But again, note that the “trans-” in transgender does not indication temporal transition. It does not speak to the history of a person implying that they “were a man and are now a woman”. Rather, it describes the relative state of gender identity vs assigned/chromosomal sex, which can be cis- or trans-.
Very simply, IMHO, “trans-” implies change from the physical/genetic gender assigned at birth (“across”, since we have basically two major categories). If Bruce Jenner were still Bruce, he wouldn’t be “trans” anything. Once he started to let any subset of the world know he was she, (IMHO) then he’s now / she’s now -a transgendered woman. After all, you wouldn’t likely call a person who sees themselves as a “woman”, a “man”; in all politeness and decency, assuming they are sincere, they are what they believe themselves to be.
(“transvestite” = “cross-dresser”, for example)
Well, I guess I just have to keep saying this until people pay attention, but the trans- in transgender does not connote a temporal change from one thing to another. The “trans-” means that gender identity differs from assigned sex. It does not speak to a person’s history, it speaks to their nature.
It’s an important distinction.
And, to be clear, I’m not expression my personal opinion about what the word means. Spend 15 minutes googling and I think you’ll find there’s widespread consensus on this.
Indeed. Trans people are just as much the gender their brain is even if they never get surgically or hormonally modified to make their body look like what they are.
I agree with you, but in GQ you can’t make other people do your research for you.
As the Wikipedia page touches on, and as brought up by the recent production of “Rocky Horror Picture Show” starring Laverne Cox, “transvestite” was sometimes used to mean “transsexual”. Here’s an article that mentions her (and the director’s) decision to keep the term in the song.
I think that Rocky Horror Picture Show just sort of jumbled all forms of non-mainstream sexuality together, without any attempt to distinguish between them. Which probably does a disservice to all of them.
I’m not really sure what you mean. I already posted links to the comprehensive and carefully written Wiki articles, quoting relevant excerpts. If anyone questions this, they can google and easily find a dozen reputable sources that concur with the Wiki articles, showing a clear consensus in the community about what the word means. It seems to me that it’s better for anyone skeptical of Wiki to discover this for themselves, rather than have me post a wall of links that might be cherry-picked. It’s not difficult to find many reputable sources discussing the terminology.
Transvestite was used in error to refer to transsexual and transgender persons, either due to ignorance or due to mistake. When I do my research on technical and medical journals prior to 1980 I have to always include “transv*” in the search terms, moreso the further back one gets. Even Christine Jorgensen’s lead physician Christian Hamburger referred to her as a “transvestite,” even after surgery.
I often deliberately refer to myself as “transsexual” because the word “transgender” is being appropriated by people who on a temporary, sometimes situational basis, are calling themselves “transgender.” A drag performer I know calls themselves that, even though they admit they’re “just a guy that gets (an erection) from dressing up.” Under the broad definition of transgender, because they are crossing gender presentation boundaries, they are “transgender” too.
Una, can I just say, it’s nice to see you in a discussion. Maybe I’ve missed your posts–I am mainly in GQ and a bit in IMHO–but I always enjoy them.
Worth mentioning, and in context, Richard O’Brien - the author of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, himself identifies as transgender, but in another possible (and grammatically correct) meaning of the term. From his wikipededia page:
Thank you very much for writing that, TSBG. My radio show and the transgender research and advocacy work I do at the Institute limit my time online here (in addition to my day job…), but I’m still working on the Straight Dope with Cecil.
Richard O’Brien is also a piece of shit who has made transphobic statements, and is oft-hated in the community, and is another example of why the broad umbrella of transgender is often offensive to people like me. RuPaul also fits in that category.
Life used to be so much simpler. 
You mean, back when it consisted entirely of prokaryotes? Because even that’s a lot more complicated than it’s usually given credit for.
Or, more likely, I think what you mean to say is that we used to think that life was simpler. There have always been intersexed individuals, and homosexuality, and transgenderism, and all the rest of that; it just didn’t used to get talked about much.
I had no clue about Riff Raff. I expected much better from him. I’m stunned
It’s interesting because among the younger trans people I interact with (being a younger transperson myself), we all really hate the term “transsexual” and many flat out reject it. It, at the very least, tends to sound quaint or outdated, and more often than not tends to precede ignorance or hate speech outside scientific literature.
I agree that there’s an odd lumping going on with “transgender” and some people are trying to appropriate it, but your feelings on this topic are always interesting to me because of how much they diverge from my peer group. We hate the lumping going on with transgender as much as you, but our reactions are much different.
Edit: There’s also a bit of reclaiming of “tranny” going on, but that one is waaaaaaaay more contentious, and you don’t really use it unless you know everyone involved in the conversation is on the same page with regards to that word; even when you’re all trans it can cause discomfort and fights.
Thanks for posting this.
I keep getting encouraged to embrace the term “transgender” for myself. “Oh, you qualify, why would you want to call yourself something different when we’re all in this together?”
I’m continually amazed that there are not more people like Una Persson who wish to have (and to use) a term that specifically means a person who did transition or who intends to transition from their “assigned at birth” sex to the one that matches their gender. Such people have had to negotiate a complex journey with a shitload of challenges that are very different from those that someone like me faces. And they’ve made society aware of their situation — perhaps society thinks of them in a reductionistic caricaturish way, but it is now aware and to a significant extent sympathetic, nonetheless, and that’s a massively admirable accomplishment.
If people used “transsexual” to refer to such transitioning people, and they used “transgender” to refer to the entire inclusive grand ole big tent of ALL people who are in some sense or another “of a different gender than the one assigned at birth”, that would make sense, but that’s not how it is. As Jragon points out, “transsexual” is in disfavor, almost viewed as an insulting pejorative. Know what that means? It means that people use the term “transgender” in nearly every context where what they actually mean is “transsexual” — the transitioning people, not the rest of us who are theoretically hovering underneath those big tentflaps.
And it isn’t doing us, the non-transitioning gender-variant people, any favors, either, this equivocation. It erases us. We’re included and yet we’re included the way married women were included under the old definition of marriage: man and woman have become one and the one is the husband.
I could not ask for braver or stronger allies than the transitioning people who largely comprise the trans community. In fact, to say that is a bit like the Republic of Monaco saying they sure do appreciate having the United States as allies. The rest of us are a motley crew of badly self-defined people with assorted concerns we haven’t enunciated very well, and no clear and available coming-out narratives to explain what the hell our deal is, except for a whole lot of heat and noise about pronouns.
But while I very much want to continue to be seen as on the same side and sharing many of the same concerns, we need our own term(s) and we need to attain society’s understanding of our situation. Trans people could not just lurk as part of the lesbian and gay community, and genderqueer and other-named (or unnamed) gender-variant people can’t just be in the shadows of the transgender identity.
Yes, given the evident widespread misapprehension seen in this thread that trans-[anything] implies a temporal transition along the lines of “born male, changed into female” (whether expressed pejoratively or otherwise), it does seem that we could do with a different word that does not use the prefix trans- for those who do not fit a mould of well-defined transition. Gender-fluid captures another subset of people, but the way I understand that is to imply variability over time?