Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Is non-op transsexual a contradiction? Since non-op is contradictory with transsexual which refers to individuals who have undergone SRS.
But what if someone stays in that " transition space " where they go on HRT but don't have intentions to undergo SRS.
Should they be labeled transgender or transsexual?
My therapist refers to me as " transgender " but is of the opinion that I can't call myself a trans woman because I haven't undergone SRS. In her opinion the term trans woman is reserved for individuals who underwent SRS.
She refers to me as " a transgender / a gender ( not to be confused with agender ) " .

Most people in daily life label me " a transsexual " though.

So, can one call herself transsexual when she is non-op or is that a contradiction with the ground meaning of the word transsexual?

FWIW : I still refer to myself as a trans woman. Trans woman applies to me because for my feeling one doesn't need to have undergone SRS to be able to call themselves trans woman. I am a woman of transition experience and the fact that I undertake a transgender transition instead of a transsexual transition has no bearing on the use of the word in my opinion.

No, it isn't. Per the  site terms and definitions  (https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,54369.0.html) :

"Transsexual: a person who is mentally one gender, but has the body of the other. They desire to live and be accepted as a member of the mental gender, this is generally accompanied by the strong desire to make their body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex through surgery and hormone treatments."

Strong desire does not equal a requirement to have surgery.

Hugs, Devlyn

Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 02, 2018, 08:16:35 AM
No, it isn't. Per the  site terms and definitions  (https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,54369.0.html) :

"Transsexual: a person who is mentally one gender, but has the body of the other. They desire to live and be accepted as a member of the mental gender, this is generally accompanied by the strong desire to make their body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex through surgery and hormone treatments."

Strong desire does not equal a requirement to have surgery.

Hugs, Devlyn

Yeah,
I agree.

My therapist was of the opinion that I shouldn't call myself transsexual or trans woman because I'm non-op. According to her I should call myself transgender because I undergo a HRT treatment but not a genital surgical treatment.

But she might be a gatekeeper.

Regards,
Transfused.

Quote from: Transfused on March 02, 2018, 08:22:59 AM

Yeah,
I agree.

My therapist was of the opinion that I shouldn't call myself transsexual or trans woman because I'm non-op. According to her I should call myself transgender because I undergo a HRT treatment but not a genital surgical treatment.

But she might be a gatekeeper.

Regards,
Transfused.

We definitely are trans-women, no matter where we are in transition. The trans is short for transgender not transsexual. 

But more importantly why the need to say trans-woman?  Why not just woman?  There are times when it would be necessary or helpful to make the trans distinction, but normally it should not be.

I am a woman first, trans-woman being a subset of all women, just as tall women or short women would be.



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In common usage, transgender = someone whose experience of gender identity differs from their assignment at birth.  Transsexual = someone who alters their body to make it more like their identified gender.  So most people would consider someone on HRT, which alters the body, to be transsexual, even if they are non-op.

If you are MTF, you are a trans-woman.  MTF are trans-men.  (Not forgetting the enbys: they are whatever they say the are!)  It sounds like your therapist thinks you need a vagina to be called a woman, which is a TERF-y attitude.  If it were me, I would not continue seeing a therapist with that view.

Consider an additional fact. I am no longer transgender or transsexual because my treatment has made me comfortable with my body so I no longer experience dysphoria. My transsexualism is in the past tense and that is how I refer to it. People may desire surgery but may not get it because of family, money or medical issues. It's the desire and not the state of the body that defines both ->-bleeped-<- and transsexualism.

I haven't had SRS yet but I think of and refer to myself as a woman, period. Not trans anything.

Your therapist is sadly mistaken.

There is definitely no contradiction. We can correctly call ourselves transgender, transsexual, transwoman or woman.

What counts is the (original) desire to change as Dena states.

Pamela

In my mind that is exactly how it works. I use transgender as an umbrella term and transexual and someone who as undergone the OP. Though I often just refer to myself as a non op trans woman (when the situation calls for it)

But none of these terms are really codified or have solid meanings. Tons of it comes to personal interpretation and connotation. Not to mention the meanings shift with education and more understanding.

20 years ago we would have all been "transexuals" or "transvestities". The term Trangender wasn't in use. But now many find the terms offensive as they harken to a time when understanding was much less and being trans was conflated with sexuality and a lot of gate keeping.

For many the use of transgender over transexual regardless of the status of thier junk is to promote a better understanding of gender as separate to sex.


SO! Use the terms you are comfortable with and your therapist should NOT be trying to push her preferred uses of the terms. Nor using any to refer to you you are not comfortable with.

At least that's what I think :)

Quote from: Frae on March 04, 2018, 12:24:47 AM
20 years ago we would have all been "transexuals" or "transvestities". The term Trangender wasn't in use.

Actually it was already. I started transition in the mid 90's and it was already in use.

To me a transsexual is someone who needs to physically change sex as opposed to just social role, as much possible for them, and willing to make significant sacrifices to do so. It's the strength of that need that to me defines a transsexual rather than if they have yet managed to have SRS.

- karen

Quote from: Karen_A on March 04, 2018, 11:36:34 AM
Actually it was already. I started transition in the mid 90's and it was already in use.

To me a transsexual is someone who needs to physically change sex as opposed to just social role, as much possible for them, and willing to make significant sacrifices to do so. It's the strength of that need that to me defines a transsexual rather than if they have yet managed to have SRS.

- karen

Very true.  I remember seeing the term transgender in an article I read in "Tapestry" magazine, back in the early or mid 90s (I know a person who met Virginia Prince [the person who coined the term] back in the early 70s [my friend, didn't like Prince]), and while the transgender term was out there, I really didn't hear it become prevalent until at least 2000 or 2001. 

I do agree, that the level of need or desire to have SRS, is what defines whether or not you are a transsexual.  Even when I was pre-op, I defined myself as woman who happened to be transsexual, instead of transgender (which IMO, is such a majorly umbrella term - sorry, I'm really not like a cross dresser, or drag queen [both of whom are covered under the transgender term]).  When I had my SRS in 2003, the "transing" was done, so I just defined myself (and do so to this day) as a woman, occasionally alluding to having a transsexual history (but only on what I consider to be a need to know, or desire to tell basis).

Ellen,
HRT since 1999
Orchiectomy - 2001
SRS Yeahh!!! by Suporn - Nov. 25, 2003

Quote from: EllenJ2003 on March 04, 2018, 01:05:12 PM
Very true.  I remember seeing the term transgender in an article I read in "Tapestry" magazine, back in the early or mid 90s (I know a person who met Virginia Prince [the person who coined the term] back in the early 70s [my friend, didn't like Prince]), and while the transgender term was out there, I really didn't hear it become prevalent until at least 2000 or 2001. 

I met Virgina Prince in the mid 90's...  When I saw her she was basically  telling a lesbian that TSes did not exist!!!! Not my favorite person...

While maybe not in the larger world, transgendered was already in common use in the online T* community by the mid 90s... the usenet newsgroup alt.transgendered was formed in 1992 and soc.support.transgendered in late 93 or early 94.

- karen

Quote from: Karen_A on March 04, 2018, 02:14:18 PM
I met Virgina Prince in the mid 90's...  She I saw her she was basically  telling a lesbian that TSes did not exist!!!! Not my favorite person...

While maybe not in the larger world, transgendered was already in common use in the online T* community by the mid 90s... the usenet newsgroup alt.transgendered was formed in 1992 and soc.support.transgendered in late 93 or early 94.

- karen

Yep, Virginia Prince told my friend (who was just starting to transition), that anybody who thought they could change their sex (in other words was transsexual) was delusional.  Prince also struck my friend as being kind of snooty.

BTW, were you by chance in crazy Suzy and Tina's WBT group about 10 plus years ago?

Ellen
HRT since 1999
Orchiectomy - 2001
SRS Yeahh!!! by Suporn - Nov. 25, 2003

Quote from: EllenJ2003 on March 04, 2018, 01:05:12 PM
> I do agree, that the level of need or desire to have SRS, is what defines whether or not you are a transsexual

I have a different view.  Where I draw the line is the term "me" and "you". 
I don't necessarily agree with generic absolute categories, they usually fail when digging into exceptions. 
I prefer the definition Devlyn pointed to. 

GCS/SRS is a detail - a significant one, but for some people isn't the most important and does not define whether they are transsexual.  I had GCS/SRS 6 weeks ago, started HRT 7 months ago.  I've experienced the initial stages of both and super glad with the results of both, but HRT was more significant to me.

Quote from: Kendra on March 04, 2018, 06:21:17 PM
I have a different view.  Where I draw the line is the term "me" and "you". 
I don't necessarily agree with generic absolute categories, they usually fail when digging into exceptions. 
I prefer the definition Devlyn pointed to. 

GCS/SRS is a detail - a significant one, but for some people isn't the most important and does not define whether they are transsexual.  I had GCS/SRS 6 weeks ago, started HRT 7 months ago.  I've experienced the initial stages of both and super glad with the results of both, but HRT was more significant to me.

Point taken.  Though in my case, while HRT was a mega-important step to take in transitioning (not doing hormones was a definite No Go for me), until I had SRS, I didn't feel complete.  This feeling for me was very much emphasized in a nasty way in early 2002, when I took a huge cut in pay (due to an economic recession, and corporate downsizing), that made what was just attainable for me (SRS), look like an impossibility.  I basically suffered a nervous breakdown (I spent a goodly amount of my days crying), and I almost killed myself (I actually took my running shoes off on the shore of Lake Michigan [I often went running along the shore of Lake Michigan for  the solitude - there were 150 foot high bluffs where I ran, that kept the shoreline secluded] and stood a step from the water, crying my head off the entire time, ready to take that one-way swim out into The Lake - I still can't explain why I didn't go through with it to this day). 

Luckily, things improved for me financially starting in April 2003, and by basically almost working myself to death, I was able to pull off (just barely) having SRS, a trach shave, and a nose job (I am also eternally thankful that after fighting me non-stop about my transsexuality since 1978 [when I was 15], my parents reconciled with me a few weeks before my SRS, and helped me to stay on my feet financially, while I recovered from my surgery). 

The above is my reasoning, YMMV.

Ellen
Started HRT in 1999
Orchiectomy - 2001
SRS Yeahhh!!! by Suporn - Nov. 25, 2003

Way back in the 1960s Dr. Harry Benjamin was doing pioneering work on gender incongruity issues.  He considered 'transsexual' to refer to all persons who sought some form of medical interevention to alter their bodies in some manner to be closer to their gender identity.  (I'm using more modern terms than the 1960s psychiatric-speak, which would be downright insulting today!)

Transgender eventually applied to the broader community that did not seek medical intervention, along with some other older terms, now considered insulting, that were in use prior to 'transgender' being accepted in the scientific literature more recently.

Quote from: EllenJ2003 on March 04, 2018, 05:23:25 PM
Yep, Virginia Prince told my friend (who was just starting to transition), that anybody who thought they could change their sex (in other words was transsexual) was delusional.

Back in the 1960's, GCS was called "Sex Change Surgery". We all know that even today the surgical procedures will allow us to live our lives as our chosen gender, but there are also certain things we give up. Specifically we cannot produce the hormones associated with our preferred gender, we have to take them via HRT. We give up our reproductive functions. Yes we can store sperm and eggs frozen until needed, but we still need another host to bring them to life.

My point is that all transgender surgeries are not a true sex change, but today's procedures will allow us to live as we wish with certain limits. Someday, there may be a procedure which will allow new reproductive organs to be grown that will match our mental gender, but short of transplants, that has not happen yet.

So, lets be a little gracious to those who came before us. They did not have the understanding that we have today. They expressed themselves as best they could, for better or worse.

Quote from: EllenJ2003 on March 04, 2018, 05:23:25 PM
BTW, were you by chance in crazy Suzy and Tina's WBT group about 10 plus years ago?

Yes... but I knew them on-line since the mid-late 90's from several different on-line fora (long before they partnered).

Suzy is not crazy, she just has strong opinions which sometime change, and has been very vocal about them ... BTW it seems she has mellowed a bit in her old age...

- karen

- karen

Quote from: Michelle_P on March 04, 2018, 07:19:17 PM
Way back in the 1960s Dr. Harry Benjamin was doing pioneering work on gender incongruity issues.  He considered 'transsexual' to refer to all persons who sought some form of medical interevention to alter their bodies in some manner to be closer to their gender identity. 

Over the years I have run into a few of his ex-patients... all post-ops.

- karen

Quote from: Dani on March 04, 2018, 07:43:49 PM
So, lets be a little gracious to those who came before us. They did not have the understanding that we have today. They expressed themselves as best they could, for better or worse.

All I will say is that you are being a lot more gracious than VP was.

- karen

Quote from: Karen_A on March 04, 2018, 07:53:52 PM
Yes... but I knew them on-line since the mid-late 90's from several different on-line fora (long before they partnered).

Suzy is not crazy, she just has strong opinions which sometime change, and has been very vocal about them ... BTW it seems she has mellowed a bit in her old age...

- karen

- karen

I remember you from that group Karen.  I just meant crazy because both Suzy and Tina had a tendency to get rabid with anybody who held a different point of view than they had.  I finally got fed up and quit the group (in a rather public "I quit" post IIRC), because of them being that way.  I remember you mentioning how Suzy used to swing between opinions (oftentimes in a pretty radical way).

Ellen

Quote from: Karen_A on March 04, 2018, 08:01:01 PM
All I will say is that you are being a lot more gracious than VP was.

- karen

Virginia Prince's less than gracious feelings/attitude about transsexuality, may have been due to the fact that (from what I was told - correct me if I'm wrong) Harry Benjamin nixed Virginia Prince for transitioning under his care in the late 60s or early 70s, when Virginia Prince went to see him for doing so.  So, the feelings/attitude may have been bitterness based for VP?

Ellen
HRT since 1999
Orchiechtomy - 2001
SRS Yeahh!! by Suporn - Nov. 25, 2003

Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 02, 2018, 08:16:35 AM
No, it isn't. Per the  site terms and definitions  (https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,54369.0.html) :

"Transsexual: a person who is mentally one gender, but has the body of the other. They desire to live and be accepted as a member of the mental gender, this is generally accompanied by the strong desire to make their body as congruent as possible with the preferred sex through surgery and hormone treatments."

Strong desire does not equal a requirement to have surgery.

I interpret that definition in a slightly different way.  While a "strong desire" does not necessarily require that someone currently has the surgery, it should require that someone should want and desire the surgery.  So, I consider pre-op women as transsexuals because they want the surgery in the future.  I consider non-op women as transsexuals, if they want the surgery but are unable to do so due to life-threatening risks from undergoing surgery.  But if a non-op woman simply doesn't want the surgery because she's comfortable with her genitals, that means she doesn't have genital dysphoria.  It means she does not have a strong desire to make her body as congruent as possible with her preferred sex.  And so it follows that she doesn't fit the definition of a transsexual according to this site's own definition.  She's still transgender, and she's still a trans woman, and she's still a woman.  But in my opinion she's not a transsexual woman.

Quote from: Karen_A on March 04, 2018, 11:36:34 AM
Actually it was already. I started transition in the mid 90's and it was already in use.

To me a transsexual is someone who needs to physically change sex as opposed to just social role, as much possible for them, and willing to make significant sacrifices to do so. It's the strength of that need that to me defines a transsexual rather than if they have yet managed to have SRS.

- karen

Oh! Well til. But I was just a kid in the 90's learning about the Trans umbrella through Taxi Cab Confessions! And maybe the odd sitcom episode / the rocky horror picture show. And I never heard Transgender until I was older and starting to research online. It was all sexual/vestite in popular culture.

Quote from: Frae on March 04, 2018, 12:24:47 AM
In my mind that is exactly how it works. I use transgender as an umbrella term and transexual and someone who as undergone the OP. Though I often just refer to myself as a non op trans woman (when the situation calls for it)

But none of these terms are really codified or have solid meanings. Tons of it comes to personal interpretation and connotation. Not to mention the meanings shift with education and more understanding.

20 years ago we would have all been "transexuals" or "transvestities". The term Trangender wasn't in use. But now many find the terms offensive as they harken to a time when understanding was much less and being trans was conflated with sexuality and a lot of gate keeping.

For many the use of transgender over transexual regardless of the status of thier junk is to promote a better understanding of gender as separate to sex.

Hello Frae

Obviously I disagree with your first para.

However I wholeheartedly agree with your third and fourth paras. Whether we use term Transgender or Transsexual or Transwoman, we use them as term of GENDER and not of sexuality which is modern and I feel sure correct thinking.

That is the message we need to get across outside our community as many outside still unfortunately cannot (or will not) differentiate between the two.

Pamela

Quote from: echo7 on March 05, 2018, 12:23:35 AM
I interpret that definition in a slightly different way.  While a "strong desire" does not necessarily require that someone currently has the surgery, it should require that someone should want and desire the surgery.  So, I consider pre-op women as transsexuals because they want the surgery in the future.  I consider non-op women as transsexuals, if they want the surgery but are unable to do so due to life-threatening risks from undergoing surgery.  But if a non-op woman simply doesn't want the surgery because she's comfortable with her genitals, that means she doesn't have genital dysphoria.  It means she does not have a strong desire to make her body as congruent as possible with her preferred sex.  And so it follows that she doesn't fit the definition of a transsexual according to this site's own definition.  She's still transgender, and she's still a trans woman, and she's still a woman.  But in my opinion she's not a transsexual woman.

The site definition you cite is preceded by the words "generally accompanied by". I still don't think that constitutes a requirement.

Hugs, Devlyn 

Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 06, 2018, 07:49:12 AM
The site definition you cite is preceded by the words "generally accompanied by". I still don't think that constitutes a requirement.

Hugs, Devlyn

Absolutely right!  Gender dysphoria is not a requirement, but a condition often associated with persons desiring to surgically correct a gender incongruity.  Young transitioners in particular, raised in an accepting and supportive environment, might not have an experience of gender dysphoria.

I would be careful about tying gender dysphoria to medical transition.                                                                       

Quote from: TonyaW on March 02, 2018, 10:05:05 AM
We definitely are trans-women, no matter where we are in transition. The trans is short for transgender not transsexual. 

But more importantly why the need to say trans-woman?  Why not just woman?  There are times when it would be necessary or helpful to make the trans distinction, but normally it should not be.

I am a woman first, trans-woman being a subset of all women, just as tall women or short women would be.



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I though believe that there  a comparison to tall and short.. is a bit extreme.

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Quote from: Mary1 on March 06, 2018, 10:18:37 PM
I though believe that there  a comparison to tall and short.. is a bit extreme.

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The only comparison is that tall and short, trans and cis are adjectives and woman is the noun they are describing.  My point is that we should not have to separate ourselves by saying "trans woman" when "woman" will suffice 99% of the time. 

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Quote from: Michelle_P on March 06, 2018, 02:50:51 PM
Absolutely right!  Gender dysphoria is not a requirement, but a condition often associated with persons desiring to surgically correct a gender incongruity.  Young transitioners in particular, raised in an accepting and supportive environment, might not have an experience of gender dysphoria.

I would be careful about tying gender dysphoria to medical transition.                                                                       

As it applies to me, you expressed how I feel. Simply a medical transition. Nothing more. I would even go as far to leave the word 'transition' off and instead use 'intervention'. For me, the absence of dysphoria is due to my accepting and understanding parents, sisters and friends. The rest of my craziness is only because I enjoy it  ;D

Quote from: herekitten on March 07, 2018, 10:43:15 AM
I would even go as far to leave the word 'transition' off and instead use 'intervention'.

I have heard some transgender people say that 'transition' is actually a transphobic term because it follows cissexist norms for gendered bodies.  Maybe 'intervention' is a better word then.

Quote from: Transfused on March 02, 2018, 07:52:26 AM
Is non-op transsexual a contradiction? Since non-op is contradictory with transsexual which refers to individuals who have undergone SRS.
But what if someone stays in that " transition space " where they go on HRT but don't have intentions to undergo SRS.
Should they be labeled transgender or transsexual?
My therapist refers to me as " transgender " but is of the opinion that I can't call myself a trans woman because I haven't undergone SRS. In her opinion the term trans woman is reserved for individuals who underwent SRS.
She refers to me as " a transgender / a gender ( not to be confused with agender ) " .

Most people in daily life label me " a transsexual " though.

So, can one call herself transsexual when she is non-op or is that a contradiction with the ground meaning of the word transsexual?

FWIW : I still refer to myself as a trans woman. Trans woman applies to me because for my feeling one doesn't need to have undergone SRS to be able to call themselves trans woman. I am a woman of transition experience and the fact that I undertake a transgender transition instead of a transsexual transition has no bearing on the use of the word in my opinion.

You don't have to have had surgery of any kind to be a transwoman. Your therapist is not only wrong but offensive in her attempts to dictate what terminology you use for yourself and your experience. And personally, anyone in the caring field who referred to me as "a transgender" (or as "a" anything) would see me walking out the door and lodging a complaint as we aren't "transgenders" but "transgender people/men/women."