being discovered, and the daily negotiations of survival in a hostile world. Readers encounter scenes of bullying, rejection, and violence, as well as moments of fragile tenderness that only sharpen the contrast with the constant secrecy. There are mildly sexual moments too, not gratuitous but necessary to depict how confusing and isolating intimacy becomes when one’s body is a source of betrayal. These elements remind us that dysphoria is not abstract or academic, but visceral and lived, shaping every choice and relationship.
During that interview, Ballard explained that she wrote the book not just as a memoir but as a plea. She wanted parents, teachers, doctors, counselors, and policymakers to understand what truly happens when transgender girls are denied help. Her own childhood was shaped by so-called treatments that amounted to forced brainwashing, including aversion therapy and shock treatments. She had seen firsthand how destructive it was to deny a child the chance to live authentically. The book, then, is not just about Rex, but about the countless transgender children who never transition and whose stories often go untold.
Ballard’s work also reveals her own remarkable duality. As she shared in the same conversation, she was a pioneer in the IT world, helping commercialize the Internet in the 1990s, advance open-source technologies, and push globalization forward. Yet alongside her technological achievements, she was carrying the invisible weight of living as someone she was not. That contradiction, between visible professional success and private suffering, gives Living in Stealth: Undercover an added layer of poignancy. The book is not easy reading, nor is it meant to be. Its warnings of violence and its depictions of dysphoria may unsettle, but they are essential to the truth Ballard wants her readers to confront. By showing us Rex’s struggle, she forces us to ask what happens when society chooses silence over compassion, when parents and communities look away rather than act, and when medical systems turn their backs on children in need.
Ultimately, Living in Stealth: Undercover is a work of both testimony and advocacy. It reminds us that the cost of secrecy is measured in scars both physical and emotional. Ballard’s story urges us to listen to transgender children, to believe them when they say who they are, and to create a world where no one is forced to live undercover. It is a painful but vital book, recommended for anyone who truly wishes to understand why gender dysphoria cannot be dismissed, ignored, or postponed.
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Photo via The Heroines of My Life
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