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Notes -
I realize this is late and you may not have been actually asking for 'have you tried this?', but heck a friend and I brainstormed various trans-character concepts when we were scoffing at ham-fisted character insertions, and it feels a waste not to put some of the points.
One of the basic premise we agreed on is that if you want a character who is trans to not have their trans-ness be the thing, it's not enough for the writer not to focus on it- other characters need to not focus on it to, even if made aware. And one of the best character roles to do this is when antagonists- not sympathetic characters- didn't make a deal of it. In a hamfisted approach that could be a 'even evil has standards' trope, but a more thematic way would be for utilitarians in the setting not to find utility in it. When even disagreeable antagonists don't bother to jump on, then it's truly Just A Thing.
For us, since one of the premise here was that a successfully passing trans person should be, well, passing to casual inspection, that made inspections with ulterior motives a primary venue. As in, someone goes looking into the person for dirt... and doesn't find the transness the most relevant point. At which point, since transitioning persons often make breaks with the past as part of the transition, the narrative hook that could be tugged is those gaps in missing years / continuous contacts before/after transition.
One example was a mystery setup, where the antagonists/players are both chasing a (secretly/passing Trans) person of some repute/influence who has a Mysterious Past. For reasons the someone who is assumed to have a fake identity... because none of the public records / school book photos / etc. show the post-transition person during their pre-transition youth. As the person's post transition identity is assumed to be 'fake', the question of the miniplot was 'why?'- with various theories being witness protection programs, identity theft, etc. When the person's pre-transition name is discovered, it was even framed as a case of a family scandal being shushed up, with speculation like the current persona being a once-illegitimate child legitimized after the 'death' of their dead-name 'sibling,' a case of someone hiding gender to escape the notice of the law for some mysterious crime, or so on.
The antagonist's- and thus the protagonist's- motives for finding out the past weren't about the gender per see, but for the implications of what a mystery box sort of answer might allow them to do to influence the person. Say they're looking to blackmail to force the trans-leader's cooperation, to protect the reputation of the (completely unrelated to trans) cause they trans-person is aligned with, or whatever.
The kick in the plot concept was that the antagonist could find the secret... but then not find it worth exploiting/insufficient leverage, to the point that they give it up rather than try and exploit it, and go on to something else instead. By having the antagonist with utilitarian motivations dismiss that part of the trans-person's identity as relevant, it was signalled to the audience that in the setting, being trans wasn't some overwhelming thing. What made the person relevant wasn't their transition, but what they were in a position to do- and the society was such where the insinuations of misconduct conflated with the transition overwhelmed the social relevance of the transition itself.
That's a really cool analysis and idea. I have no idea what to do with it right now but I'm gonna be thinking about that one.
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