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

[skylark-10.livejournal.com]

the following is an image of a model i came up with to try to get across these ideas in a seminar i regularly teach to whitman-walker clinic volunteers on trans and bi awareness.



the idea, in very sketchy form, is that "gender variant" refers to anything not conformant with conventional gender-encoded expectations. note that by some light pressing on this viewpoint, gays and lesbians become "gender variant".

"transgendered" then becomes a quality of nonconformant gender identity (internal sense of self), without regard to expression (external presentation). something to bear in mind here is that among heterosexual male crossdressers, the idea that they are "getting in touch with their feminine side" (a distinctly transgendered expression) is quite common. the flip side of course is that not everyone who feels queer acts it.

"transsexual" is a persistent sense of identity not in keeping with one's sex assigned at birth. *often* the sense is so intense that we are compelled to address it physically... but not always. hence the overlap on the expression scale.

obviously an arbitrary and limiting way to put it, but maybe it will help a little.

[otterylexa.livejournal.com]

Your diagram makes my head hurt.