it's a complicated topic and i would have to take time to really put my thoughts together on it. stealth/binary trans is a position that's very alien to me so I want to choose my words carefully. i think once one isn't adopting stealth for self hating/internalised transphobia/primitive accumulation reasons it's totally valid, and I wouldn't use the label for that person.

that said, I also strongly believe that being visibly queer is a daily act of praxis against cishet patriarchy and something to be encouraged. but I would never say it's a prerequisite for being a trans comrade, obviously there are other ways of doing this type of praxis too.

assimilators to me are people who choose to erase and de-radicalise their transness (and queerness broadly), to neuter it and make it palatable to the cishets, in the simultaneous pursuit of essentially being a good capitalist cog or even a straight up owner-capitalist. that process can take on the quality of going stealth, or it can look more like what Wu is doing in the posted tweet. they are those who discard any notions of radicalism or queer liberation, of solidarity with other queers, and choose to just work within the system and accept the way things are, leveraging advantages like passing privilege to avail of better opportunities than those available to most trans folks (the "pulling up the ladder" being mentioned in this thread about Wu). it's essentially a liberal type of queerness. it's an abandoning of trans and queer solidarity.

just being stealth or binary trans alone of course doesn't necessarily put anyone in that category. I'd like to clearly state that binary transness is no less radical than any other kind, assimilators are those who choose to push that qualitative change onto it. sorry it's just a disorganised thought dump, hope I made some sense.

Assimilator as in, "I've assimilated, now I have the same opinions as those I've assimilated in with."