I get it, Violet. Passing and Acceptance are two ways to interact en femme with the rest of the world. Of the two, passing is the only one each of us has some immediate control over (albeit more limited control for some of us than others). It's internal, and offers us the *possibility* of controlling the situation ...hence the power you wrote about.
Acceptance ( /tolerance?) is in the hands of those around us. I understand the perspective of those who have replied here that embracing passing keeps us living in fear of discovery, forced to play the game: "You're born a girl or you're born a boy ...and that's all there is to it." But I think you too acknowledged the cost of embracing passing as a strategy.
We have no control over being accepted/tolerated. That's a slow-moving shift we all wish the world would embrace. It's fair for anyone to argue that if we all walked out of the shadows and into the light, the force of our numbers would probably accelerate that change. But not all of us are in a position to be revolutionaries: some of us have loved ones who could become collateral damage; some of us are just scared ...with good reason, I think. I admire those of you who are fighting the fight for all of us.
But until the world becomes a more tolerant place, I think there's no denying Violet's point, which I take as meaning that Passing is power: for those who can wield it (and, again, we are all in different places on that), it has the potential to diminish the threat of being a victim and to put you in charge of the parts of your life you can control.
