Identity Babble

[mereprototype]

I was rereading this post just now because it was linked on Tumblr and I realized, not for the first time, that I have never identified as transsexual even though according to most people’s definitions, I fit it. I was assigned female at birth, lived as female for the first 21 years of my life, but identify as male and am taking hormones (and

Comments

[nuraya]

This is an interesting topic. I have been involved in discussions where the term transsexual is coined as extremely offensive toward people with transgender experience; people who didn't come with a body matching their social & psychological gender identity. Basically, I associate the word transgender to mean someone who has been born in the wrong body. Transsexual, in the conversations I've been involved with, has been defined as an incorrect term because it's been seen as referring to sexuality, which then is something completely else; because gender identity has nothing to do with sexuality at all.

But perhaps it is not as simple as all that.

At any rate, it's my experience that people who want to alter their body to match their true gender identity rarely want to be referred to as transgendered -- it seems much more likely to wish to be identified as simply male or female. But this is a very individual thing. I have high respect for ambiguous gender definitions and happen to believe that everyone's gender identity is and should be what and how they feel it is and should be, and other people need to respect that, whatever it is. It's not our bodies that define us, it's who we are on the inside.

[mereprototype]

That's the first time I've ever heard of it being used to refer to sexuality. Sex is there because most people believe that someone's sex is what's between their legs and their gender is what's between their ears. It's a decent way to start explaining things to people, but it's not the belief I hold in the long run.

Maybe it's the language/country barrier at work.

It's not "transgendered", just "transgender". Having the -ed at the end makes it seem like a verb, which it isn't. It's an adjective. And whether or not someone chooses to identify as a trans person or simply a person is their choice. As I said, I'm a trans guy, not a regular guy.

[nuraya]

Well, the reason why (I have heard that) the word transsexual can be considered to be an incorrect term is only because sexual can be understood to refer to sexuality (like, homosexual or bisexual) which of course sounds a bit strange in context of gender identity. However, most of this type of conversation I've heard revolves around the terminology in my own language, and there the difference between these two terms exists strongly. On the other hand I may be missing the English nuances completely, because I wasn't associating the word transsexual here to the word sex in the meaning you mention above, though I am aware of the difference that is attributed to the words sex and gender in the meaning you mention. Anyway, you're probably right that language/country barrier is at work here because I admit that I transfer the meanings of the corresponding words from my own language, and over here it is a huge deal to a lot of people what type of word you use. I find the terminology involved a little difficult to negotiate because it's such a touchy topic, or at least it can be.

Ehh sorry about the extra -ed, I'm not sure why I put that there! At any rate it's really difficult terminology for me and especially in English. I hope I didn't offend you, incidentally, I didn't mean to, I just find gender identity issues and terminology that goes with them very interesting to discuss since I feel like people interpret terms so very differently. Simple terms that can be used as labels are of course very useful in starting to explain matters to people who don't understand the issue at hand, like you said, but something like gender identity, I think is just too complex to be put down in very simple terms.