Are Transsexuals Transgender?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoe-dolan/are-transsexuals-transgen_b_9400682.html?utm_hp_ref=transgender
The Huffington Post/By Zoe Dolan 03/07/2016
"If I am a lousy feminist for admitting that men first made me feel female, I would be even more remiss as a humanist in trying to convince you otherwise.
Where I will claim feminism, so be it at the risk of ostracism, is in challenging the taboo on talking about sex change surgery. I prefer the term "sex change surgery" over the politically correct "sex reassignment surgery," since, when I look down, I see a body that was changed, not just "reassigned." Moreover, the euphemism -- misnomer, even -- conceals a question that the transgender movement seeks to dissuade us from asking: Are transsexuals transgender?"
Interesting food for thought. I struggle with this too. Being uncertain about my sexuality, I do wonder whether if I desired and was romanced by men, it would affirm my sense of being feminine. But lesbians don't feel less of a woman, do they? And I've been through GCS, grown breasts, etc., even been desired by a man once or twice (though never turned it into an actual romance) and it hasn't made a dent it my quite confusing gender identity.
Hi Stephaniec, to me they are the same, as for what the writer was talking about knowing your a woman and for her she found it in men for me I don't need any one to tell me or define it, I know in my heart and soul I'm a woman!!!
BY FOR NOW
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In what surely was my more militant youth, I must have bristled at being labeled in any and all masculine sense.
Time and age have mellowed me to the reality that I once had an existence as a human being whom doctors assigned as male at birth.
My personal journey began with what was termed 'feminine protesting tantrums' - 'I AM a girl, Mom!, 'I'm gonna do it, Dad!'
I hated every fibre of my being that anyone perceived any element of my self as male or masculine.
The terminology during my time also included 'sex change' and 'transsexual'. I am fine with those terms. I did change my sex - at least according to the legal and social records. I first heard of 'gender dysphoria' as a new name by the late-1970s. I also accept that because I did bear the error between my anatomical sex and my mental sexual identity.
My disagreement is with 'transgender'. I never changed my gender identity; I changed what sex anatomy the birth doctors assigned of me.
I have come to a point where I allow those past years as my male predecessor. That was what I was to the world. Hey, I did boy activities that were off-limits to girls - Boy Scouts, Little League Baseball to name them:
- As a Boy Scout, I went hiking and camping and learned about nature and my self. I rose quickly from entry to First Class the fastest in my troop to my time. I also earned both the 'Horsemanship' and the 'Hiking' merit badges, the only one in my troop to have either as of my time - I had both.
- I played Little League until age 14. I played an advanced Little League my final season. We played our games at a real Major League baseball stadium; okay, maybe to 40 spectators, not 40 thousand.
How could I ever have done that if I had been assigned as female at birth and raised as the female that I am? I can't declare that I did those as a female because all evidence proves that I did them as a male.
If someone wants to refer to my male past in male nomenclature, then go right ahead, I take no offense. That does not diminish that my gender is female, always has been female, always will be female.
Likewise, my discomfort comes in my irregular manner of anticipating others. My medical privacy and past are no one's business; with that perspective, no one has any absolute right to know all my medical past any more than I have a right demanding same of anyone else. Then that never-ending philosophy arrives that a truly close relationship requires an ever-expanding revelation of one's self. A partner has a certain amount of right to know certain aspects of my past. The debate is how and what I reveal and when must I reveal it.
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It doesn't matter to me what people call me. It's how they treat me that is important.
Cindi
They're words. What they mean depends on how they're used.
At the moment, "transgender" is the best we have for an umbrella term, a word that captures the common elements in the varied experiences of many people. As far as I'm concerned, we need a word like that, for personal as well as political reasons.
There's enough divisiveness in our ranks already. Let's not add to it.
I guess you need words for communication , but I'd rather just go by stephanie.
Sharon,
Not to burst the centered male aspect in little league baseball. But when I was in the field, and well in my time, we had a streamline in which there were one or two females on each team.
Kate <3
I find this article bothers me for some reason I find hard to put into words. After some effort to understand it I appreciate the point she's making, but I find this article quite unclear and the author seems really hung up on labels.
I don't feel particularly female myself and as someone medically transitioning but not to socially transitioning I can feel the lack of external validation. In fact I expect it. It seems like the way humans work, and in that I accept myself.
She's written about her past and the difficulty of moving past being transgender, but the way she's written it, focusing on labels and their meaning give me the feeling she's not really moved past it at all.
Its only a small piece in a much larger story, so perhaps I'm misunderstanding it.
Words have specific meanings, and are often misused... but that misuse can sometimes create a cultural context, one that might even subvert and supersede the denotative meanings. Culturally, I'm understood to be "transgender," but I never changed my gender, only my body, which technically makes me transexual. I make the choice to wear and speak the label "transgender" as an umbrella term, because it allows me to identify with others who may not have as clear of a gendered identity as me, but who share much of my narrative, and who share a lot of the same history. That said, it is a *choice* to ignore the denotative meaning of the word "transgender," and one that I do not take lightly.
As far as this site is concerned the definitions are here:
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,54369.0.html
I'm not interested in getting into semantic discussion on this site it will only lead to discourse. Hence the definitions we shall use here are listed.
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