Vocabulary Dysphoria

[bcholmes]

Someone on one of the trans lists I read made this claim:

Technically, since I have had the surgery, I am no longer transsexual, as my body now is harmonized (anatomically) with my brain and gender identity.

This was buried in the middle of a lengthy post about proper use of term in the trans community. Feh.

Y'know, I really try to respect other people's labels. I really do. But sometimes... sometimes I think that certain claims are just dumb.

There's an increasingly vocal part of the trans community who have been arguing that the umbrella term "transgendered" is not an appropriate label for transsexauls. And I have great difficulty seeing that viewpoint.

I mean, my definition of transgendered has been this: someone is transgendered if their feelings about their gender put them into conflict with mainstream society's view of gender. By my definition, transsexuals are necessarily transgendered.

I've recently tried to get into the headspace of such "I'm transsexual, not transgendered"-types by likening the discussion to the claim that Canadians are also Americans because this is, after all, North America. (Yeah, I've heard people say that. And no Canadians that I know of are inclined to agree with that statement).

The problem seems to be that the brain perceives a category, and then tries to define it later. Teasing out just what the brain latched on to is a Hard Task.

Comments

Re: Vocabulary Dysphoria

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

*nod*. i agree with your definition of transgendered.

but i've run into a considerable number of TSs who do indeed buy wholeheartedly into the binary gender definition of mainstream society, and who therefore no longer consider themselves either transsexual or transgendered after being through with all the surgeries.

i can see the roots of that quite possibly lie in the difficulty to be permitted to transition at all by the medical establishment. i don't actually know in how far that's still a concern, since i stopped interacting with TS communities (it was just too politically charged and i didn't have the energy to keep defending my own "wishy-washy" views of gender).