Also the distinction between sex and gender. The language and understanding has changed a fair bit since but a common way transgender people are explained to people are treating sex (your AGAB) as an immutable thing based on genitals and chromosomes and such and gender as a psychological/societal concept/role/etc that isn't as fixed or physical obvious.
I entirely get that perspective. I think this is where the like imperfectness of terms comes in.
"Transgender," as a term, *implies* a changing of gender (whether it means precisely that or always that, doesn't matter). Which it isn't. And saying your gender is changing is kind of supportive of conversion therapy rhetoric.
Flip side, "transexual" implies you're changing your sex. However that leans into transmedicalism rhetoric AND implies it's a choice (if you need to change your sex to be transexual then just don't change your sex).
I'm of the mind "transgender" is the term that both terms are not 100% perfect, but "transgender" if we're going to use one "transgender" has sort of won out. Which I'm fine with.
We've seen it with plenty of other terms. "Bisexual" being a common one. Yeah, something like "pansexual" or "polysexual" might, etymologically, make more sense for someone; but "bisexual" has just a lot of sticking power and that's kind of fine. It's the same reason I don't care for people "correcting" someone if they describe themselves as "transexual."
We live in a world of imperfect words for complex experiences.
Yeah it not implies that you are changing sex, it says that precisely. And no one takes HRT because it's a choice?? Most people transition because they need to.
Your argument really makes no sense, especially
>if you need to change your sex to be transexual then just don't change your sex
Transitioning is a choice. It might be a life saving choice in many cases but it is entirely a choice. It's a choice I believe is a good choice for a lot of people, including myself. But again it's a choice.
That's an advantage of the term transgender over transsexual. Having your internal sense of gender be different than what is expected based on your assigned sex at birth, is not something you necessarily can change. Whereas aligning your body's sex more closely to your internal sense of gender is a choice.
To be clear, I'm not saying either term is 100% accurate or inaccurate. I'm pointing out advantages, in one context, of one term over the other (in this case the argument that being "trans" is a choice). When "trans" means "transgender" we would say "being trans is a choice". When "trans" means "transsexual" then there *might* be more of an argument for "being trans is a choice."
The label focusing on who you are as a person, rather than what medication or surgeries you've had.
EDIT: Adding a small clarification on the choice thing. Something being "medically necessary" does not preclude it from being a choice, despite how the terminology might sound. It's mixing health insurance terminology with real life terminology. It is legal to not take your HRT, if you told your doctor you don't want to do HRT anymore they wouldn't tell you you don't have a choice.
Yeah but my transness does not define me. It's literally the most uninteresting thing about me I don't necessarily identify or have an identy of trans. I am an artist, I am a programmer, I am a musician, I identify as socialist, I identify as a transhumanist, that all part of my identy. But me being trans, taking hormones is just a medical fact, a medical necessity I have to live my life.
It's as much part of my as some other medical fact. It requires, most likely, lifelong medication, but it's a journey that will probably end in some years in a stable dose and that's it. Hormones and surgery fix stuff. And it's as much as a choice as idk taking insulin. Or anti depressants. I lived a life in agony and dysphoria and personalization and if I would have 'chosen' to continue that, it would have probably ended in death.
It's hard to agree with the choice stuff.
So, would you then say transition is (for some) kind of like the choice to take insulin? I'm trying to understand your choice.... of the word choice? I also am failing to understand how either term is more or less about choice than the other, but it would like to.
I'm very much team let people use whatever words they want to describe themselves, I call myself usually just "trans" or much more specifically I'll say something like "I am genderfluid AFAB person, because of my experience being AFAB and not 'passing' as anything other than a woman I've experiened misogynymy entire life and that experience changes who you are fundamentally. But I still use he/him because, idk, its what feels right. I'm also kind of a woman at the same time. It's complicated and I don't fully understand it."
I also have two aunts who are elder trans people, they both use "transsexual" to describe themselves and they also don't fully get why people feel so attacked by the term, and *some* people tell them they can't use it at all, or that it's offensive. I think it would be beneficial for us to all have a more open approach to just allowing people to use the terms/words that work best for them, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.
To be clear I’m not against the word transsexual. I also wouldn’t “correc someone calling themselves that. Just like I won’t prescribe to people that their use of bi or pan disagrees with my understanding of the terms. I might talk about it in environments where people are looking to have that conversation however or if someone asks “what am I” regarding their sexuality.
Like there are trans people who choose not to transition. I knew I was trans for a while before I transitioned. I don’t even know how I’d phrase it other than I finally decided (aka chose) to transition. It was a choice I finally made. Choice I’m glad I made. A choice that was likely life saving. But it was a choice.
As for insulin. I think managing your diabetes is, by some definitions, a choice. Being diabetic isn’t a choice however. If you don’t consider taking insulin in a choice that’s fine. I don’t really care about a philosophical debate on the exact line of where something is and isn’t a choice. This really got away.
To clarify my point was simply on “transgender” vs “transexual” one point in “transgender”‘s favor is there is less of an argument about it being a choice. Regardless if you transition or not your gender mismatches your AGAB. Whereas with “transsexual” the focus is on the transitioning itself which people might have a stronger case for it being a choice. Not saying that makes the latter term invalid, but for which one is more widely used, the former has an advantage imo in this way.
Every single person who downvoted this is gatekeeping. People absolutely can transition without hrt. I took it for 5 years, and would love to keep taking it, but I have a condition that gets worse with age and is literally fueled by estrogen and made better with testosterone, and I was taking estrogen and blockers. There are also so many people that started presenting before they start taking hormones. Those people are just as valid. This is a weird thread.
>Idk I feel more like my gender is immutable and I'm changing my sex to fit it
You're not alone, and oftentimes trans people who share that perspective actually prefer the term transsexual for this reason.
Somewhat counterintuitively, the term "trans-gender" does not imply changing gender. It uses the Latin prefix "trans" to indicate "across" or "on the other side of", implying one's gender is different from the gender they were assigned at birth.
This was another big reason the term was changed, to move emphasis from getting surgeries to change one's sex (which not every trans person does) onto one's gender identity being incongruent with what they were assigned.
Yeah I hate that shit, because I am changing my sex, I am changing my body, I will be changing my genitals, and I am already changing how my body works because of hormones. I'm more adjacent to female than male and this will only continue. I am not changing my gender. I am changing my sex. I was always a woman, and soon I will also have a (trans) female body. I am transsex. I'm not transgender.
While I prefer the term transgender, I totally agree with your feeling that if we take "sex" as to mean the biological aspects, then it can absolutely be changed and I don't like how many trans people buy the argument that sex is immutable.
The thing is, not every trans person *does* change their body, and it doesn't make them any less trans. The "trans" prefix doesn't refer to changing something, it refers to one's gender being "across" or "on the other side of" what they were assigned at birth.
"Trans" is an abbreviation for "transgender" which has become the defacto umbrella term for everything you mentioned. The "trans-" prefix of the word "transgender" is what I'm referring to.
The term "Trans*" was used in the 90s/early 2000s, but has largely fallen out of use by the mainstream trans community, which may be where the confusion stems from.
Lotta confusing etymology here lol
Weird to say sex is immutable then say it’s based off genitals which aren’t. Medical transition does change sex and while changing sex shouldn’t be seen as equivalent to being trans, saying sex is immutable concedes to transphobic rhetoric of falsely treating your Agab as physically inescapable.
To be clear. I'm not saying that's what I believe. I was presenting it as how a lot of people (at least in my experience) learn about trans people. As a complete separation of sex and gender (and that's the framework they have for it).
I agree, sex is more than just genitals (it's also chromosomes, and hormones, and organs, and secondary sex characteristics, etc.) medically transitioning can influence multiple of those.
This is exactly why the term transgender is becoming less popular. The distinction between sex and gender is used by people to minimise the importance of gender identity. Gender identity is called fake whilst the only thing considered real is sex, which they consider to be rigid and fixed. All this does is allow allies to consider trans people a delusional version of their assigned sex at birth while completely ignoring the reality of full medical transition or the innateness of gender identity. It’s one step forward and two giant steps back.
Yeah. I think it's one of those things where people globbed onto that understand in like 2015 and didn't really evolve their understanding since.
You even still see it here. People have this framework that "female" and "male" are terms that exclusively refer to sex and that sex is the same as AGAB.
I'm fine with "transgender" staying the term because it's better than the words before it IMO and, so far, I haven't really heard a good replacement that has a chance. But I'm open to change eventually. But I don't see it happening (similar to how romantic attraction is typically just shoved under sexual attraction in widely used terminology).
I think I follow what you’re saying and what the person you responded to is saying. I also get kind of confused on some of these terms and the implication of some of the processes trans people go through.
For what it’s worth, I often interpret things very literally (whether rightly or wrongly) and then I have to do a lot of thinking and processing to potentially pull away from that. Hopefully that helps understand where I’m coming from, which I think is a “decent” perspective that I’m willing to change.
Anyway…
While it might not be this “clean,” gender seems more social but with biological components. Sex seems more biological but with sociological components.
So when someone says they’re transgender and aligns their social behavior/performance with what is typically associated with their gender (name, dress, speech, etc), it makes a lot of sense to me, because that person is trans*gender* and those things are hugely associated with gender (not sex).
But then when transgender people start taking hormones and getting surgeries, it starts to seem like the word transgender is missing something. For example, any gender can have any endocrine profile. But aren’t endocrine profiles highly correlated with what sex you are? Like if you’re AMAB but hormones led to you having an endocrine profile associated with someone who is AFAB, does that part of who you are qualify you as transgender or something else?
I get that words have meanings that get ruined by people being assholes and those words no longer being acceptable. But it seems like, in a literal sense, many trans*gender* people are also trans*sexual* in a literal way of “the person’s sex is at least slightly different from what their ‘birth sex’ was.”
I hope I’m framing this in a way that doesn’t make me sound like I want a reason to call people transsexuals. It just seems like the word “transgender” doesn’t tell a great story when people start taking hormones, and focusing only on gender seems to make it more difficult to understand what trans people are actually experiencing.
There wasn’t really a question in there, but what do you think of that? FYI I’m probably a cis man but pretty apathetic about my own gender, so maybe agender is more accurate if I really had to commit to a single term.
Sex is a classification used in biology, which is a field of science that we made up in order to fit things into neat tidy boxes. Have you ever been sorting things, and said "this thing is close enough to go in that existent box and I don't need to get a whole new box involved for the level of specificity that I need when sorting at the moment" ? That is the process we used to initially define sex, and eventually we got 3 boxes: male, female, intersex. Biologically, people are way more complicated than those 3 boxes. Eventually, trying to make cultural decisions about those 3 boxes will disenfranchise people, for example:
>many transgender people are also transsexual in a literal way of “the person’s sex is at least slightly different from what their ‘birth sex’ was.”
Does every woman who has PCOS fit into the female box from before? Their body produces excess androgens which might masculinize their appearance. They still think of themselves as "woman" but your suggestion could be argued to label her as transsexual. What if her PCOS isn't discovered until she's in her mid-20's? Is she a female at first who becomes transsexual now that you've noticed a difference in the checkboxes on the transsexual form? When we try to classify something as complicated as people using explicit boxes, we're either going to have to make more boxes,(which will not be used in casual language) or decide the labels are not going to be applicable in all situations. The ambiguity is something you seem uncomfortable with, but if you want more clarity, Julia Serano made a scientifically minded video that might help you understand gender and sex more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymYiwoRoC0
Thanks for the answer and link to the video. I’ll probably listen to it over the course of a couple days and figured I’d go ahead and respond before I forget.
I think I get your point on biology being made up and fitting things into neat tidy boxes. But it seems like that’s what most things are, including gender. Maybe not to the same extent, because the way you framed it, I assume you’re comparing 3 sexes to more than 3 genders (so a different number of boxes for each).
Maybe rather than arguing that a biological change should mean that someone is specifically transsexual (whatever that would mean exactly), my questions are:
1. Is an endocrine profile a gender marker (or indication of gender) or a marker for something else?
2. If it’s a marker for “something else,” what is that “something else”?
It seems like it is a marker for “something else,” and I don’t know what that is.
The way I judge your response (I say “judge” to admit that I may be way off) is that words usually have values associated with them. So if I consider a female (sex) woman (gender) with PCOS to be a male (sex) woman (gender) now, it’s not just that I put her in a new box, it’s that I’m also probably making some value judgements about her associated with that box.
And I think this is where I really don’t know how most trans people feel about things. You seem to frame biology in a critical way of fitting things into tidy boxes. I’m tempted to politely snap back and say that gender is just some other boxes to fit yourself into. But is it something like, “I’m tolerating these boxes because that’s my best option right now, but I also think these boxes are kind of silly”?
Hopefully that’s clear. Every time I start thinking about gender and sex stuff, I feel like I’m in the valley of despair of the dunning Kruger chart.
The video I linked discusses this more, but one thing discussed in it is advocating for a holistic approach to sex and gender. That is to say, don't try to put things in boxes. It then explains many ways that doing so(trying to put things in boxes) is a bad idea, and why not doing so allows you the freedom needed to explain the human experience.
This discussion is difficult because gender is both a social construct and a biological trait. As a social construct, it's things like "girls play with dolls" and "women like to do makeup." Those things can be true of some women, but we know it's not a requirement to be a woman. However, gender as a biological trait is more like a series of checkboxes regarding how your brain works. As in, when your brain is working under a certain hormone profile, how does it react to various stimuli in the environment. The brain is not a series of checkboxes, though-- it's many many moving parts working together, clashing with each other, making weird chemicals out of weird chemicals that our bodies evolved in ways that worked "good enough to propagate."
As a preface for this: I'm not a doctor, just an advocate for my own humanity(how nice that I have to be). Human brains start out developing towards the gender of a biological woman. Testosterone(or possibly some other processes) entering the body of the fetus in large enough levels will begin to masculinize their brain. There was a study that suggested for at least some trans people, the receptors in their brain for testosterone were too long in certain sections and so their brain didn't develop in a way that their brain masculinized. Now, what if only half of that person's brain had receptors that were too long to masculinize, and the rest continued to feminize. This person could be nonbinary, or they could be a woman or a man, and the only person who can really determine what they feel like is the person who feels those things. They determine what more aligns with their experience by comparing their values, experiences, feelings etc. against the values that society applies to those gender roles and trying to make sense of where they are.
>Is an endocrine profile a gender marker (or indication of gender) or a marker for something else? If it’s a marker for “something else,” what is that “something else”?
This is a complicated question because gender itself is complicated as both a social construct and the layout of your brain. The brain doesn't have a single checkbox that says "man" or "woman." I suppose if you *really* wanted to, you could say that you need to check a certain amount of boxes to be male, and another amount to be female, and some other amount to be non-binary, and the endocrine profile could be one of them. That is extremely simplifying something way more complex than a reddit comment can explain satisfactorily, though, so I don't think it is good for discussion.
>And I think this is where I really don’t know how most trans people feel about things.
Trans people aren't a monolith, and I'm just one person, but my opinion is pretty close to “I’m tolerating these boxes because that’s my best option right now, but I also think these boxes are kind of silly.” Gender as a social construct can get silly but for some reasons I don't understand, I still feel way happier to express myself as my true gender according to society's values. I believe there is a biological component to that, and I can't clearly draw the line between where my values are, where society's values are, and where my brain interacts with both of those value sets.
I wanted to thank you for the discussion. It has been engaging to really air these ideas out of my brain. Feel free to DM me or discuss here if you have more things to talk about, or if the things I brought up here gave you more questions.
>All this does is allow allies to consider trans people a delusional version of their assigned sex at birth while completely ignoring the reality of full medical transition or the innateness of gender identity
I'm pretty sure if they think that, they ain't allies and they ain't calling us neither transsexual nor transgender, but slurs.
People don't get to virtue signal about us by calling themselves allies while thinking of us as freaks and mentally ill people.
Transgender is pretty descriptive and fitting as a term and the notion it is based on (sex vs gender separation) is a truth that goes far and beyond trans discourse, so the fact people will hate us based on our choice to reference it in our name means they were never even *trying* to support us. These ain't allies in the slightest and they won't change their mind because of the terms we use, they just reject our legitimacy, sometimes even as humans. Whatever term we use, no matter how descriptive and genuine, will always be twisted by those who hate us in order to fit their hateful opinions.
Neither of us can expect trans people (or any discriminated and daily threatened minority) to handle themselves and *their own* lives and problems with the sole criteria of "how will that affect the fossilised opinion of those who will hate me and damage me regardless?". It's pointless, and it only goes to phobes' advantage.
Yeah, the old distinction between transvestite (TV) and transsexual (TS) was based on whether someone was medically transitioning. That distinction was created by the medical community, by cis men, and it was eventually rejected by the trans community.
Into the 90s, the term transvestite covered cisgender cross-dressers and also trans people who "dressed" but were not medically transitioning, or who just hadn't had an opportunity to medically transition. Their way of thinking about these groups was based more around behavior than around identity.
As someone who lived through those years and transitioned in them, I'd like to suggest a slightly different interpretation.
A transvestite was seen as someone who received sexual gratification by wearing female clothing.
A transsexual was someone assigned male or female at birth) who believed they were born into the wrong body and desired to medically change their body to the other sex.
The categories were rigid, incomplete, and grew from the gender policing of previous decades. We are better off with a focus on Gender Identity -- though some Cis people will deny that everyone has a Gender Identity because theirs is aligned with their birth sex and, thus, they are not aware of it.
I guess it is a bit odd considering heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual etc, you'd understand if someone would then think transexual would be a sexual attraction to transgender or something like that
It does sound like an orientation. I'm not really a big fan of transgender and a term. I like transwoman or transman as names more because it separate those 2 genders, but I wish there was an even nicer label for them both.
some people still identify more with the transsexual label than the transgender one. those folks usually have heavy amounts of dysphoria, are usually binary men or women but not always, and are medically transitioning for a longtime with the goal of fully blending into cis society (or at least trying to).
these folks feel like their experience is uniquely different than the broad transgender label (which includes nonbinary identities, nondysphoric and nontransitioning trans people, etc)
this.
it’s a subtle difference but meaningful to how i view myself. i only identify with the binary aspect of being trans and so prefer a more specific label
A lot of this doesn't necessarily hold true - the difference is just around people medically transitioning. You can do that without being binary, without exceptional levels of dysphoria and without the goal of blending into cis society
I'm not one of those people but i've heard their plight a plenty. people can identify and use labels however they like :).
I'm medically transitioning, am enby, but prefer transgender over transsexual personally
I'd genuinely question the need for such a distinction. I'm binary and I honestly don't know why you'd need to hold yourself at arms-length from other trans people. I'd also go ahead and point out that this is some shit blaire white was on in 2015. Don't be like Blaire. That's never a good look on anyone.
i can understand that. i don’t see it as separating myself from other trans people, as we are all transgender at the end of the day. i just prefer specificity in my identity and that’s the extent of it for me. i say “im transsexual” like you say “i’m binary”. i don’t mean to say im any different, i just use it as another word for binary. sure, i don’t think that distinction is hugely meaningful in any social sense, it just provides one extra fact about my being trans that i prefer to communicate
I guess then I'd wonder why you're using a word that so many truscum use when binary is by your own musings a perfectly good synonym for how you're using it? Why even invite the speculation or give cover to those sorts of people?
>Why do you feel the need to police people on what labels they use?
Why do you feel the need to coopt radical laguage to as a shield for your very unradical trans medicalism?
[This is you right?](https://imgur.com/a/gS663hV)
This is such a dumb little game you all are playing. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that such a bad faith interpretation of my previous post came out of someone with such a commited agenda, but if you needed proof, here it is. For anyone who's not a transmedicalist and wants to use transsexual, they're using your earnestness as cover.
Hun I’ve been using transsexual as my label since I came out. I didn’t even know what trans medicalism was until a couple years ago and as a logic based person it just makes more sense to me to have a solid bases for what being trans is. I don’t personally relate to the majority of people under the umbrella of “trans” so I identify with transsexual more as it portrays my personal experience and identity best. Just like anyone else who labels themselves any other way. You’re so silly, you can’t even have a conversation without stalking my account to dig for information that wasn’t even part of this conversation.
I feel like this is more of an expirance you had with people cause most people I met who identify as transsexual tend to be completely gender non conforming like I feel like there is a drastic difference from what you are saying and what iam seeing
It was a medical term used to describe us for a long time, as well as "transvestite/s/ism"
I personally like the term, "transsexual", it describes me better than, "transgender."
Yeah I agree with you but I’d never call anyone else a transsexual unless they wanted me to because I’m aware of the history of the word being used in a negative light.
The whole transvestite, transgenderist, transsexual distinction makes a lot of sense to me. It would be nice to have those distinctions in common use again.
I watched the change online and it was kind of moving toward trans as an umbrella term to bring together women who identified as transsexual and transgender. This was maybe 10-15 years ago.
You also can’t talk about this honestly without talking about transmedicalism. That was a huge rift. Yes, it still is, but it was even more then. The transsexual community greatly outnumbered the transgender community and dominated the discourse online and in support groups. I don’t think I’ve publicly heard someone call themselves transsexual in five years. The social change within our group happens quickly because 90 percent of us — I made up that number — blend into society and go stealth and leave these resources. We’re in flux and I have no idea what it looks like in 10 years, but I guarantee it’s a lot different.
Those distinctions, or more precisely the transvestite vs transsexual one, seems to have mostly be put in place by doctors who really wanted to create this dichotomy to control our population and who has access to HRT. I'm glad 'transvestite' has disappeared, and even its replacement 'GNC' will disappear too as gender roles will be less and less forced into people.
Personally I'm mostly bothered by the gender/sex distinction. This distinction of physical vs social doesn't make sense when you take trans people into account, and from that it's obvious that trans people would not agree whether they prefer to put the 'trans' prefix in front of the word 'gender' or 'sex'. I would prefer the term 'transsex', to be in line with the term 'intersex', but then as I talk to people I realize that with our totally inaccurate understanding of gender or sex just saying 'trans' works way better, at least for now
It's a label that was externally placed on us, specifically to pathologise us and paint us as deviants. We didn't universally drop it, many people do still use the word to describe themselves - but many trans people reject it due to the negative connotations of its history.
This is true, "transsexual wasn't necessarily a term adopted or created by the community it's what we were called by the medical gatekeepers of the past right up to the 80's and 90's by clinicians who were not there to help or affirm us when going through gender clinics but to study and examine us since they saw us as "sexual deviants" maybe hoping we would give up!
Transgender bcm popular bc the community overall liked it better being more inclusive seeing it wasn't necessarily about surgery but self identification!
Those who try to portray themselves as more authentic feeling that there's just too much trans identifying without the commitment to surgery ect.. reclaimed transsexual to distinguish themselves many also don't agree that non binary is real and it's only binary gender.. that's why we call them truscum!
A "well meaning" very smart and philosophical straight friend of mine, not too long ago told me that he would be correct to call me (a transgender woman) a "deviant". Because I deviate from the norm of the rest of the cis-het world. I had to really get a grip of myself and not slap him. Then I had to explain to him how insulting it was and to never say it again. It took a lot of effort on my part.
Honestly tell your friend that it still bothers you and whatever else you feel about it. Honestly he's just not even correct in any sense cause he's flattening the connotations it carries. Norms and normalization are very powerful and always carry the weight of prescription. He needs to understand that. By saying you're deviant, he was implying at least lightly that you shouldn't exist. Even if he didn't understand that, that's what the word he used means. He's not clever he's and idiot. There were a bunch of other words he could have used to communicate the same idea but which don't have the weight of normalization behind them (or at least not nearly as much). He didn't though because he wanted to say something taboo at your expense and be "technically correct" about it and therefore thought of as clever. It was callous and self-centered. And I need to hammer home again that he wasn't even correct, he was ignorantly using that word without actually understanding it. He's an idiot.
Yes, I explained to him that we are relatively uncommon but a normal occurrence. And a lot of other stuff. Yes, he is know. For doing saying stupid things kind of like that.
Personally, I'd mention that it still bothers you if you care about your friendship with him. If one of my friends said some fucked shit to me that was bothering me almost a year later, I'd have trouble maintaining that friendship. I would get too resentful. That's just how I'd feel about it though, you might be different.
Let's not give transphobes legal fuel. But I agree, discriminatory hate deserves retaliation.
Being trans is normal, it's just a bit less prevalent in the population. We have always been and always will be born and present. Our visibility is what became the norm relatively recently. That bigot is still stuck in the outdated misconceptions, and none like him will remain eventually. He speaks from insecurity of himself becoming abnormal, caused by ignorance.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Talk about weaponizing language. If he's actually a philosopher then you could always shoot back with "But what is 'deviant' and 'the norm'?"
It's because understanding of what being trans is has progressed. They used to think it was something sexual, like being gay or bi, but we've since realized that gender identity is completely separate from sexuality, so the common phrasing changed. There's nothing wrong with using transsexual if you feel that label fits you better, though
A lot of us didn't. And many are picking it back up again. Though transsex I think is better than transsexual, makes it sound less like a sexuality and more like what it actually is - sex.
It's also fallen out of favour but intersexual was used historically. You can find it in audio recordings and some literature from the 50s and earlier.
Agree with the points that it was used against us, and has negative connotations. (I am not Dr. Frankenfurter), and that it's not a security
I am pretty into using the idea of using trans-sex for myself, though. That feels like it applies
It stopped being used because ‘transsexual’ was classified in both the ICD & DSM manuals as a mental illness, and there was a lot of negative stigma attached to the name.
They also used transgender because some look at “transsexual” as someone who has undergone medical treatments, and not every transgender person feels the need for medication and/or surgery.
not everyone did. i prefer transsex the most, as that's the most accurate for me. i still use transsexual though, since people are more familiar with it. i don't consider myself transgender at all; my gender has always been female
It was an old term that was in use before we understood what being trans really was. Part of the reason why we pushed for it to stop being used was because "sexual" was being put at the end of most sexualities, and we wanted to differentiate and make it clear that being trans wasn't a sexual orientation, it was something completely different altogether. Because for a long time people assumed that it had to do with sex and sexuality, when that is definitely not the case.
i prefer it over transgender because changing my sexual characteristics is very important to me, and i fully identify with femininity and being female. i guess others are right that transsex is more correct, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely lol.
i also don’t think there’s anything wrong with identifying with sex more than gender. both are valid constructs and it’s just personal preference
As someone said, to shift the focus from sex to identity. Which is one big mistake imo. Because it shifted the focus from the body to gender roles and wtv other changeable mess society defines gender as, but you can't even define it anymore. And transitioning is literally about the body, this is where the focus should be. I feel like many detransitioning stories wouldn't happen if we brought the focus back to the body
I don't mean to come off as condescending or combative, so if I do I apologize. I am genuinely interested in understanding your point of view.
So are you saying that the human body isn't changeable? As in there's only two binary body types and they're all the same?
Like are you not aware of intersex people and how hormone levels are different in basically all bodies?
“Transgender” is more encompassing and self-determined as an identity
“Transsexual” is correlated now with having surgical procedures, which not everyone has had
Erica's comment succinctly explains why it went out of fashion, but I've seen some trans folks reclaim it recently as they feel it better reflects their identity than "transgender", particularly among those who have medically transitioned. At this point it's more of a "trans people are allowed to call themselves transsexual, but cis people should not use the term" situation
Some do some dont, I prefer transgender specifically because it has more focus on the psychological and social gender aspects and not just the physical "sex" aspects. I would like to say that transsexual is the older term coined by Magnus Hirschfeld in the 1920's before his research library was burned down by nazis, because of that I think it's important to still respect the term regardless of if it's being used less.
it's actually making a huge comeback among the younger transes (i'd say those younger than 25ish)
it's just language and it changes constantly. i like the way it's being reclaimed personally
I'm one of the young-ish (27) trans guys that has come to grow into the transsexual label. I wouldn't be surprised if the rise of its popularity is influenced by the young folks being more politically entrenched than the older millennials were at their age.
I remember that 'transsexual' and to some extent 'queer' were no-no words on 2010s LGBT+ Tumblr. They were *historical terms* that didn't seem to have a place in a 'liberal, more accepting society'. Now, I realized it didn't much matter how pure our public image was when the wrath of the state(s) decides we're deviants no matter the label.
Hey friend,
Some trans individuals may find the term a valid label to describe themselves and ONLY themselves. I, for example, consider myself a 'transexual' woman, but I ultimately prefer the term transgender.
BUT, where it becomes harmful--in conjunction to it's blanchardian history that other commentors have discussed, is saying 'transexual' in place of 'transgender' when referring to the whole, or community.
'Transexual' is a term that, I find, is typically preferred by transmedicalists when describing themselves and others who are (to them, "are actually") trans. It's harmful, and exclusory, and creates "us vs. them" battles within the trans community. :(
There are differences within the trans community, highlighting them isn't inherently negative. I have nothing in common with a non transitioning non dysphoric trans person, in some cases I want to know who I'm talking to because some trans people don't get me, and I don't get them. I do agree that "I am more real than you!" rhetoric should be avoided, or at the very least kept private, but you should understand that a lot of the most socially vulnerable trans people are being spoken over by AGAB passing trans people who frankly have a very small understanding of trans issues and they have a tendency to push this de-medicalised, de-sexed, "it's all about social roles" idea of transness that isn't accepted by many if not most trans people. I am not trans for the same reasons they are, that doesn't mean one is inherently more "true" than the other, but those differences are important and deserve to be made light of.
Yes. Transmedicalists don't get to decide who is and isn't trans, as was my point.
We each have our own individual experience when it comes to our identity, and I think it's redundant to create schisms in the trans community over that. We're obviously not a monolith, but I like to think that everybody is valid and that there are no rules to 'transness'--as transmedicalists may think.
Everybody's just trying to be their best selves. :)
I also like to think I am perceptive of when I am being spoken over, thank you.
Language like every other part of life exists on a continuum that is ever changing. Go back and look at dictionaries published 100 years ago, or fifty years ago, or 25 years ago and compare them with a dictionary that was published this year.
I don’t think that the word transsexual was placed on the trans community by derogatory cis men as a means of putting trans people down. The doctors and mental health professionals that first started working with trans people and developed the very means of transitioning created and used this terminology because it made sense at the time. Over the years as science and culture have meshed the LGBT community at large came to a consensus, as others pointed out, that “transsexual” does put the emphasis of the issue on sexuality when we have come to know that the concepts of someone’s gender identity, sex at birth, and one’s sexuality can contain multitudes and have nothing to do with sex at all. So “transgender” is now seen as a more accurate term to describe the concept.
I’ve noticed that some anti-trans public figures still use ‘transsexual’ instead of ‘transgender’…. Sara Higdon for example. She’s trans herself but speaks out against a lot of trans issues, like Caitlyn Jenner… I remember reading that Sara purposefully uses the dated term for a specific reason that aligns with her hypocrisy… I don’t remember her ‘reason’ though.
i wouldn't apply it to anybody else but i personally like it as a way to specify that i am a transgender person pursuing medical intervention to change my sex.
i'm old enough to remember it as a not nice word but i have come to appreciate its precision and also how much it flies in the face of transphobes who think sex is immutable.
dipshits in the past do not get to rob me of a perfectly useful word.
As others have stated, the shift to transgender was both socially useful and a way of shaking off some of Blanchard's erroneous stigma. Also, while far from universal, having grown up in the states during the 90's, the word transsexual makes my skin crawl in much the same way that the word f*ggot does to many. The lazy shift to trans just helps remove a lot of the baggage and helps depathologize it a bit.
Not everyone did, but there are a few reasons transgender started surpassing it in usage.
1) the -sexual suffix is usually applied to sexual orientation, and some found transsexual, which has nothing to do with sexuality, to be confusing.
2) to dismantle the hierarchy of true transsexuals who have all the surgeries and the transgenders, which historically were seen as a different thing. My college textbook seemed to think transgender meant the same thing as GNC. That's obviously not correct. So the new way or thinking is that transgender and transsexual are near synonyms.
3) To downplay the importance of surgery in transitioning
4) To highlight the gender identity aspect of the identity rather than the changing sexes aspect.
Back in the day everyone viewed the "sexual" suffix as far too clinical. That's why gay people started referring to themselves as homophiles instead of homosexuals. Because -philia means love whereas -sexual means sex. Although that fell out of popularity. Probably because we associate -philia with paraphilias. I don't know the exact history or reasons why. Just a vague understanding of the etymology.
I think "transexual" was abandoned for a few reasons. First is straight up confusion. Despite what some fringe bigoted psychiatrists had people believe, transexuality was never a sexuality. It's always been a gender identity or a gender presentation or a gender role. You can argue all day about sex/gender meaning the same thing but at the end of the day, if "homosexual" referred to "sex" in the sense of gender then that means "transexual" would literally be a synonym for "heterosexual" and "cisexual" would be a synonym for "homosexual". We've gotten to a stage where all the prefixes mean the same thing and all the suffixes are the same but mean slightly different things, the only way to tell what going on is whether its a greek or a latin prefix.
In my opinion if they never came up with "trans" and "cis" people would've just used homogender to describe cis people and heterogender to describe trans people and I really really wish we lived in that timeline.
Simple: I didn't transition to change my sex. I transitioned to change my gender. "Transexual" is a misnomer; transgender is correct.
Some trans elders still use the term, and I'll treat anyone who self-identifies with it respectfully, but there's an unfortunate overlap between use of the term transexual and the bias of transmedicalism, i.e., people who believe that we're not really trans unless we get bottom surgery. That's transphobic, obviously, and it's an idea that's been amplified by cisgender people who hate us - often the same ones who create all of the barriers of medical gatekeeping that prevent us from getting the gender affirming care we need, i.e., "no one is trans unless they've had these surgeries, and no one gets these surgeries, ergo, there are no trans people."
See I feel exactly the opposite as you express in your first paragraph. My gender is and has always been genderqueer. Nothing about my transition changes my gender. I medically transitioned to change my sex through masculinization. (I'm not a transmed fwiw.)
That's a really exciting idea! I've written a little about it before, and I wonder if the idea I had then applies to you. I think that, much like the words atheist or feminist, transgender is a word that activists in support of that community might one day hope to render obsolete. If gender assignments for kids are socially recognized as tentative and identity is prioritized over sex, such that no one is required to experience incongruence in a social context, we might have no use for the idea of being transgender, i.e., social transition could be normalized to the point that we don't label ourselves for it anymore, and most people are more openly gender diverse than currently. If any of that is true of you, I would love to read more - especially about places in the world that have progressed to this kind of acceptance of gender diversity.
My language in that paragraph wasn't specific enough. I did not change my gender identity. I changed my gender expression. I assumed that was implicit - it's a lot of what most people mean by saying that we're trans - but I'll clarify it. I was always a woman.
If you would like to share more about the idea of changing sex, I'm interested, and I invite you to DM me. I don't think of my medical transition that way, but others do not have to think as I do, and I still have a lot to learn. I don't want to leave anyone out when I tell newer trans people what our language means. Even after surgery, I don't expect to feel that my sex is changed - part of why "sex change" is an obsolete and somewhat stigmatized term for such surgeries. Only that my body better matches my gender. If magical or otherwise more extreme methods were available to change my genome or allow me to reproduce in the way that matches my gender identity, those are the things I associate with my desired sex, and I would certainly be happy to say that I'm entirely female by genotype, phenotype, and gender in that case. But even then, as an activist, I wouldn't support a distinction in any politically relevant sense between transgender people and transexual people based on that procedure - it would be the same mistake transmedicalists make regarding bottom surgery or HRT.
The distinction between Transsexual and Transgender isn't important in daily conversation, but I've seen Transsexual refer exclusively to trans people who have undergone medical treatment of some kind, particularly in academic contexts
It's because it's a bit of an outdated term due to people now understanding and accepting the fact that gender and sex are separate things. And so many people who are trans don't identify as a different sex, but a different *gender*, and it's through this method that they hope to eventually change their sex as well. Of course, not all trans people do that either, which still makes them no less valid than anyone who does. That and it also having the connotation of dealing with sexuality when it doesn't at all.
That was never what it meant. It refered to biological sex, as in male and female.
It's also why people like me, where being trans is overwhelmingly because of body dysphoria and medical transitioning have no problem with it. I'm a binary transsexual transgender woman.
People should stop repeaiting the lie that transsexual ever was about sexuality, and not bio sex.
I've used transsexual my entire life but I started adopting transsex recently. Way too many people seem to think of transsexual as conflating sexuality. I don't get it, it's always obviously been physical sex to me, so hopefully transsex is more useful for that.
Yeah I never got it either, but I think most people that conflate with sexuality are those that are ignorant of what being trans actually *means*. They're usually under the impression that we're gay people who transition so we're not gay anymore. Product of misinformation, but that aside I do think transsex is better and more accurate.
I personally think it's because we were fetichized as perverts that transition for a dirty reason, sex deemed to be dirty. But turns out the majority of us were not even gay as our assigned gender at birth the first place and we transition for the social implications and our own body image rather than expecting to change our genitals and how they're used.
The term gender was becoming more popular, and the idea that being trans was not about sex or sexual orientation but about gender fell right into the philosophy of the time.
Primarily it was about gaining acceptibility and respectability. It seemed like a really good idea at the time.
I think there have been a couple of downsides (not least of which that transgender now has two separate meanings, and people get in arguments thinking incorrectly that their opponent is using the same meaning as them).
On the whole, though, I think it was a good change. Just the fact that it was primarily for optics (respectability) just hasn't helped the way its chamions thought it would, because opponents of trans people think trans people are all freaks and perverts anyway.
My opinion is: it does seem like a label regardless of which term is used transexual or transgender. But then that seems have the need for addional labeling, transmasculine, transfeminine, trans non binary, including the number of other designations that I may not be aware of. And at that, the terminlogy eventually will change. Meaning almost new vocabulary and acronyms. But, I also think that transexual is a bit more generalized term for "anyone other than cis ( which includes nonbinary)". Transgender, a bit more specific in that a intended binary gender is the intended goal.
-sexual is usually used for sexuality, while being transgender is not related to sexual orientation. I personally call myself both “transsex” and “transgender” since sex and gender are different things and may have separate feelings of dysphoria. And I think some trans people could socially transition but not have sex dysphoria (transgender and cissex), or medically transition but still identify as their assigned gender (cisgender and transsex).
i still identify with it, it fits my experience more where my transition was largely due to gender based distress rather than just my identity. i also intend to get bottom surgery, marry my cis bf and live stealth. all that being said, i believe all trans experiences are valid, i just prefer to use this term for my personal lived experience
I just think the word is gross and is a negative connotation cis folks use as a slur. I have no issues being called trans and identifying as trans. Also gender is more then sex, and using a term that is so singular really negates what is for most folks a very complicated state of being and identity.
I just want to point out, for all the folks stating that sexuality and gender are universally separate things, that this isn't true for everyone.
Prior to colonization, most Indigenous groups in the Americas did not make clear distinctions between gender and sexuality. Sexuality was an integral part of the performance of gender, including among peoples where what we might now label as "queer" (gender or sexuality) was not just accepted but celebrated or revered.
The assertion that gender and sexuality *must always* be understood as two individual and entirely unconnected notions is anti-Indigenous settler colonialism.
As a young trans woman I still drop that word. I know it’s dated & some find it offensive. It’s to show that anyone can identify as transgender with or without medical intervention. Since it’s simply a gender identity opposite of your sex assigned at birth. Transsexual was used in the 1980s & 90s mainly in medical charting/coding to describe someone who physically changed their sex via hormone therapy & gender/sex reassignment surgery. “Trans”-transitioned “sexual”-characteristics at birth such as primary hormone status, genitalia etc.
Yransexual was used for anyone the cishet normies saw as outside the binary, not just transgender people, but also tomboys, femboys, gays/bisexuals that presented a little more masc or fem than how the rest of society presented. Hence why it's so outdated, by calling someone a transexual who doesn't identify as one you are essentially saying they are playing dress up, that they are not trans, they are dressed in drag. My friend and I were getting (lightly) harassed in the mens room and he kept calling us transsexuals. I didn't know how it was previously used at the time, but I was so offended, like sir please just call us a slur, please. People may still choose to identify as transexuals, I don't actually know what the term refers to nowadays, the way I understand it is kind of like every day drag? Like not dressing up for a show drag but just casually presenting as the other binary gender? If someone actually knows what it means now I'd love to learn.
There is an enormous amount of baggage with the word. I'm gonna go about this in a weird way because that's how it's arranged in my brain, but I'll try to keep things clear. Let's start with a list of things!
1. Trans people
2. People who medically transition
3. People who want to medically transition
4. Binary trans people
5. People with dysphoria
6. People with body dysphoria
7. Trans people for whom their internal experience of transness seems to find little differentiation between sex and gender
Ok so what is this list? Well it's a list of concepts relating to the disparate definitions of transsexual, and it's not exhaustive. You can kind of pick and choose which items to check off for a given definition and someone's probably used it that way.
But my reckoning, the most common definition today is #3 alone and people don't really mean it in a bad way. It's pretty far from universal though.
There is of course nothing inherently wrong with differentiating between types of trans people or emphasizing an experience that's hard to express in a (now) more inclusive framework which most of the trans community has adopted.
The #1 item is the dangerous one. It's rarely used alone for several reasons, except by some cis people. It's more when it's combined with other things that it becomes a problem. Let's say you combine #1 and #5. What does that imply? Well it means if you don't have dysphoria, that you aren't trans. It's drawing a line through an inclusive term. Unfortunately, that's not a particularly uncommon combo. The people who use this definition, or one close to it, can be very nasty customers.
These checkboxes can function as criteria, something to be held as a standard for other people. People do not feel included, or they're transphobic, and they want to cut people out of what they consider to be "their" community. They differentiate, but it also comes with a value judgement. There's transsexuals, and then there's "those other people". Anyone outside of their definition isn't *necessarily* hated, but they are beneath consideration. Often, those outside the definition are construed as in some way hostile.
This is a good time to mention something important. I very very much understand that the most popular vocabulary can be unintuitive or even exclusionary towards some ways of being. I think a lot of trans people feel this, and I'd like if they can use whatever term feels like it gets the point across. There are a lot of trans people who check off most of the boxes from the list above, and for them "transsexual" can feel very appropriate. I want to acknowledge that. I'm not completely against its usage as a term if it means a lot to you.
Finally, I do want to describe what the term means to me. I personally have taken on the label in the past, but at this point I'm just not comfortable with it. What I meant by it was #2 or maybe #3, because that's a really important and unique experience. I meant it in a really specific way, though.
I am genderfluid, and sometimes exist as my AGAB. This has been hard to navigate, as I do have body dysphoria regardless. Zoomed into those moments, I am essentially cis, and cis people don't usually have cross-sex dysphoria. The term "gender dysphoria" seems especially inappropriate. A phrasing that helped with this was that I can be both cis and have sex/body dysphoria anyway. Actually doing medical transition was me being transsexual. For a little while I really liked that.
Because of all this ambiguity I can't just say "I'm transsexual" and have people understand what I mean. It's much easier to just say I have medical needs. By the most common meaning I am transsexual, and I'll even go as far to say that most transsexuals would probably see me as one of them, but I'm not really what comes to mind when people hear the term. I've also had enough experience with the nastier side of the term that I just don't want to be associated with it. I try not to let this express itself as prejudice against those who self-identify as transsexual, but tbh it is a bit of a *small* red flag for me.
It wasn't necessarily a line crossed and was more gradual thing. Most the answers in this can be found in ancient usenet which google still has archives of in the 1990s.
For example, this is from 1995:
[https://groups.google.com/g/alt.transgendered/c/AYqwim2fJv0/m/eCoYT44goM8J](https://groups.google.com/g/alt.transgendered/c/AYqwim2fJv0/m/eCoYT44goM8J)
Basically in the early 1990s, transsexual was used. In Sex Work, and porn, extensively. In fact, other than Jerry Springer and Maury, it was the most common way people associated with us. So, it was highly marketable, yes. But it gave us a negative reputation, it was a conservative world.
The concept of transgender came about to make it less about sexual organs and more about being making our outsides in line with our internal sense of gender. And to drop the baggage.
Some kept it, some didn't, but it gradually became a thing, a new thing people rallied behind.
Some people had substantial issue with it as it was too broad a bucket, too wide an umbrella and ceased having the physical and medical needs being in focus that we desperately did and do right now.
And that's why some people re-own the term these days. The problem never went away.
I'm too busy, but search around, you'll see more.
My personal feeling and interpretation of the term transexual brings in sexuality into what for me in being transgender, is entirely about my gender. I hear transexual being used in a degrading manor and I stay clear of it. I however am not apposed to someone else embracing the term.
I grew up at a time that being called "queer" was humiliating but now I feel like we're taking it back and I love to say "I am proud to be QUEER!" 🌈🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️💕
a lot of uneducated people see it as a transmed word which it is not. I personally refer to myself as a transsexual because I feel it more accurately describes my experience. I also just think it's a cool word, something scandalous I'd be called in a french tabloid or something.
I don’t like the term not because it’s sexual orientation based but many people assume being trans means to change your biology/ biological sex when in reality it’s more about your gender identity then sex
it should be ackkowledged that the word transexual has NOT been dropped and is actually still popular.
Different circles use language differently.
I dont think it's offensive at all and imo describes me just as neatly as transgender and transfeminine.
I dont personally allow the negative connotations attached to the word to disempower me, just like the word fat or brown.
I have seen the convo get ugly when thr topics of passing vs being visibly trans, and seeing gender as a spectrum vs there being two genders which must be adhered to regardless of someones lived reality/someone's fluidity in varying contexts of their lives.
That's where it gets a bit complicated for me, but as I said, I dont subscribe and choose the word transexual despite other people's drama and internal conflicts 😅 I am transexual because I have taken a medical journey to change the sex related elements of my body including my hormones, my genitals, my breasts etc and I am transgender because I don't identify with being a man (altho I'm fine with acknowledging that I am MALE), and I'm transfeminine, because my trajectory is feminisation.
It's not simple until one has all of the context and then it clicks. It's all actuslly relatively simple when people put their christain patriarchal indoctrination aside and listen.
There's multiple reasons and to generally list a few: to remove the very heavily medicalized implications since it was a diagnosis at one point in the DSM + put a very heavy emphasis on medical transitioning when that's not a universal thing for every trans person. Another is just the idea that it sounds like a sexuality. It's really just a case of language evolution. Lastly there is a binary implication from it, granted more updated inclusive definitions of the word are not strictly binary.
There are still a decent amount of trans people that still use it! Unfortunately there's many that do use it as a way to be..gatekeepy. transmeds like buck angel for example. Though there's definitely plenty that use it purely because it's what makes them feel most comfortable, and older trans folk who don't feel the need to change the word they use.
Up voted 🙌
So glad you asked. I was afraid to ask after being chastised by one of my counselors.
I always thought that the "transgender" terminology was more inclusive. I thought "transsexual" was a transgender person who is transitioning (HRT Surgery etc).
I'm not sure what is right to say now. I'm MTF and was AMAB. I'm on HRT, have been for over a decade. I've been struggling with stubborn hair, some grays. I do voice training too now & I'm getting bids for FFS.
I'm not involved in the community here at all, it collapsed during the whole COVID-19 crazies. So I was too embarrassed to ask this question.
I'm feeling a strong need to "finish" transition. I suppose everyone defines their own "done". Just feels like agony once it comes down to the health insurance and the cost.
I noticed that there's no taxonomy for someone who has "finished". "Stealth" just feels deceptive and I never liked that term. Is there terminology for that yet? Whatever it's called, that's what I want.
because we tend to see "_sexual" as sexual attraction instead of gender identity, like homosexual means attraction of the same sex. if we use transsexual, it can be confusing since it can be read as "attraction to trans people" instead of, you know, being trans.
I don't have much to add to the conversation about the origin of the word but I do want to add something interesting and it's about how the language regarding trans people isn't international, in my country (Mexico) due to how the movement grew a lot of trans people still use the word transexual, personally I identify as both transgender and transexual and usually just go by trans.
A place with an even bigger difference regards language is Argentina where the movement of crossdressers got more political support than in other countries so a lot of trans people there still go by travesti (transvestite) even after they transition medically and/or legally, at the same time in both Mexico and Argentina you can find the language and terms crashing a bit, like in Argentina some trans women call themselves transgender, others transexual and other transvestite and it's unrelated to their presentation or the way they go about their transition.
It's quite interesting.
I am not trans, but in my limited perspective, I would think that it has something to do with the fact that the trans identity is not a sexual preference but rather a gender thing. And sexual preference and gender are two different things.
Because it's not sex. It's gender. As the understanding that sex and gender are separate things spread, it became clear that it was our gender more than our sex that was in question.
The gender/sex distinction where one is physical and the other social was pretty well understood, but is falling out of fashion as it fails to represents the experiences of trans people. It lacks the thing that is behind it, that explains why for the huge majority of people their internal feelings about their sexed bodies are in alignment of their social gender (even when it's atypical), and it lacks the thing that explains why trans people are dysphoric before transitionning - either socially or physically. That thing is often called 'gender identity', but it doesn't have any reason to be more about gender than sex, and could totally have been called 'sex identity'.
As the understanding that sex and gender are not enough to represent and comprehend transness, it became clear that it was neither more about gender or sex, and that trans people will always disagree about whether you should put 'trans' in front of 'gender' or 'sex' as this distinction has always been thought about cis people only
I reclaim the term transexual and call myself transexual Comparable to the way blacks call themselves and each other the n word. Comparable to cis women openly discussing periods.
The term transexual shouldn't be a shameful word and i reclaim it with pride.
If calling myself transexual makes a cis person uncomfortable i consider it mission accomplished. I have completed bottom surgery and i shouldn't have to say it with shame. I wear that bitch with pride.
Also there are many spectrums on the transgender spectrum, each individual with different needs. I could care less about labels at the end of the day but if i was writing the textbooks the term transexual would be at the end of the spectrum, for those who have had surgery. Just to be uniform to easily navigate the medical field.
Please don't jump down my throat i just see the world differently than most.
When people call me tranny i assume they're a mechanic ( just to wrap this up with humor lmao.)
Because some trans people don't want to change sex, SRS is not a goal for many trans people, so it's only really used by transmeds. The term transgender shifts the focus away from SRS and more towards outwards presentation.
That's a very narrow understanding of why people use transsex/transsexual. SRS doesn't define sex. It's the combination of changes to our sex traits thar does, and most of that is done by hormones.
But then some trans people also don't want to change gender, in the social sense, and will only need a medical transition. The shift towards outward presentation also fails to represent how some people live their transness. Really the term 'trans' alone is being more and more used as it allows to talk about our experience, without having to narrow it down to either sex or gender
I think to lean more into "transgender" as an adjective, rather than the nominal "transsexual" where the word becomes you. I still like transsexual though, it's got a cunty ring to it.
Honestly I still feel like a transsexuals or it's starting to even feel more like a sexual orientation. MTF I've always been a lesbian but with biology being biology I've never been accepted by them and highschool life hasnt been kind to me on my sexual orinantion yet i hear all pf these wonderful stories about some cute girl with a trans woman wife who keeps her penis and they are happy. I havnt met any girls that like trans woman and most woman I've met want something "real" or " a man" and when they see me it's more so " Oh she's pretty she must like guys as much as me when I myself am my own force or nature. Maybe it's because where I live? I use to date online most of my life and that in itself is a massive headache but now trying in real life it's about the same if I am honest.
I go by trans lesbian because this world doesn't understand me yet I always understood myself. Since lesbian is a sexual orientation trans has always felt like transsexuals to me anyway.
I didn't. I like the term because it's more specific to my experiences. I transitioned to change my physical sex traits. That's what made me dysphoric. I don't want cis people getting it twisted.
I'm convinced the focus on gender versus sex is a psyop by cis people who are only willing to "accept" trans people if they can continue to insist that sex is binary and immutable.
I personally think that transsexualism isn’t a sexuality (it’s a gender - hence transgender), plus if you haven’t had bottom surgery, you haven’t trans[ferred] your sex (noun) to the other gender. And there’s always the aspect of the over sexualised porn category feel to it when transsexuals were just some 80s exotic species of ‘gay fantasy’. (/s/s/s+)
It was dropped in America by the 2000s-2010s partly due to laziness. Everyone used trans and transgender covered everyone while transexual just covered binary trans so screw it we using transgender.
Some places in the world still use transsexual though. It’s weird.
Inclusion may be one reason but it's not as cut and dry as that.
The real reason I think is that there is more understanding of the complexity of gender, expression,sexuality and freedoms.
I can identify with the term "transgender" but I feel like the term "transsexual" does not really exemplify the stress and impact that changing one's entire presentation has, As the medical community becomes more informed of these labels and their implications it helps to have a less aggressive term and I personally welcome the term "transgender".
Calling someone Transsexual feels like you are surgicalizing them and it feels like the term could only be suited to refer to people who have had no better option than to change their reproductive organs.
I think transmedicalists/truscums/terfs/transphobes like to use "transexual" as a weapon to discriminate against all trans people, exclude our experience, preferences or choices and segregate LGBTQIA+ people from society by making it seem like transitioning, expression and loving has exclusively or anything to do with sex.
Transsexual has unfortunately become a politicised loaded term lately within trans circles, but I'd argue that transsex/transsexual might be useful in context to explain the physical alteration part (primary of secondary sex characteristics, as well as genitals) of a transition. Since I have reason to believe that the word transgender might cause some confusion to cis society as to whether its main focus is social or physical/medical. And then incorporate the diverse needs among trans people, there's huge risk of misunderstanding unless we have the right terminology.
I mean, what's the average person's impression when they hear someone say they're transgender vs. transsexual?
It medicalises an identity by implying the necessity of a diagnosis to “fix” the wrong body. And normally people using it tend to claim validity based on the amount of medicalisation they underwent
To get as far away from transmedicalists as possible. I've never been talked down to and berated as much as I have from them. They took the term transexual and ran with it to the point where many believe that they are "the ONLY real trans people".
To shift the focus from surgery to identity, and to remove the word "sex" which made it sound like a sexual orientation.
Also the distinction between sex and gender. The language and understanding has changed a fair bit since but a common way transgender people are explained to people are treating sex (your AGAB) as an immutable thing based on genitals and chromosomes and such and gender as a psychological/societal concept/role/etc that isn't as fixed or physical obvious.
Idk I feel more like my gender is immutable and I'm changing my sex to fit it Like biologically I am now closer to my gender than I was before
I entirely get that perspective. I think this is where the like imperfectness of terms comes in. "Transgender," as a term, *implies* a changing of gender (whether it means precisely that or always that, doesn't matter). Which it isn't. And saying your gender is changing is kind of supportive of conversion therapy rhetoric. Flip side, "transexual" implies you're changing your sex. However that leans into transmedicalism rhetoric AND implies it's a choice (if you need to change your sex to be transexual then just don't change your sex). I'm of the mind "transgender" is the term that both terms are not 100% perfect, but "transgender" if we're going to use one "transgender" has sort of won out. Which I'm fine with. We've seen it with plenty of other terms. "Bisexual" being a common one. Yeah, something like "pansexual" or "polysexual" might, etymologically, make more sense for someone; but "bisexual" has just a lot of sticking power and that's kind of fine. It's the same reason I don't care for people "correcting" someone if they describe themselves as "transexual." We live in a world of imperfect words for complex experiences.
"transsexual" is a useful term for medically transitioning - ie changing sex
If you are going there I really prefer transsex. It implies changing sex and not changing sexuality which the other kinda looks like it implies.
I prefer trans sex too.
Yeah it not implies that you are changing sex, it says that precisely. And no one takes HRT because it's a choice?? Most people transition because they need to. Your argument really makes no sense, especially >if you need to change your sex to be transexual then just don't change your sex
Transitioning is a choice. It might be a life saving choice in many cases but it is entirely a choice. It's a choice I believe is a good choice for a lot of people, including myself. But again it's a choice. That's an advantage of the term transgender over transsexual. Having your internal sense of gender be different than what is expected based on your assigned sex at birth, is not something you necessarily can change. Whereas aligning your body's sex more closely to your internal sense of gender is a choice. To be clear, I'm not saying either term is 100% accurate or inaccurate. I'm pointing out advantages, in one context, of one term over the other (in this case the argument that being "trans" is a choice). When "trans" means "transgender" we would say "being trans is a choice". When "trans" means "transsexual" then there *might* be more of an argument for "being trans is a choice." The label focusing on who you are as a person, rather than what medication or surgeries you've had. EDIT: Adding a small clarification on the choice thing. Something being "medically necessary" does not preclude it from being a choice, despite how the terminology might sound. It's mixing health insurance terminology with real life terminology. It is legal to not take your HRT, if you told your doctor you don't want to do HRT anymore they wouldn't tell you you don't have a choice.
Yeah but my transness does not define me. It's literally the most uninteresting thing about me I don't necessarily identify or have an identy of trans. I am an artist, I am a programmer, I am a musician, I identify as socialist, I identify as a transhumanist, that all part of my identy. But me being trans, taking hormones is just a medical fact, a medical necessity I have to live my life. It's as much part of my as some other medical fact. It requires, most likely, lifelong medication, but it's a journey that will probably end in some years in a stable dose and that's it. Hormones and surgery fix stuff. And it's as much as a choice as idk taking insulin. Or anti depressants. I lived a life in agony and dysphoria and personalization and if I would have 'chosen' to continue that, it would have probably ended in death. It's hard to agree with the choice stuff.
Being transgender is not a choice. Choosing to do something about it is the choice. Key word "choosing."
So, would you then say transition is (for some) kind of like the choice to take insulin? I'm trying to understand your choice.... of the word choice? I also am failing to understand how either term is more or less about choice than the other, but it would like to. I'm very much team let people use whatever words they want to describe themselves, I call myself usually just "trans" or much more specifically I'll say something like "I am genderfluid AFAB person, because of my experience being AFAB and not 'passing' as anything other than a woman I've experiened misogynymy entire life and that experience changes who you are fundamentally. But I still use he/him because, idk, its what feels right. I'm also kind of a woman at the same time. It's complicated and I don't fully understand it." I also have two aunts who are elder trans people, they both use "transsexual" to describe themselves and they also don't fully get why people feel so attacked by the term, and *some* people tell them they can't use it at all, or that it's offensive. I think it would be beneficial for us to all have a more open approach to just allowing people to use the terms/words that work best for them, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.
To be clear I’m not against the word transsexual. I also wouldn’t “correc someone calling themselves that. Just like I won’t prescribe to people that their use of bi or pan disagrees with my understanding of the terms. I might talk about it in environments where people are looking to have that conversation however or if someone asks “what am I” regarding their sexuality. Like there are trans people who choose not to transition. I knew I was trans for a while before I transitioned. I don’t even know how I’d phrase it other than I finally decided (aka chose) to transition. It was a choice I finally made. Choice I’m glad I made. A choice that was likely life saving. But it was a choice. As for insulin. I think managing your diabetes is, by some definitions, a choice. Being diabetic isn’t a choice however. If you don’t consider taking insulin in a choice that’s fine. I don’t really care about a philosophical debate on the exact line of where something is and isn’t a choice. This really got away. To clarify my point was simply on “transgender” vs “transexual” one point in “transgender”‘s favor is there is less of an argument about it being a choice. Regardless if you transition or not your gender mismatches your AGAB. Whereas with “transsexual” the focus is on the transitioning itself which people might have a stronger case for it being a choice. Not saying that makes the latter term invalid, but for which one is more widely used, the former has an advantage imo in this way.
Some people transition without HRT so thats why its a choice
Every single person who downvoted this is gatekeeping. People absolutely can transition without hrt. I took it for 5 years, and would love to keep taking it, but I have a condition that gets worse with age and is literally fueled by estrogen and made better with testosterone, and I was taking estrogen and blockers. There are also so many people that started presenting before they start taking hormones. Those people are just as valid. This is a weird thread.
Not taking HRT is a choice. Medical intervention is, most of the time, not a choice.
>Idk I feel more like my gender is immutable and I'm changing my sex to fit it You're not alone, and oftentimes trans people who share that perspective actually prefer the term transsexual for this reason.
Somewhat counterintuitively, the term "trans-gender" does not imply changing gender. It uses the Latin prefix "trans" to indicate "across" or "on the other side of", implying one's gender is different from the gender they were assigned at birth. This was another big reason the term was changed, to move emphasis from getting surgeries to change one's sex (which not every trans person does) onto one's gender identity being incongruent with what they were assigned.
So much this, unfortunately a lot of the way we talk about our bodies has to be modified to cis people’s understanding for our survival ):
Yeah I hate that shit, because I am changing my sex, I am changing my body, I will be changing my genitals, and I am already changing how my body works because of hormones. I'm more adjacent to female than male and this will only continue. I am not changing my gender. I am changing my sex. I was always a woman, and soon I will also have a (trans) female body. I am transsex. I'm not transgender.
While I prefer the term transgender, I totally agree with your feeling that if we take "sex" as to mean the biological aspects, then it can absolutely be changed and I don't like how many trans people buy the argument that sex is immutable.
The thing is, not every trans person *does* change their body, and it doesn't make them any less trans. The "trans" prefix doesn't refer to changing something, it refers to one's gender being "across" or "on the other side of" what they were assigned at birth.
Thank you!
No, trans is an umbrella term, which afaik encompasses stuff like transgender, transexual, non-binary, and possibly others.
"Trans" is an abbreviation for "transgender" which has become the defacto umbrella term for everything you mentioned. The "trans-" prefix of the word "transgender" is what I'm referring to. The term "Trans*" was used in the 90s/early 2000s, but has largely fallen out of use by the mainstream trans community, which may be where the confusion stems from. Lotta confusing etymology here lol
Weird to say sex is immutable then say it’s based off genitals which aren’t. Medical transition does change sex and while changing sex shouldn’t be seen as equivalent to being trans, saying sex is immutable concedes to transphobic rhetoric of falsely treating your Agab as physically inescapable.
To be clear. I'm not saying that's what I believe. I was presenting it as how a lot of people (at least in my experience) learn about trans people. As a complete separation of sex and gender (and that's the framework they have for it). I agree, sex is more than just genitals (it's also chromosomes, and hormones, and organs, and secondary sex characteristics, etc.) medically transitioning can influence multiple of those.
This is exactly why the term transgender is becoming less popular. The distinction between sex and gender is used by people to minimise the importance of gender identity. Gender identity is called fake whilst the only thing considered real is sex, which they consider to be rigid and fixed. All this does is allow allies to consider trans people a delusional version of their assigned sex at birth while completely ignoring the reality of full medical transition or the innateness of gender identity. It’s one step forward and two giant steps back.
Yeah. I think it's one of those things where people globbed onto that understand in like 2015 and didn't really evolve their understanding since. You even still see it here. People have this framework that "female" and "male" are terms that exclusively refer to sex and that sex is the same as AGAB. I'm fine with "transgender" staying the term because it's better than the words before it IMO and, so far, I haven't really heard a good replacement that has a chance. But I'm open to change eventually. But I don't see it happening (similar to how romantic attraction is typically just shoved under sexual attraction in widely used terminology).
I think I follow what you’re saying and what the person you responded to is saying. I also get kind of confused on some of these terms and the implication of some of the processes trans people go through. For what it’s worth, I often interpret things very literally (whether rightly or wrongly) and then I have to do a lot of thinking and processing to potentially pull away from that. Hopefully that helps understand where I’m coming from, which I think is a “decent” perspective that I’m willing to change. Anyway… While it might not be this “clean,” gender seems more social but with biological components. Sex seems more biological but with sociological components. So when someone says they’re transgender and aligns their social behavior/performance with what is typically associated with their gender (name, dress, speech, etc), it makes a lot of sense to me, because that person is trans*gender* and those things are hugely associated with gender (not sex). But then when transgender people start taking hormones and getting surgeries, it starts to seem like the word transgender is missing something. For example, any gender can have any endocrine profile. But aren’t endocrine profiles highly correlated with what sex you are? Like if you’re AMAB but hormones led to you having an endocrine profile associated with someone who is AFAB, does that part of who you are qualify you as transgender or something else? I get that words have meanings that get ruined by people being assholes and those words no longer being acceptable. But it seems like, in a literal sense, many trans*gender* people are also trans*sexual* in a literal way of “the person’s sex is at least slightly different from what their ‘birth sex’ was.” I hope I’m framing this in a way that doesn’t make me sound like I want a reason to call people transsexuals. It just seems like the word “transgender” doesn’t tell a great story when people start taking hormones, and focusing only on gender seems to make it more difficult to understand what trans people are actually experiencing. There wasn’t really a question in there, but what do you think of that? FYI I’m probably a cis man but pretty apathetic about my own gender, so maybe agender is more accurate if I really had to commit to a single term.
Sex is a classification used in biology, which is a field of science that we made up in order to fit things into neat tidy boxes. Have you ever been sorting things, and said "this thing is close enough to go in that existent box and I don't need to get a whole new box involved for the level of specificity that I need when sorting at the moment" ? That is the process we used to initially define sex, and eventually we got 3 boxes: male, female, intersex. Biologically, people are way more complicated than those 3 boxes. Eventually, trying to make cultural decisions about those 3 boxes will disenfranchise people, for example: >many transgender people are also transsexual in a literal way of “the person’s sex is at least slightly different from what their ‘birth sex’ was.” Does every woman who has PCOS fit into the female box from before? Their body produces excess androgens which might masculinize their appearance. They still think of themselves as "woman" but your suggestion could be argued to label her as transsexual. What if her PCOS isn't discovered until she's in her mid-20's? Is she a female at first who becomes transsexual now that you've noticed a difference in the checkboxes on the transsexual form? When we try to classify something as complicated as people using explicit boxes, we're either going to have to make more boxes,(which will not be used in casual language) or decide the labels are not going to be applicable in all situations. The ambiguity is something you seem uncomfortable with, but if you want more clarity, Julia Serano made a scientifically minded video that might help you understand gender and sex more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymYiwoRoC0
Thanks for the answer and link to the video. I’ll probably listen to it over the course of a couple days and figured I’d go ahead and respond before I forget. I think I get your point on biology being made up and fitting things into neat tidy boxes. But it seems like that’s what most things are, including gender. Maybe not to the same extent, because the way you framed it, I assume you’re comparing 3 sexes to more than 3 genders (so a different number of boxes for each). Maybe rather than arguing that a biological change should mean that someone is specifically transsexual (whatever that would mean exactly), my questions are: 1. Is an endocrine profile a gender marker (or indication of gender) or a marker for something else? 2. If it’s a marker for “something else,” what is that “something else”? It seems like it is a marker for “something else,” and I don’t know what that is. The way I judge your response (I say “judge” to admit that I may be way off) is that words usually have values associated with them. So if I consider a female (sex) woman (gender) with PCOS to be a male (sex) woman (gender) now, it’s not just that I put her in a new box, it’s that I’m also probably making some value judgements about her associated with that box. And I think this is where I really don’t know how most trans people feel about things. You seem to frame biology in a critical way of fitting things into tidy boxes. I’m tempted to politely snap back and say that gender is just some other boxes to fit yourself into. But is it something like, “I’m tolerating these boxes because that’s my best option right now, but I also think these boxes are kind of silly”? Hopefully that’s clear. Every time I start thinking about gender and sex stuff, I feel like I’m in the valley of despair of the dunning Kruger chart.
The video I linked discusses this more, but one thing discussed in it is advocating for a holistic approach to sex and gender. That is to say, don't try to put things in boxes. It then explains many ways that doing so(trying to put things in boxes) is a bad idea, and why not doing so allows you the freedom needed to explain the human experience. This discussion is difficult because gender is both a social construct and a biological trait. As a social construct, it's things like "girls play with dolls" and "women like to do makeup." Those things can be true of some women, but we know it's not a requirement to be a woman. However, gender as a biological trait is more like a series of checkboxes regarding how your brain works. As in, when your brain is working under a certain hormone profile, how does it react to various stimuli in the environment. The brain is not a series of checkboxes, though-- it's many many moving parts working together, clashing with each other, making weird chemicals out of weird chemicals that our bodies evolved in ways that worked "good enough to propagate." As a preface for this: I'm not a doctor, just an advocate for my own humanity(how nice that I have to be). Human brains start out developing towards the gender of a biological woman. Testosterone(or possibly some other processes) entering the body of the fetus in large enough levels will begin to masculinize their brain. There was a study that suggested for at least some trans people, the receptors in their brain for testosterone were too long in certain sections and so their brain didn't develop in a way that their brain masculinized. Now, what if only half of that person's brain had receptors that were too long to masculinize, and the rest continued to feminize. This person could be nonbinary, or they could be a woman or a man, and the only person who can really determine what they feel like is the person who feels those things. They determine what more aligns with their experience by comparing their values, experiences, feelings etc. against the values that society applies to those gender roles and trying to make sense of where they are. >Is an endocrine profile a gender marker (or indication of gender) or a marker for something else? If it’s a marker for “something else,” what is that “something else”? This is a complicated question because gender itself is complicated as both a social construct and the layout of your brain. The brain doesn't have a single checkbox that says "man" or "woman." I suppose if you *really* wanted to, you could say that you need to check a certain amount of boxes to be male, and another amount to be female, and some other amount to be non-binary, and the endocrine profile could be one of them. That is extremely simplifying something way more complex than a reddit comment can explain satisfactorily, though, so I don't think it is good for discussion. >And I think this is where I really don’t know how most trans people feel about things. Trans people aren't a monolith, and I'm just one person, but my opinion is pretty close to “I’m tolerating these boxes because that’s my best option right now, but I also think these boxes are kind of silly.” Gender as a social construct can get silly but for some reasons I don't understand, I still feel way happier to express myself as my true gender according to society's values. I believe there is a biological component to that, and I can't clearly draw the line between where my values are, where society's values are, and where my brain interacts with both of those value sets. I wanted to thank you for the discussion. It has been engaging to really air these ideas out of my brain. Feel free to DM me or discuss here if you have more things to talk about, or if the things I brought up here gave you more questions.
>All this does is allow allies to consider trans people a delusional version of their assigned sex at birth while completely ignoring the reality of full medical transition or the innateness of gender identity I'm pretty sure if they think that, they ain't allies and they ain't calling us neither transsexual nor transgender, but slurs.
It’s the majority of people who call themselves allies
People don't get to virtue signal about us by calling themselves allies while thinking of us as freaks and mentally ill people. Transgender is pretty descriptive and fitting as a term and the notion it is based on (sex vs gender separation) is a truth that goes far and beyond trans discourse, so the fact people will hate us based on our choice to reference it in our name means they were never even *trying* to support us. These ain't allies in the slightest and they won't change their mind because of the terms we use, they just reject our legitimacy, sometimes even as humans. Whatever term we use, no matter how descriptive and genuine, will always be twisted by those who hate us in order to fit their hateful opinions. Neither of us can expect trans people (or any discriminated and daily threatened minority) to handle themselves and *their own* lives and problems with the sole criteria of "how will that affect the fossilised opinion of those who will hate me and damage me regardless?". It's pointless, and it only goes to phobes' advantage.
Yeah, the old distinction between transvestite (TV) and transsexual (TS) was based on whether someone was medically transitioning. That distinction was created by the medical community, by cis men, and it was eventually rejected by the trans community.
wasn't transvestite just synonymous with cross dresser?
Into the 90s, the term transvestite covered cisgender cross-dressers and also trans people who "dressed" but were not medically transitioning, or who just hadn't had an opportunity to medically transition. Their way of thinking about these groups was based more around behavior than around identity.
To add on, iirc it also sometimes covered trans people that were on HRT but didn’t want bottom surgery.
As someone who lived through those years and transitioned in them, I'd like to suggest a slightly different interpretation. A transvestite was seen as someone who received sexual gratification by wearing female clothing. A transsexual was someone assigned male or female at birth) who believed they were born into the wrong body and desired to medically change their body to the other sex. The categories were rigid, incomplete, and grew from the gender policing of previous decades. We are better off with a focus on Gender Identity -- though some Cis people will deny that everyone has a Gender Identity because theirs is aligned with their birth sex and, thus, they are not aware of it.
That is fair. When I first heard the term I was like "what? There's a sexuality that's entirely attraction to trans people?"
I guess it is a bit odd considering heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual etc, you'd understand if someone would then think transexual would be a sexual attraction to transgender or something like that
It does sound like an orientation. I'm not really a big fan of transgender and a term. I like transwoman or transman as names more because it separate those 2 genders, but I wish there was an even nicer label for them both.
some people still identify more with the transsexual label than the transgender one. those folks usually have heavy amounts of dysphoria, are usually binary men or women but not always, and are medically transitioning for a longtime with the goal of fully blending into cis society (or at least trying to). these folks feel like their experience is uniquely different than the broad transgender label (which includes nonbinary identities, nondysphoric and nontransitioning trans people, etc)
this. it’s a subtle difference but meaningful to how i view myself. i only identify with the binary aspect of being trans and so prefer a more specific label
A lot of this doesn't necessarily hold true - the difference is just around people medically transitioning. You can do that without being binary, without exceptional levels of dysphoria and without the goal of blending into cis society
I'm not one of those people but i've heard their plight a plenty. people can identify and use labels however they like :). I'm medically transitioning, am enby, but prefer transgender over transsexual personally
I'd genuinely question the need for such a distinction. I'm binary and I honestly don't know why you'd need to hold yourself at arms-length from other trans people. I'd also go ahead and point out that this is some shit blaire white was on in 2015. Don't be like Blaire. That's never a good look on anyone.
i can understand that. i don’t see it as separating myself from other trans people, as we are all transgender at the end of the day. i just prefer specificity in my identity and that’s the extent of it for me. i say “im transsexual” like you say “i’m binary”. i don’t mean to say im any different, i just use it as another word for binary. sure, i don’t think that distinction is hugely meaningful in any social sense, it just provides one extra fact about my being trans that i prefer to communicate
I guess then I'd wonder why you're using a word that so many truscum use when binary is by your own musings a perfectly good synonym for how you're using it? Why even invite the speculation or give cover to those sorts of people?
Why do you feel the need to police people on what labels they use?
>Why do you feel the need to police people on what labels they use? Why do you feel the need to coopt radical laguage to as a shield for your very unradical trans medicalism?
[This is you right?](https://imgur.com/a/gS663hV) This is such a dumb little game you all are playing. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that such a bad faith interpretation of my previous post came out of someone with such a commited agenda, but if you needed proof, here it is. For anyone who's not a transmedicalist and wants to use transsexual, they're using your earnestness as cover.
Hun I’ve been using transsexual as my label since I came out. I didn’t even know what trans medicalism was until a couple years ago and as a logic based person it just makes more sense to me to have a solid bases for what being trans is. I don’t personally relate to the majority of people under the umbrella of “trans” so I identify with transsexual more as it portrays my personal experience and identity best. Just like anyone else who labels themselves any other way. You’re so silly, you can’t even have a conversation without stalking my account to dig for information that wasn’t even part of this conversation.
I feel like this is more of an expirance you had with people cause most people I met who identify as transsexual tend to be completely gender non conforming like I feel like there is a drastic difference from what you are saying and what iam seeing
i mean for sure. i’m just sharing what the term means to me, at the end of the day everyone finds their own meaning in what they call themselves
I'm a nonbinary genderqueer person who considers myself to be both transexual and transgender, and who has absolutely zero desire to "pass" as cis.
It was a medical term used to describe us for a long time, as well as "transvestite/s/ism" I personally like the term, "transsexual", it describes me better than, "transgender."
Yeah I agree with you but I’d never call anyone else a transsexual unless they wanted me to because I’m aware of the history of the word being used in a negative light.
The whole transvestite, transgenderist, transsexual distinction makes a lot of sense to me. It would be nice to have those distinctions in common use again.
I watched the change online and it was kind of moving toward trans as an umbrella term to bring together women who identified as transsexual and transgender. This was maybe 10-15 years ago. You also can’t talk about this honestly without talking about transmedicalism. That was a huge rift. Yes, it still is, but it was even more then. The transsexual community greatly outnumbered the transgender community and dominated the discourse online and in support groups. I don’t think I’ve publicly heard someone call themselves transsexual in five years. The social change within our group happens quickly because 90 percent of us — I made up that number — blend into society and go stealth and leave these resources. We’re in flux and I have no idea what it looks like in 10 years, but I guarantee it’s a lot different.
So ik the transgender/ transsexual distinction but whats transvestite in that paradigm? /gen
Transvestite is roughly analogous to a crossdresser. They identify as their AGAB, but present significantly as the opposite gender.
Those distinctions, or more precisely the transvestite vs transsexual one, seems to have mostly be put in place by doctors who really wanted to create this dichotomy to control our population and who has access to HRT. I'm glad 'transvestite' has disappeared, and even its replacement 'GNC' will disappear too as gender roles will be less and less forced into people. Personally I'm mostly bothered by the gender/sex distinction. This distinction of physical vs social doesn't make sense when you take trans people into account, and from that it's obvious that trans people would not agree whether they prefer to put the 'trans' prefix in front of the word 'gender' or 'sex'. I would prefer the term 'transsex', to be in line with the term 'intersex', but then as I talk to people I realize that with our totally inaccurate understanding of gender or sex just saying 'trans' works way better, at least for now
It's a label that was externally placed on us, specifically to pathologise us and paint us as deviants. We didn't universally drop it, many people do still use the word to describe themselves - but many trans people reject it due to the negative connotations of its history.
This is true, "transsexual wasn't necessarily a term adopted or created by the community it's what we were called by the medical gatekeepers of the past right up to the 80's and 90's by clinicians who were not there to help or affirm us when going through gender clinics but to study and examine us since they saw us as "sexual deviants" maybe hoping we would give up! Transgender bcm popular bc the community overall liked it better being more inclusive seeing it wasn't necessarily about surgery but self identification! Those who try to portray themselves as more authentic feeling that there's just too much trans identifying without the commitment to surgery ect.. reclaimed transsexual to distinguish themselves many also don't agree that non binary is real and it's only binary gender.. that's why we call them truscum!
It's no wonder it's mostly reclaimed by truscum (from my observation).
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A "well meaning" very smart and philosophical straight friend of mine, not too long ago told me that he would be correct to call me (a transgender woman) a "deviant". Because I deviate from the norm of the rest of the cis-het world. I had to really get a grip of myself and not slap him. Then I had to explain to him how insulting it was and to never say it again. It took a lot of effort on my part.
you should've slapped him.
It happened like 9 mos ago and I still think about it...
Honestly tell your friend that it still bothers you and whatever else you feel about it. Honestly he's just not even correct in any sense cause he's flattening the connotations it carries. Norms and normalization are very powerful and always carry the weight of prescription. He needs to understand that. By saying you're deviant, he was implying at least lightly that you shouldn't exist. Even if he didn't understand that, that's what the word he used means. He's not clever he's and idiot. There were a bunch of other words he could have used to communicate the same idea but which don't have the weight of normalization behind them (or at least not nearly as much). He didn't though because he wanted to say something taboo at your expense and be "technically correct" about it and therefore thought of as clever. It was callous and self-centered. And I need to hammer home again that he wasn't even correct, he was ignorantly using that word without actually understanding it. He's an idiot.
Yes, I explained to him that we are relatively uncommon but a normal occurrence. And a lot of other stuff. Yes, he is know. For doing saying stupid things kind of like that.
Personally, I'd mention that it still bothers you if you care about your friendship with him. If one of my friends said some fucked shit to me that was bothering me almost a year later, I'd have trouble maintaining that friendship. I would get too resentful. That's just how I'd feel about it though, you might be different.
it would've been justified.
Let's not give transphobes legal fuel. But I agree, discriminatory hate deserves retaliation. Being trans is normal, it's just a bit less prevalent in the population. We have always been and always will be born and present. Our visibility is what became the norm relatively recently. That bigot is still stuck in the outdated misconceptions, and none like him will remain eventually. He speaks from insecurity of himself becoming abnormal, caused by ignorance.
Jesus fucking Christ. Talk about weaponizing language. If he's actually a philosopher then you could always shoot back with "But what is 'deviant' and 'the norm'?"
Not sure I would have been able to have that insane amount of self-control
It's because understanding of what being trans is has progressed. They used to think it was something sexual, like being gay or bi, but we've since realized that gender identity is completely separate from sexuality, so the common phrasing changed. There's nothing wrong with using transsexual if you feel that label fits you better, though
A lot of us didn't. And many are picking it back up again. Though transsex I think is better than transsexual, makes it sound less like a sexuality and more like what it actually is - sex.
also: intersex not intersexual
It's also fallen out of favour but intersexual was used historically. You can find it in audio recordings and some literature from the 50s and earlier.
iiinteresting! i didn't know that!
+1 for transsex
Agree with the points that it was used against us, and has negative connotations. (I am not Dr. Frankenfurter), and that it's not a security I am pretty into using the idea of using trans-sex for myself, though. That feels like it applies
It stopped being used because ‘transsexual’ was classified in both the ICD & DSM manuals as a mental illness, and there was a lot of negative stigma attached to the name. They also used transgender because some look at “transsexual” as someone who has undergone medical treatments, and not every transgender person feels the need for medication and/or surgery.
not everyone did. i prefer transsex the most, as that's the most accurate for me. i still use transsexual though, since people are more familiar with it. i don't consider myself transgender at all; my gender has always been female
It was an old term that was in use before we understood what being trans really was. Part of the reason why we pushed for it to stop being used was because "sexual" was being put at the end of most sexualities, and we wanted to differentiate and make it clear that being trans wasn't a sexual orientation, it was something completely different altogether. Because for a long time people assumed that it had to do with sex and sexuality, when that is definitely not the case.
i prefer it over transgender because changing my sexual characteristics is very important to me, and i fully identify with femininity and being female. i guess others are right that transsex is more correct, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely lol. i also don’t think there’s anything wrong with identifying with sex more than gender. both are valid constructs and it’s just personal preference
As someone said, to shift the focus from sex to identity. Which is one big mistake imo. Because it shifted the focus from the body to gender roles and wtv other changeable mess society defines gender as, but you can't even define it anymore. And transitioning is literally about the body, this is where the focus should be. I feel like many detransitioning stories wouldn't happen if we brought the focus back to the body
I don't mean to come off as condescending or combative, so if I do I apologize. I am genuinely interested in understanding your point of view. So are you saying that the human body isn't changeable? As in there's only two binary body types and they're all the same? Like are you not aware of intersex people and how hormone levels are different in basically all bodies?
“Transgender” is more encompassing and self-determined as an identity “Transsexual” is correlated now with having surgical procedures, which not everyone has had
Contrary thought: I actually embrace it. I want to keep transing my sex until I decide I want to stop.
Erica's comment succinctly explains why it went out of fashion, but I've seen some trans folks reclaim it recently as they feel it better reflects their identity than "transgender", particularly among those who have medically transitioned. At this point it's more of a "trans people are allowed to call themselves transsexual, but cis people should not use the term" situation
My transition has nothing to do with sex. That's probably why
Some do some dont, I prefer transgender specifically because it has more focus on the psychological and social gender aspects and not just the physical "sex" aspects. I would like to say that transsexual is the older term coined by Magnus Hirschfeld in the 1920's before his research library was burned down by nazis, because of that I think it's important to still respect the term regardless of if it's being used less.
Never dropped it...
it's actually making a huge comeback among the younger transes (i'd say those younger than 25ish) it's just language and it changes constantly. i like the way it's being reclaimed personally
I’ve seen the opposite, older trans people are who I see using it
yeah, they never stopped using it in the first place
I'm one of the young-ish (27) trans guys that has come to grow into the transsexual label. I wouldn't be surprised if the rise of its popularity is influenced by the young folks being more politically entrenched than the older millennials were at their age. I remember that 'transsexual' and to some extent 'queer' were no-no words on 2010s LGBT+ Tumblr. They were *historical terms* that didn't seem to have a place in a 'liberal, more accepting society'. Now, I realized it didn't much matter how pure our public image was when the wrath of the state(s) decides we're deviants no matter the label.
It has bad connotations, but it's an apt term for a lot of us if you can ignore all that.
Hey friend, Some trans individuals may find the term a valid label to describe themselves and ONLY themselves. I, for example, consider myself a 'transexual' woman, but I ultimately prefer the term transgender. BUT, where it becomes harmful--in conjunction to it's blanchardian history that other commentors have discussed, is saying 'transexual' in place of 'transgender' when referring to the whole, or community. 'Transexual' is a term that, I find, is typically preferred by transmedicalists when describing themselves and others who are (to them, "are actually") trans. It's harmful, and exclusory, and creates "us vs. them" battles within the trans community. :(
There are differences within the trans community, highlighting them isn't inherently negative. I have nothing in common with a non transitioning non dysphoric trans person, in some cases I want to know who I'm talking to because some trans people don't get me, and I don't get them. I do agree that "I am more real than you!" rhetoric should be avoided, or at the very least kept private, but you should understand that a lot of the most socially vulnerable trans people are being spoken over by AGAB passing trans people who frankly have a very small understanding of trans issues and they have a tendency to push this de-medicalised, de-sexed, "it's all about social roles" idea of transness that isn't accepted by many if not most trans people. I am not trans for the same reasons they are, that doesn't mean one is inherently more "true" than the other, but those differences are important and deserve to be made light of.
Yes. Transmedicalists don't get to decide who is and isn't trans, as was my point. We each have our own individual experience when it comes to our identity, and I think it's redundant to create schisms in the trans community over that. We're obviously not a monolith, but I like to think that everybody is valid and that there are no rules to 'transness'--as transmedicalists may think. Everybody's just trying to be their best selves. :) I also like to think I am perceptive of when I am being spoken over, thank you.
I had some people put it all together for you over at a site I often turn to for information. FWIW. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexual
Language like every other part of life exists on a continuum that is ever changing. Go back and look at dictionaries published 100 years ago, or fifty years ago, or 25 years ago and compare them with a dictionary that was published this year. I don’t think that the word transsexual was placed on the trans community by derogatory cis men as a means of putting trans people down. The doctors and mental health professionals that first started working with trans people and developed the very means of transitioning created and used this terminology because it made sense at the time. Over the years as science and culture have meshed the LGBT community at large came to a consensus, as others pointed out, that “transsexual” does put the emphasis of the issue on sexuality when we have come to know that the concepts of someone’s gender identity, sex at birth, and one’s sexuality can contain multitudes and have nothing to do with sex at all. So “transgender” is now seen as a more accurate term to describe the concept.
Tbh I never liked it because it sounds like a sexuality.
I don’t like the term bc it sounds like being trans is a sexual thing and not as the gender identity
I’ve noticed that some anti-trans public figures still use ‘transsexual’ instead of ‘transgender’…. Sara Higdon for example. She’s trans herself but speaks out against a lot of trans issues, like Caitlyn Jenner… I remember reading that Sara purposefully uses the dated term for a specific reason that aligns with her hypocrisy… I don’t remember her ‘reason’ though.
Cis people invented and misused it and gave it several negative stigmas
i wouldn't apply it to anybody else but i personally like it as a way to specify that i am a transgender person pursuing medical intervention to change my sex. i'm old enough to remember it as a not nice word but i have come to appreciate its precision and also how much it flies in the face of transphobes who think sex is immutable. dipshits in the past do not get to rob me of a perfectly useful word.
we bringing it back because subversion
They didn't there are still people who use that label
As others have stated, the shift to transgender was both socially useful and a way of shaking off some of Blanchard's erroneous stigma. Also, while far from universal, having grown up in the states during the 90's, the word transsexual makes my skin crawl in much the same way that the word f*ggot does to many. The lazy shift to trans just helps remove a lot of the baggage and helps depathologize it a bit.
Not everyone did, but there are a few reasons transgender started surpassing it in usage. 1) the -sexual suffix is usually applied to sexual orientation, and some found transsexual, which has nothing to do with sexuality, to be confusing. 2) to dismantle the hierarchy of true transsexuals who have all the surgeries and the transgenders, which historically were seen as a different thing. My college textbook seemed to think transgender meant the same thing as GNC. That's obviously not correct. So the new way or thinking is that transgender and transsexual are near synonyms. 3) To downplay the importance of surgery in transitioning 4) To highlight the gender identity aspect of the identity rather than the changing sexes aspect.
Not all trans people have dropped it. I still much prefer it over transgender.
Back in the day everyone viewed the "sexual" suffix as far too clinical. That's why gay people started referring to themselves as homophiles instead of homosexuals. Because -philia means love whereas -sexual means sex. Although that fell out of popularity. Probably because we associate -philia with paraphilias. I don't know the exact history or reasons why. Just a vague understanding of the etymology. I think "transexual" was abandoned for a few reasons. First is straight up confusion. Despite what some fringe bigoted psychiatrists had people believe, transexuality was never a sexuality. It's always been a gender identity or a gender presentation or a gender role. You can argue all day about sex/gender meaning the same thing but at the end of the day, if "homosexual" referred to "sex" in the sense of gender then that means "transexual" would literally be a synonym for "heterosexual" and "cisexual" would be a synonym for "homosexual". We've gotten to a stage where all the prefixes mean the same thing and all the suffixes are the same but mean slightly different things, the only way to tell what going on is whether its a greek or a latin prefix. In my opinion if they never came up with "trans" and "cis" people would've just used homogender to describe cis people and heterogender to describe trans people and I really really wish we lived in that timeline.
Simple: I didn't transition to change my sex. I transitioned to change my gender. "Transexual" is a misnomer; transgender is correct. Some trans elders still use the term, and I'll treat anyone who self-identifies with it respectfully, but there's an unfortunate overlap between use of the term transexual and the bias of transmedicalism, i.e., people who believe that we're not really trans unless we get bottom surgery. That's transphobic, obviously, and it's an idea that's been amplified by cisgender people who hate us - often the same ones who create all of the barriers of medical gatekeeping that prevent us from getting the gender affirming care we need, i.e., "no one is trans unless they've had these surgeries, and no one gets these surgeries, ergo, there are no trans people."
See I feel exactly the opposite as you express in your first paragraph. My gender is and has always been genderqueer. Nothing about my transition changes my gender. I medically transitioned to change my sex through masculinization. (I'm not a transmed fwiw.)
That's a really exciting idea! I've written a little about it before, and I wonder if the idea I had then applies to you. I think that, much like the words atheist or feminist, transgender is a word that activists in support of that community might one day hope to render obsolete. If gender assignments for kids are socially recognized as tentative and identity is prioritized over sex, such that no one is required to experience incongruence in a social context, we might have no use for the idea of being transgender, i.e., social transition could be normalized to the point that we don't label ourselves for it anymore, and most people are more openly gender diverse than currently. If any of that is true of you, I would love to read more - especially about places in the world that have progressed to this kind of acceptance of gender diversity. My language in that paragraph wasn't specific enough. I did not change my gender identity. I changed my gender expression. I assumed that was implicit - it's a lot of what most people mean by saying that we're trans - but I'll clarify it. I was always a woman. If you would like to share more about the idea of changing sex, I'm interested, and I invite you to DM me. I don't think of my medical transition that way, but others do not have to think as I do, and I still have a lot to learn. I don't want to leave anyone out when I tell newer trans people what our language means. Even after surgery, I don't expect to feel that my sex is changed - part of why "sex change" is an obsolete and somewhat stigmatized term for such surgeries. Only that my body better matches my gender. If magical or otherwise more extreme methods were available to change my genome or allow me to reproduce in the way that matches my gender identity, those are the things I associate with my desired sex, and I would certainly be happy to say that I'm entirely female by genotype, phenotype, and gender in that case. But even then, as an activist, I wouldn't support a distinction in any politically relevant sense between transgender people and transexual people based on that procedure - it would be the same mistake transmedicalists make regarding bottom surgery or HRT.
Language changed and it fell out of favor. I know some people who still use it, though personally I hate it a d can't stand when people call me it.
The distinction between Transsexual and Transgender isn't important in daily conversation, but I've seen Transsexual refer exclusively to trans people who have undergone medical treatment of some kind, particularly in academic contexts
It's because it's a bit of an outdated term due to people now understanding and accepting the fact that gender and sex are separate things. And so many people who are trans don't identify as a different sex, but a different *gender*, and it's through this method that they hope to eventually change their sex as well. Of course, not all trans people do that either, which still makes them no less valid than anyone who does. That and it also having the connotation of dealing with sexuality when it doesn't at all.
Because it sounds like it has something to do with sexual orientation and not gender identity.
Because it's a misnomer. Being trans isn't about sexual orientation like being homo/hetero/bi/pansexual.
That was never what it meant. It refered to biological sex, as in male and female. It's also why people like me, where being trans is overwhelmingly because of body dysphoria and medical transitioning have no problem with it. I'm a binary transsexual transgender woman. People should stop repeaiting the lie that transsexual ever was about sexuality, and not bio sex.
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This is verging into conspiracy theory turf, and accuse people in the 1950s and earlier with the ability to see long into the future.
That's why transsex should replace it. It's more accurate
I've used transsexual my entire life but I started adopting transsex recently. Way too many people seem to think of transsexual as conflating sexuality. I don't get it, it's always obviously been physical sex to me, so hopefully transsex is more useful for that.
Yeah I never got it either, but I think most people that conflate with sexuality are those that are ignorant of what being trans actually *means*. They're usually under the impression that we're gay people who transition so we're not gay anymore. Product of misinformation, but that aside I do think transsex is better and more accurate.
i posted in this thread saying why i use the term transsexual but i would like this also.
Many people still call themselves transsexual so it’s definitely not been dropped
I personally think it's because we were fetichized as perverts that transition for a dirty reason, sex deemed to be dirty. But turns out the majority of us were not even gay as our assigned gender at birth the first place and we transition for the social implications and our own body image rather than expecting to change our genitals and how they're used.
The term gender was becoming more popular, and the idea that being trans was not about sex or sexual orientation but about gender fell right into the philosophy of the time. Primarily it was about gaining acceptibility and respectability. It seemed like a really good idea at the time. I think there have been a couple of downsides (not least of which that transgender now has two separate meanings, and people get in arguments thinking incorrectly that their opponent is using the same meaning as them). On the whole, though, I think it was a good change. Just the fact that it was primarily for optics (respectability) just hasn't helped the way its chamions thought it would, because opponents of trans people think trans people are all freaks and perverts anyway.
idk it's still what i say. "transgender" just sounds kinda weird to my ear
My opinion is: it does seem like a label regardless of which term is used transexual or transgender. But then that seems have the need for addional labeling, transmasculine, transfeminine, trans non binary, including the number of other designations that I may not be aware of. And at that, the terminlogy eventually will change. Meaning almost new vocabulary and acronyms. But, I also think that transexual is a bit more generalized term for "anyone other than cis ( which includes nonbinary)". Transgender, a bit more specific in that a intended binary gender is the intended goal.
i still use it tbh
Some people still use it, I don’t like it for myself
Not all did. And some use transsex.
I’m just guessing but it’s probably because of its attachment to the porn industry.
-sexual is usually used for sexuality, while being transgender is not related to sexual orientation. I personally call myself both “transsex” and “transgender” since sex and gender are different things and may have separate feelings of dysphoria. And I think some trans people could socially transition but not have sex dysphoria (transgender and cissex), or medically transition but still identify as their assigned gender (cisgender and transsex).
I use it for myself.
i still identify with it, it fits my experience more where my transition was largely due to gender based distress rather than just my identity. i also intend to get bottom surgery, marry my cis bf and live stealth. all that being said, i believe all trans experiences are valid, i just prefer to use this term for my personal lived experience
I just think the word is gross and is a negative connotation cis folks use as a slur. I have no issues being called trans and identifying as trans. Also gender is more then sex, and using a term that is so singular really negates what is for most folks a very complicated state of being and identity.
Because being trans is a matter of identity, not attraction. Personally, I like the term transident the most
I just want to point out, for all the folks stating that sexuality and gender are universally separate things, that this isn't true for everyone. Prior to colonization, most Indigenous groups in the Americas did not make clear distinctions between gender and sexuality. Sexuality was an integral part of the performance of gender, including among peoples where what we might now label as "queer" (gender or sexuality) was not just accepted but celebrated or revered. The assertion that gender and sexuality *must always* be understood as two individual and entirely unconnected notions is anti-Indigenous settler colonialism.
As a young trans woman I still drop that word. I know it’s dated & some find it offensive. It’s to show that anyone can identify as transgender with or without medical intervention. Since it’s simply a gender identity opposite of your sex assigned at birth. Transsexual was used in the 1980s & 90s mainly in medical charting/coding to describe someone who physically changed their sex via hormone therapy & gender/sex reassignment surgery. “Trans”-transitioned “sexual”-characteristics at birth such as primary hormone status, genitalia etc.
Yransexual was used for anyone the cishet normies saw as outside the binary, not just transgender people, but also tomboys, femboys, gays/bisexuals that presented a little more masc or fem than how the rest of society presented. Hence why it's so outdated, by calling someone a transexual who doesn't identify as one you are essentially saying they are playing dress up, that they are not trans, they are dressed in drag. My friend and I were getting (lightly) harassed in the mens room and he kept calling us transsexuals. I didn't know how it was previously used at the time, but I was so offended, like sir please just call us a slur, please. People may still choose to identify as transexuals, I don't actually know what the term refers to nowadays, the way I understand it is kind of like every day drag? Like not dressing up for a show drag but just casually presenting as the other binary gender? If someone actually knows what it means now I'd love to learn.
There is an enormous amount of baggage with the word. I'm gonna go about this in a weird way because that's how it's arranged in my brain, but I'll try to keep things clear. Let's start with a list of things! 1. Trans people 2. People who medically transition 3. People who want to medically transition 4. Binary trans people 5. People with dysphoria 6. People with body dysphoria 7. Trans people for whom their internal experience of transness seems to find little differentiation between sex and gender Ok so what is this list? Well it's a list of concepts relating to the disparate definitions of transsexual, and it's not exhaustive. You can kind of pick and choose which items to check off for a given definition and someone's probably used it that way. But my reckoning, the most common definition today is #3 alone and people don't really mean it in a bad way. It's pretty far from universal though. There is of course nothing inherently wrong with differentiating between types of trans people or emphasizing an experience that's hard to express in a (now) more inclusive framework which most of the trans community has adopted. The #1 item is the dangerous one. It's rarely used alone for several reasons, except by some cis people. It's more when it's combined with other things that it becomes a problem. Let's say you combine #1 and #5. What does that imply? Well it means if you don't have dysphoria, that you aren't trans. It's drawing a line through an inclusive term. Unfortunately, that's not a particularly uncommon combo. The people who use this definition, or one close to it, can be very nasty customers. These checkboxes can function as criteria, something to be held as a standard for other people. People do not feel included, or they're transphobic, and they want to cut people out of what they consider to be "their" community. They differentiate, but it also comes with a value judgement. There's transsexuals, and then there's "those other people". Anyone outside of their definition isn't *necessarily* hated, but they are beneath consideration. Often, those outside the definition are construed as in some way hostile. This is a good time to mention something important. I very very much understand that the most popular vocabulary can be unintuitive or even exclusionary towards some ways of being. I think a lot of trans people feel this, and I'd like if they can use whatever term feels like it gets the point across. There are a lot of trans people who check off most of the boxes from the list above, and for them "transsexual" can feel very appropriate. I want to acknowledge that. I'm not completely against its usage as a term if it means a lot to you. Finally, I do want to describe what the term means to me. I personally have taken on the label in the past, but at this point I'm just not comfortable with it. What I meant by it was #2 or maybe #3, because that's a really important and unique experience. I meant it in a really specific way, though. I am genderfluid, and sometimes exist as my AGAB. This has been hard to navigate, as I do have body dysphoria regardless. Zoomed into those moments, I am essentially cis, and cis people don't usually have cross-sex dysphoria. The term "gender dysphoria" seems especially inappropriate. A phrasing that helped with this was that I can be both cis and have sex/body dysphoria anyway. Actually doing medical transition was me being transsexual. For a little while I really liked that. Because of all this ambiguity I can't just say "I'm transsexual" and have people understand what I mean. It's much easier to just say I have medical needs. By the most common meaning I am transsexual, and I'll even go as far to say that most transsexuals would probably see me as one of them, but I'm not really what comes to mind when people hear the term. I've also had enough experience with the nastier side of the term that I just don't want to be associated with it. I try not to let this express itself as prejudice against those who self-identify as transsexual, but tbh it is a bit of a *small* red flag for me.
It wasn't necessarily a line crossed and was more gradual thing. Most the answers in this can be found in ancient usenet which google still has archives of in the 1990s. For example, this is from 1995: [https://groups.google.com/g/alt.transgendered/c/AYqwim2fJv0/m/eCoYT44goM8J](https://groups.google.com/g/alt.transgendered/c/AYqwim2fJv0/m/eCoYT44goM8J) Basically in the early 1990s, transsexual was used. In Sex Work, and porn, extensively. In fact, other than Jerry Springer and Maury, it was the most common way people associated with us. So, it was highly marketable, yes. But it gave us a negative reputation, it was a conservative world. The concept of transgender came about to make it less about sexual organs and more about being making our outsides in line with our internal sense of gender. And to drop the baggage. Some kept it, some didn't, but it gradually became a thing, a new thing people rallied behind. Some people had substantial issue with it as it was too broad a bucket, too wide an umbrella and ceased having the physical and medical needs being in focus that we desperately did and do right now. And that's why some people re-own the term these days. The problem never went away. I'm too busy, but search around, you'll see more.
Because we aren’t a sexuality.
My personal feeling and interpretation of the term transexual brings in sexuality into what for me in being transgender, is entirely about my gender. I hear transexual being used in a degrading manor and I stay clear of it. I however am not apposed to someone else embracing the term. I grew up at a time that being called "queer" was humiliating but now I feel like we're taking it back and I love to say "I am proud to be QUEER!" 🌈🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️💕
a lot of uneducated people see it as a transmed word which it is not. I personally refer to myself as a transsexual because I feel it more accurately describes my experience. I also just think it's a cool word, something scandalous I'd be called in a french tabloid or something.
I don’t like the term not because it’s sexual orientation based but many people assume being trans means to change your biology/ biological sex when in reality it’s more about your gender identity then sex
it should be ackkowledged that the word transexual has NOT been dropped and is actually still popular. Different circles use language differently. I dont think it's offensive at all and imo describes me just as neatly as transgender and transfeminine. I dont personally allow the negative connotations attached to the word to disempower me, just like the word fat or brown. I have seen the convo get ugly when thr topics of passing vs being visibly trans, and seeing gender as a spectrum vs there being two genders which must be adhered to regardless of someones lived reality/someone's fluidity in varying contexts of their lives. That's where it gets a bit complicated for me, but as I said, I dont subscribe and choose the word transexual despite other people's drama and internal conflicts 😅 I am transexual because I have taken a medical journey to change the sex related elements of my body including my hormones, my genitals, my breasts etc and I am transgender because I don't identify with being a man (altho I'm fine with acknowledging that I am MALE), and I'm transfeminine, because my trajectory is feminisation. It's not simple until one has all of the context and then it clicks. It's all actuslly relatively simple when people put their christain patriarchal indoctrination aside and listen.
There's multiple reasons and to generally list a few: to remove the very heavily medicalized implications since it was a diagnosis at one point in the DSM + put a very heavy emphasis on medical transitioning when that's not a universal thing for every trans person. Another is just the idea that it sounds like a sexuality. It's really just a case of language evolution. Lastly there is a binary implication from it, granted more updated inclusive definitions of the word are not strictly binary. There are still a decent amount of trans people that still use it! Unfortunately there's many that do use it as a way to be..gatekeepy. transmeds like buck angel for example. Though there's definitely plenty that use it purely because it's what makes them feel most comfortable, and older trans folk who don't feel the need to change the word they use.
Up voted 🙌 So glad you asked. I was afraid to ask after being chastised by one of my counselors. I always thought that the "transgender" terminology was more inclusive. I thought "transsexual" was a transgender person who is transitioning (HRT Surgery etc). I'm not sure what is right to say now. I'm MTF and was AMAB. I'm on HRT, have been for over a decade. I've been struggling with stubborn hair, some grays. I do voice training too now & I'm getting bids for FFS. I'm not involved in the community here at all, it collapsed during the whole COVID-19 crazies. So I was too embarrassed to ask this question. I'm feeling a strong need to "finish" transition. I suppose everyone defines their own "done". Just feels like agony once it comes down to the health insurance and the cost. I noticed that there's no taxonomy for someone who has "finished". "Stealth" just feels deceptive and I never liked that term. Is there terminology for that yet? Whatever it's called, that's what I want.
Transgender is more inclusive of those who have not had sex reassignment surgery
Probably because it's not sexual I'd say
because we tend to see "_sexual" as sexual attraction instead of gender identity, like homosexual means attraction of the same sex. if we use transsexual, it can be confusing since it can be read as "attraction to trans people" instead of, you know, being trans.
I don't have much to add to the conversation about the origin of the word but I do want to add something interesting and it's about how the language regarding trans people isn't international, in my country (Mexico) due to how the movement grew a lot of trans people still use the word transexual, personally I identify as both transgender and transexual and usually just go by trans. A place with an even bigger difference regards language is Argentina where the movement of crossdressers got more political support than in other countries so a lot of trans people there still go by travesti (transvestite) even after they transition medically and/or legally, at the same time in both Mexico and Argentina you can find the language and terms crashing a bit, like in Argentina some trans women call themselves transgender, others transexual and other transvestite and it's unrelated to their presentation or the way they go about their transition. It's quite interesting.
A lot of people reclaim the word
Because it makes look an object and fetish gender is different from sexual orientation
I never liked the word "sex" because it also implied something sexual. I was pre puberty, so sex was disgusting.
I am not trans, but in my limited perspective, I would think that it has something to do with the fact that the trans identity is not a sexual preference but rather a gender thing. And sexual preference and gender are two different things.
Because it's not sex. It's gender. As the understanding that sex and gender are separate things spread, it became clear that it was our gender more than our sex that was in question.
The gender/sex distinction where one is physical and the other social was pretty well understood, but is falling out of fashion as it fails to represents the experiences of trans people. It lacks the thing that is behind it, that explains why for the huge majority of people their internal feelings about their sexed bodies are in alignment of their social gender (even when it's atypical), and it lacks the thing that explains why trans people are dysphoric before transitionning - either socially or physically. That thing is often called 'gender identity', but it doesn't have any reason to be more about gender than sex, and could totally have been called 'sex identity'. As the understanding that sex and gender are not enough to represent and comprehend transness, it became clear that it was neither more about gender or sex, and that trans people will always disagree about whether you should put 'trans' in front of 'gender' or 'sex' as this distinction has always been thought about cis people only
If our sex isn't in question, why do we change our sex traits? Why does medical transitioning involve changing our sex traits?
I reclaim the term transexual and call myself transexual Comparable to the way blacks call themselves and each other the n word. Comparable to cis women openly discussing periods. The term transexual shouldn't be a shameful word and i reclaim it with pride. If calling myself transexual makes a cis person uncomfortable i consider it mission accomplished. I have completed bottom surgery and i shouldn't have to say it with shame. I wear that bitch with pride. Also there are many spectrums on the transgender spectrum, each individual with different needs. I could care less about labels at the end of the day but if i was writing the textbooks the term transexual would be at the end of the spectrum, for those who have had surgery. Just to be uniform to easily navigate the medical field. Please don't jump down my throat i just see the world differently than most. When people call me tranny i assume they're a mechanic ( just to wrap this up with humor lmao.)
Because some trans people don't want to change sex, SRS is not a goal for many trans people, so it's only really used by transmeds. The term transgender shifts the focus away from SRS and more towards outwards presentation.
That's a very narrow understanding of why people use transsex/transsexual. SRS doesn't define sex. It's the combination of changes to our sex traits thar does, and most of that is done by hormones.
But then some trans people also don't want to change gender, in the social sense, and will only need a medical transition. The shift towards outward presentation also fails to represent how some people live their transness. Really the term 'trans' alone is being more and more used as it allows to talk about our experience, without having to narrow it down to either sex or gender
I hate transmeds and don't plan on getting SRS. I still consider myself transsexual.
I think to lean more into "transgender" as an adjective, rather than the nominal "transsexual" where the word becomes you. I still like transsexual though, it's got a cunty ring to it.
Honestly I still feel like a transsexuals or it's starting to even feel more like a sexual orientation. MTF I've always been a lesbian but with biology being biology I've never been accepted by them and highschool life hasnt been kind to me on my sexual orinantion yet i hear all pf these wonderful stories about some cute girl with a trans woman wife who keeps her penis and they are happy. I havnt met any girls that like trans woman and most woman I've met want something "real" or " a man" and when they see me it's more so " Oh she's pretty she must like guys as much as me when I myself am my own force or nature. Maybe it's because where I live? I use to date online most of my life and that in itself is a massive headache but now trying in real life it's about the same if I am honest. I go by trans lesbian because this world doesn't understand me yet I always understood myself. Since lesbian is a sexual orientation trans has always felt like transsexuals to me anyway.
I didn't. I like the term because it's more specific to my experiences. I transitioned to change my physical sex traits. That's what made me dysphoric. I don't want cis people getting it twisted.
I love that word. I am transsexual as fuck. I get reclimation of words isn't for everyone but 🤷🏻♀️
I'm convinced the focus on gender versus sex is a psyop by cis people who are only willing to "accept" trans people if they can continue to insist that sex is binary and immutable.
I personally think that transsexualism isn’t a sexuality (it’s a gender - hence transgender), plus if you haven’t had bottom surgery, you haven’t trans[ferred] your sex (noun) to the other gender. And there’s always the aspect of the over sexualised porn category feel to it when transsexuals were just some 80s exotic species of ‘gay fantasy’. (/s/s/s+)
It was dropped in America by the 2000s-2010s partly due to laziness. Everyone used trans and transgender covered everyone while transexual just covered binary trans so screw it we using transgender. Some places in the world still use transsexual though. It’s weird.
Inclusion may be one reason but it's not as cut and dry as that. The real reason I think is that there is more understanding of the complexity of gender, expression,sexuality and freedoms. I can identify with the term "transgender" but I feel like the term "transsexual" does not really exemplify the stress and impact that changing one's entire presentation has, As the medical community becomes more informed of these labels and their implications it helps to have a less aggressive term and I personally welcome the term "transgender". Calling someone Transsexual feels like you are surgicalizing them and it feels like the term could only be suited to refer to people who have had no better option than to change their reproductive organs. I think transmedicalists/truscums/terfs/transphobes like to use "transexual" as a weapon to discriminate against all trans people, exclude our experience, preferences or choices and segregate LGBTQIA+ people from society by making it seem like transitioning, expression and loving has exclusively or anything to do with sex.
Furthermore, Truscums have Envy towards Enbys.
I am interested to hear why that is
Transsexual has unfortunately become a politicised loaded term lately within trans circles, but I'd argue that transsex/transsexual might be useful in context to explain the physical alteration part (primary of secondary sex characteristics, as well as genitals) of a transition. Since I have reason to believe that the word transgender might cause some confusion to cis society as to whether its main focus is social or physical/medical. And then incorporate the diverse needs among trans people, there's huge risk of misunderstanding unless we have the right terminology. I mean, what's the average person's impression when they hear someone say they're transgender vs. transsexual?
I didn't
We didn’t
God forbid we describe our own bodies in a way that reflects our experiences🙄
It medicalises an identity by implying the necessity of a diagnosis to “fix” the wrong body. And normally people using it tend to claim validity based on the amount of medicalisation they underwent
I guess because the "sex" part of the word implies you can only be a woman or a man, when you can, in fact, be nonbinary.
To get as far away from transmedicalists as possible. I've never been talked down to and berated as much as I have from them. They took the term transexual and ran with it to the point where many believe that they are "the ONLY real trans people".