Apparently, we need to explain consent again.
Not sexual consent this time, although the underlying concept is remarkably similar. We are talking about informational consent: the basic idea that a person gets some say over who knows personal information about them, when they know it, and under what circumstances they learn it.
This distinction has become particularly relevant in Kansas, where state officials defending restrictions affecting transgender and intersex people have pointed to plaintiffs’ social media activity while challenging their claims that government identification policies could involuntarily disclose their status.
The argument, stripped of the legal wrapping paper, goes something like this: If you have publicly discussed being transgender or intersex before, how can you complain about someone finding out later?
Pretty easily, actually.
Choosing to tell people something about yourself is not remotely the same thing as the government deciding when you must tell them. And being “out” does not mean surrendering control over every future disclosure of that information.
RELATED: Kansas Points to Social Media in Defense of Anti-Trans Law
Privacy Is Not the Same Thing as Secrecy
This is where much of the confusion begins. Privacy does not require secrecy.
You can post photographs of your children on Instagram and still reasonably expect their school not to publish their medical records. You can announce that you are pregnant and still expect your doctor to protect the details of your prenatal care. You can tell everyone at work that you have cancer without giving your employer permission to distribute your medical history.
You can publicly announce your divorce without consenting to have every private conversation from your marriage posted online. Nobody finds these concepts particularly difficult.
Then transgender people enter the conversation, and suddenly we need a congressional hearing to determine what “privacy” means. A transgender person can openly discuss being transgender while still wanting control over when that fact becomes relevant in everyday life.
That is not hypocrisy; that is privacy.
Coming Out Is an Act of Choice
Coming out is fundamentally about agency.
Some transgender people tell everyone. Some tell close friends and family. Some are out at work but not at home. Others are out online under usernames that have little connection to their legal identities.
Some become advocates and publicly discuss their transitions.
Others disappear into suburban America and spend Saturday mornings arguing with a lawn mower like everybody else. There is no correct way to be transgender.
More importantly, disclosure is not a switch permanently flipped from PRIVATE to PUBLIC. Human relationships do not work that way.
Imagine a transgender woman who runs an LGBTQ-focused social media account under a screen name. Thousands of people may know she is transgender without knowing her legal name, employer, home address, or what she looks like.
Is she publicly transgender? Sure.
Does that mean the cashier checking her identification while she buys a bottle of wine needs to know? No, those are completely different audiences and circumstances.
An anonymous Reddit post can technically be available to millions of people while revealing less about someone’s offline identity than showing a driver’s license to one person standing three feet away. Context matters.
Your Driver’s License Is Not Your Twitter Bio
Identification documents occupy a particularly important place in this discussion because we use them constantly.
People show driver’s licenses when traveling, entering buildings, opening bank accounts, applying for apartments, checking into hotels, purchasing age-restricted products, and interacting with law enforcement.
Most of those situations have absolutely nothing to do with someone’s transgender status.
When an identification document contains information that conflicts dramatically with a person’s appearance or presentation, however, that document can effectively become an involuntary announcement.
Suddenly, what should have been: “Can I see your ID?” becomes: “Why does this say male?”
Now the transgender person has a decision to make. Explain? Stay quiet? Prepare for questions? Hope the person doesn’t make a scene? Hope the person isn’t hostile?
That is precisely why accurate identification documents matter beyond simple symbolism. For many transgender people, they allow routine transactions to remain routine.
The bartender needs to know whether you are 21. The hotel clerk needs to know whether the reservation belongs to you. The bank needs to verify your identity.
None of them need an impromptu documentary about your transition.
RELATED: Kansas Trans Driver’s License Case Exposes Policy Gaps
“But You Posted About It Online”
Yes, and?
Suppose someone writes publicly about surviving domestic violence. Does that mean a government employee should be free to announce that information while the person’s coworkers are standing nearby?
Suppose someone posts about being gay. Does that mean a government document should unnecessarily reveal their sexual orientation every time they present it?
Suppose someone publicly discusses having undergone fertility treatments. Should that information appear during unrelated interactions simply because Google could theoretically find it? Obviously not.
The ability to discover information is not the same thing as having a legitimate reason to disclose it. This is an increasingly important distinction in a world where enormous portions of our lives exist online.
Most of us have voluntarily shared information on social media that we would nevertheless find wildly inappropriate for a government employee to announce during an unrelated interaction.
Voluntary disclosure does not eliminate contextual privacy.
Anonymous Speech Makes the Argument Even Stranger
There is another wrinkle that makes the “you talked about it online” argument especially shaky: anonymity and pseudonymity.
Transgender people frequently use screen names, alternate accounts, and anonymous communities specifically because they want to discuss gender without connecting those conversations to their everyday identities.
That is not unusual.
The internet has operated this way since approximately five minutes after humans figured out how to connect two computers.
People discuss sexuality, relationships, medical concerns, politics, religion, and deeply personal experiences anonymously because anonymity gives them control.
A transgender teenager might participate in an online support group without being out at school. A transgender professional might write extensively about transition while remaining private in a conservative workplace. Someone might have thousands of followers who know practically everything about their transition while their next-door neighbor knows nothing.
That isn’t deception; it is audience selection.
And humans have practiced it since long before social media existed. Your boss knows things your grandmother doesn’t. Your best friend knows things your coworkers don’t. Your doctor knows things your bartender definitely shouldn’t.
Welcome to being a person.
Being Proud Does Not Mean Being Available for Forced Disclosure
There is also something particularly troubling about using transgender visibility against transgender people. For decades, LGBTQ people were encouraged to come out because visibility helps dismantle stigma.
“Live openly.” “Tell your story.” “Let people see that transgender people are their coworkers, neighbors, friends, and family.”
Many transgender people did exactly that, sometimes at considerable personal risk. Now imagine turning around and saying, “Well, you told your story publicly, so apparently privacy no longer matters.”
That creates a nasty little trap.
Stay closeted, and opponents can claim transgender people are hiding something. Come out, and opponents can argue you have surrendered your privacy.
Heads they win, tails transgender people lose. No thanks.
Visibility and privacy are not mutually exclusive. A person can proudly say, “I am transgender,” while simultaneously saying, “I decide when that information is relevant.”
Those statements do not contradict each other. They reinforce the same principle: autonomy.
Government Disclosure Is Different
The government also occupies a fundamentally different position from some random person scrolling through TikTok. Government-issued identification carries authority.
When the government records information about you and requires you to present that document during everyday life, it isn’t merely participating in a conversation.
It is establishing the terms under which your identity is officially represented. That distinction matters.
A transgender person posting a transition photograph is exercising personal speech. A state requiring an identification marker that can reveal that person’s transgender status is exercising governmental power.
Those are not equivalent actions simply because both may result in another human learning the same fact.
One originates with the individual; the other can happen regardless of the individual’s wishes. That little difference is called consent.
You Don’t Lose Privacy by Speaking
There is a broader principle here that matters well beyond transgender rights.
Privacy cannot reasonably mean that once information has been disclosed somewhere, under some circumstances, everyone permanently loses any interest in controlling how that information is subsequently used.
If that were the standard, privacy in the internet age would barely exist. Instead, privacy often depends on context, audience, purpose, and control.
Transgender people understand this intuitively because coming out frequently happens in stages.
You tell one person. Then another. Maybe your family. Maybe your employer. Maybe Twitter. Maybe eventually everybody. Or maybe not.
Every one of those decisions belongs to the person coming out, and that remains true even after someone has publicly identified themselves as transgender.
The Point Really Isn’t Complicated
You can wear a transgender pride shirt and still expect your medical information to remain private.
You can march in Pride and still not want your driver’s license unnecessarily exposing your history.
You can write publicly about your transition while expecting a routine traffic stop to remain a routine traffic stop.
You can have 100,000 followers who know you are transgender and still not want the stranger checking you into a hotel to discover it from a government document.
There is nothing inconsistent about any of this. Being out means you chose to tell someone. Being outed means someone else made that choice for you.
One is autonomy, the other removes autonomy. And if anyone is still confused about the difference, here’s the simplest version we can possibly offer:
Knowing my story exists does not give you ownership of it.
Being transgender does not erase the right to choose the audience, the moment or the circumstances. And posting something online does not hand the government a lifetime permission slip to do the choosing for you.
