Deborah Ballard - Living in Stealth: Undercover

2015, Deborah Ballard, English, USA,

"He couldn't hide the girl inside, no matter how he tried. Rex had a secret, a secret he couldn't even tell his own parents. Rex was really a girl. Even though his parents knew, they couldn't do anything to help. How can Rex survive while trapped and forced to pretend to be a boy? This is NOT a story about someone who transitions, it's about what happens to transgender girls who do NOT transition."

In 2016, I talked to Deborah and this is what she told me about the book: "“Living in Stealth: Undercover” was intended to really focus on what happens to transgender girls who do NOT get help with the transition. I grew up in a time when the “treatment” for transgender girls was not transitioning, but rather an attempt at forced brain-washing that included shock therapy and aversion therapy – described in a great deal in “A Clockwork Orange”. I had seen too many conservatives who had no clue what it was to be transgender. I wanted to write a book that was addressed to parents, teachers, counselors, therapists, doctors, and political leaders.

This was a book intended to show people that most transgender girls are not Olympic athletes, they are not even Alpha males. Transgender girls have brains and biology that are different from cisgender men. Undercover describes the experience of knowing you are a girl and having to keep it a secret, like a spy working undercover, like a Jew living in Nazi Europe."

Available via Amazon

and The Heroines of My Life