There are many things that we experience in life that are very difficult to describe to someone who hasn't experienced them. Being transsexual is one of those. I'll be seeing relatives over the winter holidays and have tried to come up with a simple way to explain what it is like to be transsexual.
The best thing I've come up with so far involves printing color pictures. One technique is to pass the paper under three different print heads – cyan, magenta, and yellow – to get all the colors. If the paper gets just a tiny bit misaligned, the picture comes out off-register. You can tell what it is, and it may look pretty good, but it's off somehow – not quite right. That's the way my life has been until I started transition – off-register. Now it has snapped into perfect alignment. The difference is subtle but remarkable.
So, how do you finish the statement "Being transsexual is like ... "
- Kate
Quote from: K8 on December 19, 2009, 12:03:39 PM
There are many things that we experience in life that are very difficult to describe to someone who hasn't experienced them. Being transsexual is one of those. I'll be seeing relatives over the winter holidays and have tried to come up with a simple way to explain what it is like to be transsexual.
The best thing I've come up with so far involves printing color pictures. One technique is to pass the paper under three different print heads – cyan, magenta, and yellow – to get all the colors. If the paper gets just a tiny bit misaligned, the picture comes out off-register. You can tell what it is, and it may look pretty good, but it's off somehow – not quite right. That's the way my life has been until I started transition – off-register. Now it has snapped into perfect alignment. The difference is subtle but remarkable.
So, how do you finish the statement "Being transsexual is like ... "
- Kate
I don't feel transsexual and don't going around thinking about being transsexual.....and I'm not percieved that way or would want to be. I don't discuss it with other people and they don't dicuss it with me. I see myself as a female....so do my friends....and that's it...
Are you asking for a metaphor of what it feels like to have been born with transsexualism?
I agree with Natural Blonde but for me now since I am pre-transition I would say being transexual is like being stuck inside a disgusting ugly shell of a body and wanting to break free. I feel like I am trapped and I need to make my grand escape. :D
As had said. Being Transsexual is like being trapped in a prison. The prison is a gender that is not who you are.
I was born a girl, but the body was deformed into that of a boy. I am now on the journey to correct that deformity. Telling others that you are transsexual is just a fast way to correct their thinking about you.
Hugs and Love
Janet
...being a ghost.
Whilst others could not see me as I saw myself it was as though I did not exist corporeally.
I'll probably stir up a hornets nest with this but...
Being transsexual is like ... having a label I'm not too fond of. What I want to be is a person first, who just happened to be transsexual.
The whole mess of "x to y" isn't me, I only played a guy to lie to myself and others. That I'm a trans androgyne (playing the binary for social integration) doesn't leave out that it (transition) is just a phase for me. :P
edit: this post looks soo hacky :|
Quote from: FlanKitty on December 19, 2009, 02:04:39 PM
I'll probably stir up a hornets nest with this but...
Being transsexual is like ... having a label I'm not too fond of. What I want to be is a person first, who just happened to be transsexual.
The whole mess of "x to y" isn't me, I only played a guy to lie to myself and others. That I'm a trans androgyne (playing the binary for social integration) doesn't leave out that it (transition) is just a phase for me. :P
edit: this post looks soo hacky :|
Well at the risk of stirring things along with you I would agree and add to that that I believe that when we have arrived at a place where we are comfortable on the gender spectrum we cease to be strictly
Trans and instead just become part of the complex spectrum of human gender expression.
Although I acknowledge that historically I
was Trans I no longer generally think of myself in that way, rather I say that I am a woman with a Trans past. (And one that took place a very long time ago at that!)
OOPS. Sorry I wasn't clear.
I am seeing people who knew me for many years pretending to be a man and who assumed I was a man. I want to be able to describe to them what it is to be transsexual - to be born a girl with a boy's body (or vice versa). I don't want to get into an argument about how much of a girl I am. I want to help people who knew me before know what it has been like for me.
OK. Assuming you are talking to people who knew you when you presented in the opposite gender and who assumed you were that gender, how can you help them understand what your experience was like?
My life, being born in the body of the wrong gender, has been like ...
- Kate
Quote from: rejennyrated on December 19, 2009, 02:13:13 PM
I no longer generally think of myself in that way, rather I say that I am a woman with a Trans past.
I will acknowledge that I
may have been seen as trans at some point in later childhood but that was cured a LONG time ago. If I had once had cancer, I would not say I
am cancer just that it is old news, medically speaking. Whatever the medical state of my body so long ago has long been irrelevant.
being invisible behind the imprisoning walls of this body that people see while screaming so loud "Why can't you see me?" and realizing that they can only hear what matches what they see.
like looking in the mirror and wondering "Who the heck is that?, Where did I go?"
like getting put on the fence. go the male side and get told you can't be here, you don't belong. go the female side and get told you don't belong here as well as feel it. male side you hide in the corner to fit in and then your are heard or seen and put back on the fence. female side you hide in the corner cause you don't know how to fit in, then you speak and are put back on the fence. I been put on that fence so long I thought I had to live there. I never learned how to get through to anyone.
like being alone in a crowd.
being an alien left behind on this planet and no way home.
Ok I ramble.
Quote from: Blanche on December 19, 2009, 12:11:00 PM
Are you asking for a metaphor of what it feels like to have been born with transsexualism?
No, I think she's looking for a simile.* :P ;) ;D
For me, being trans is like being a refugee (before transition) and like being an immigrant (after).
* as though there's a meaningful difference between simile and metaphor
Quote from: K8 on December 19, 2009, 02:20:15 PM
OOPS. Sorry I wasn't clear.
I am seeing people who knew me for many years pretending to be a man and who assumed I was a man. I want to be able to describe to them what it is to be transsexual - to be born a girl with a boy's body (or vice versa). I don't want to get into an argument about how much of a girl I am. I want to help people who knew me before know what it has been like for me.
OK. Assuming you are talking to people who knew you when you presented in the opposite gender and who assumed you were that gender, how can you help them understand what your experience was like?
My life, being born in the body of the wrong gender, has been like ...
- Kate
What it felt like emotionally?
Like a fugitive. In the sense that a person who is, for instance, an escaped prisoner or subject to arrest though they are actually innocent.
You have to maintain the "cover" and the false front you present is always uncomfortable not only because it's not really you, but also because you are never 100% certain that you are "pulling off" the deception.
Technically you are free of imprisonment, but spiritually you are just as bound.
When you finally realize you are innocent of any crime and don't have to hide, it is only then that you are truly free.
Alternately, I have another thought on your "misprint" analogy - in that it's the sort of metaphor in which you describe how you precieve the world more than how the world precieves you...
try this and see if it communicates the same idea in a simpler way:
Tell the person you are talking to to cover one eye. Now tell them to assume that that is the only way they had ever seen the world - without depth perception. YOU see the world around you but in a not-quite-normal and natural way. it's only when you see it unobstructed that see life the way it is meant to be seen.
does that convey the same thought?
"Being a transsexual is Like... "
... Being the only human being on the face of the planet that sees the colour blue and finding yourself forced to explain the colour of the sky to everyone who's remotely involved in your life.
Quote from: Laura Hope on December 19, 2009, 05:55:23 PM
try this and see if it communicates the same idea in a simpler way:
Tell the person you are talking to to cover one eye. Now tell them to assume that that is the only way they had ever seen the world - without depth perception. YOU see the world around you but in a not-quite-normal and natural way. it's only when you see it unobstructed that see life the way it is meant to be seen.
does that convey the same thought?
Yes. I like this. This and some of the others are what I was looking for – not allowed off the fence, seeing blue but no one else can, an escapee, a refugee, etc.
(The one with the eyes doesn't work for
me very well because I have amblyopia. I've always seen the world more or less in a monocular way. :P)
Yes, I was looking for a simile. We are trying to tell someone what it has been like in a way they can understand even though they have no frame of reference. They're cis-gendered and so never gave gender identity much thought. Being a hopeless optimist, I think that if I can describe it well, they will "get it".
- Kate
being trans is like.......
going to a fast food resturaunt and ordering a burger, with everything on it...
but when you get it, you dont have the pickles.... but yet your make a big deal out of it, and take it back and get pickles.......
:-\
assuming, that we are the burger that is missing that extra thing, but people make a big deal out of it and want to change it??
Oh well.. if this didn't make sense it's typical normal because being trans is confusing!
Being trans is like:
Getting your ghost stuck in someone else's body.
Being dragged along by some idiot guy to a party you don't want to be at full of people you can't relate to, and realising the house it is held in has no windows and the doors are locked from the outside. And don't even get me started on the music!
Going on holiday to the worst one-star resort on the planet and being forced to send photographs of the green pool water and the stained bed linens and the blowfly in the soup bowl back home to all the people you care about attached to a moth-eaten postcard of the condemned and probably haunted hotel with the words printed underneath, in big, bright, poorly spelled letters: "Whish U wear heer!".
Don't even get me started! :)
Being born with a birth defect :P
Being Transsexual is Like nothing else.
There are times that I hate it, however most of the time I actually really enjoy it. Yes, having to get surgery, hormones, and what have you sucks, but I think the overall experience is rewarding.
I like to think that I am getting to experience more of life than almost anyone else. Who else gets to know what it is like to be a boy and a girl, most people don't. I think the experience alone is worth it. Yes, being born in the wrong body thing sucks, but I hate being negative (even though I get perceived as being negative, a lot of times it's straight facts with no feeling attached). For me, being negative just makes me more sad. And who wants to be sad. Being a transsexual is like the best thing that ever happened to me (or at least realizing I was TS).
Life gave me lemons, and I painted that ->-bleeped-<- gold.
Being transsexual is like being a butterfly trapped in her own coon.
Not being able to move for fear of being exposed. Being afraid to come out even-though the coon is very restrictive. Because it is familiar, protective and warm. But dieing inside of it.
Quote from: Northern Jane on December 19, 2009, 02:20:24 PM
I will acknowledge that I may have been seen as trans at some point in later childhood but that was cured a LONG time ago. If I had once had cancer, I would not say I am cancer just that it is old news, medically speaking. Whatever the medical state of my body so long ago has long been irrelevant.
That was really my point as well. Thanks Jane for putting it across much better than I could.
Quote from: Naturally Blonde on December 20, 2009, 10:43:19 AM
That was really my point as well. Thanks Jane for putting it across much better than I could.
Ditto! We shouldn't forget that we three all had the benefit of early treatment though. Which puts us in a very small and lucky minority for our time. :)
I still think my original comment about it being like a ghost is a reasonable description of the feeling prior to getting things sorted.
Quote from: Matilda on December 19, 2009, 02:12:35 PM
I have never felt like a "boy" or like a "transsexual" either. In my mind I've always been female just like any other female born with a birth defect other than transsexualism. Of course, to the world, I was something entirely different because of my anatomy, but that goes without saying.
During the almost two decades that I suffered from this devastating disease (yes, I call it a disease because that's exactly what it is, a disease that is curable by correcting one's body to fit one's mind)
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi572.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fss161%2Fmatilda23%2F061.gif&hash=8f2301193b0dc73bb2e3c64f938f2048ea1a0591)
That's the way I see it too. A destructive, debilitating, fatal illness if left untreated. An illness that doesn't change the fact that I'm a woman. An illness that doesn't define me. An illness that isn't my identity. It only lasts forever or until it kills you if you don't take care of it. But once you do, that's the end of it (transsexualism).
-Fer (cured by Dr. Suporn) :)
Quote from: rejennyrated on December 20, 2009, 10:59:46 AM
Ditto! We shouldn't forget that we three all had the benefit of early treatment though. Which puts us in a very small and lucky minority for our time. :)
Early treatment? not in my case! where did you get that idea from Jenny. I might have been in the GD bubble for many years but in my particular case treatment wasn't and still hasn't been very early. My extensive legal cases against the NHS are legendary and I had to fight tooth and nail for any form of treatment, so I don't think I come under the lucky banner!
Quote from: Naturally Blonde on December 20, 2009, 11:04:50 AM
Early treatment? not in my case! where did you get that idea from Jenny. I might have been in the GD bubble for a long time but in my particular case treatment wasn't and still hasn't been very early.
Ah - my sincere apologies. I stand corrected :embarrassed: I must have got the wrong end of the stick from one of the threads somewhere. Put that down to a senior moment on my part then. Sorry. :)
I feel out of phase with the rest of the world, the preverbial square peg in a round hole. I feel like I send out the wrong kind of signals which others don't quite get. I live in a bubble of deceit always living a lie. I feel that I am always having to act as others expect rather than being the real me. I therefore coast through life rather than living it to my full potential. I feel like I am lying to myself every single day.
My decision to transition came at a point where I could no longer stand the deception. Now that the real me has a chance to shine I am more content and free. This was a decision I should have made years ago, I just didn't have the courage until now.
Quote from: K8 on December 19, 2009, 02:20:15 PM
My life, being born in the body of the wrong gender, has been like ...
- Kate
That's just it, Kate, there is no way to explain it. There is no way to make someone understand the angst and the agony we face(d) each day.
I think it is the term trans-
sexual that throws people off. It sounds like it is a sexual thing. An erotic thing. Something done for enjoyment. Though it is farthest from the truth. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.
I try to convey the feeling by telling them to imagine, not if they woke up as the opposite gender, but as something completely alien. I tell them to imagine themselves waking up as an aardvark. It takes the sexual/erotic overtones out of the conversation.
I tell them to imagine what it would be like to find yourself as an aardvark. You look like an aardvark, you smell like an aardvark, and all the other aardvarks say you are an aardvark. And that you should aardvark up and start acting like an aardvark! But inside, you
know you are not. Inside, to your core, you know that you are not an aardvark. And you would do
anything to become what you are.
My therapists have all explained that while they have compassion for our plight, since they were not trans themselves, they could not truly understand.
Many of us take on the image of the caterpillar to butterfly. We imagine ourselves going through transition, a chrysalis, to emerge changed. To become what we truly are.
But if the caterpillar is kept from creating its chrysalis, its transition, it will die. It will expend all its energy trying to change.
This is what I have felt.
Sorry, Kate, for such a long-winded answer (like I have anything else), but I don't think it can be conveyed in one sentence. Much like trying to describe the color orange to a blind person, it cannot be described to one who does not have sight.
-Sandy
cnat spel
Quote from: K8 on December 19, 2009, 02:20:15 PM
OOPS. Sorry I wasn't clear.
I am seeing people who knew me for many years pretending to be a man and who assumed I was a man. I want to be able to describe to them what it is to be transsexual - to be born a girl with a boy's body (or vice versa). I don't want to get into an argument about how much of a girl I am. I want to help people who knew me before know what it has been like for me.
OK. Assuming you are talking to people who knew you when you presented in the opposite gender and who assumed you were that gender, how can you help them understand what your experience was like?
My life, being born in the body of the wrong gender, has been like ...
- Kate
well if you want to educate people, you have to start by letting them know that you're a 100% female, woman & how much of a girl you are. (not "kind of a female") that's the reason why you're transitioning in the first place, isn't it?
being "transsexual" was a temporary ailment. something that had a beginning and an end.
Quote from: Natasha on December 20, 2009, 12:34:09 PM
well if you want to educate people, you have to start by letting them know that you're a 100% female, woman & how much of a girl you are. (not "kind of a female") that's the reason why you're transitioning in the first place, isn't it?
being "transsexual" was a temporary ailment. something that had a beginning and an end.
The people I'm trying to explain this to all knew me when I pretended to be a man. To them, I
was a man. Convincing them that I am now and always have been a woman is more than I think they are ready for at this time. That's why I want to describe what this aspect of my life (my gender dysphoria) was like. I think if I can describe it in a way they can relate to they will be more ready to make the next step of seeing me as a woman (albeit a woman with on odd past).
Whether I will continue to be transsexual after I transition socially and medically is not the question.
I am trying to describe what it was like to be born into the body of the wrong gender and to be forced to live in that wrong gender until lately, and to describe the difference between then and now.
I am just trying to help someone who hasn't experienced what we go through to have some understanding of what it has been like. I have run into this when trying to explain my passion for motorcycling to someone who has never ridden, when I've tried to describe what a career in the military is like to someone who was never in the service, what it was like caring for my dying partner of over 20 years to someone who has never had a long-term partner, etc.
And I agree, Sandy, that at least in the US the term trans
sexual gets some people off track in their thinking. That's why I usually say I am transgendered. (Or
was transgendered.)
- Kate
That's why I just say "trans" if I must say anything at all. "Transgendered" is often used as an umbrella term, and "transsexual" sounds icky, and makes people start thinking about hormones and surgury and other stuff that isn't their business. If they ask me to elaborate, I just say that it means that they need to understand that I am a woman, despite the fact that they used to know me as a man and still see some male physical characteristics, and that's all that should matter to them.
Quote from: Northern Jane on December 19, 2009, 02:20:24 PM
I will acknowledge that I may have been seen as trans at some point in later childhood but that was cured a LONG time ago. If I had once had cancer, I would not say I am cancer just that it is old news, medically speaking. Whatever the medical state of my body so long ago has long been irrelevant.
I would love to get to that point, and seeing people who have gotten there gives me hope. But to extend your analogy, I would say I was blessed if I had survived cancer, and so I will say that you are blessed.
Well I don't have fibromyalgia, but I figure it's a lot like that.
You have a problem, and you know it. But nobody else believes you.
And with transsexualism, you have the nice bonus of groups people just hating you for no real reason other than "they can't relate."
Or maybe like being stuck in a box. In more ways than one.
Re: Being Transsexual is Like ...
Being 11 years old forever (well until treatment is found). When growing up (in the wrong gender) means death.
Being born transsexual was a cruel joke of nature (God if you believe in him). Absolute torture. My spirit was put into a body that wasn't mine. I was in a constant battle with my body since I could tell the difference between boys & girls, but at the end I won the war & took control of my own flesh.
I'm trans no more. I'm now the woman I always was.
-Cured by Dr. Sanguan Kunaporn-
Quote from: link=topic=69728.msg472988#msg472988 date=1261344237
Re: Being Transsexual is Like ...
Being 11 years old forever (well until treatment is found). When growing up (in the wrong gender) means death.
Going to have to go with this one.
I didn't come up with this, and it was probably written better in its original version, but I don't remember where I found it so I can't cut/paste. :P
Being transgender is like being left-handed. Less common than right handers, but that's not because we are inferior - it's no better or worse than being right handed.
In a classroom, right handed people can sit at right handed desks and be comfortable. (as comfortable as you can be at a desk in a classroom lol) Left handed people can either sit in a right handed desk and be completely uncomfortable, or they can find themselves a left handed desk and be comfortable as anyone else. It might be a little harder for left handed people to be comfortable, but that's because we live in a right-handed dominated world, not because lefties are worse.
Quote from: Miniar on December 19, 2009, 06:43:22 PM
"Being a transsexual is Like... "
... Being the only human being on the face of the planet that sees the colour blue and finding yourself forced to explain the colour of the sky to everyone who's remotely involved in your life.
Brilliant.
Being transsexual is like...Crimson Butterflies...They may be beautiful and light the way for you but often times these beautiful creatures are taken into an grotesque path which in the long run...Strips the creature of such beauty and leaves it with the outer core of only demise and disgust.
Quote from: Miniar on December 19, 2009, 06:43:22 PM
"Being a transsexual is Like... "
... Being the only human being on the face of the planet that sees the colour blue and finding yourself forced to explain the colour of the sky to everyone who's remotely involved in your life.
I used a similar analogy with my ex boyfriend...I told him "it's hard to explain to someone what bubblegum tastes like if they've never tasted it".
For me...
...it's like going through life blind and hearing about all the wonderful sights you're missing, only everyone getting upset that you want your eyes fixed so you can see too.
...it's a constant fear that you could die alone, trapped inside a shell, or you could die by someone who doesn't like what emerges from that shell.
...it's a knowledge that every step you take is earned and well-fought for. Transition has made me stronger in a lot of ways.
...it's knowing how many things people really take for granted in life. Things like a name, a pronoun, the way someone looks at you, friends, relationships, family. I can't say that being trans is 100% sad, because without being trans I wouldn't know how much I fear my family walking away from me.
Being transsexual was like trying to look at myself in the mirror but seeing the reflection of somebody else.
A disease, an illness. I like that very much too.
EDIT: Cured by Marci Bowers
Asphyxiation, blindness, paralysis, despair, pain, loneliness. You're dying inside & nobody seems to give a damn. Nobody believes you. Nobody wants to free you. The pain is yours & yours only & nobody can understand it, you can't even explain it, but it's real, too real to ignore. That's how it felt like.
...is like wearing the wrong clothes. Everyone may like your style and your look but you just feel like an idiot. Then when you change your outfit everyone has to tell you how much they hate it or how much they liked your old look better.
Being tortured physically, chemically, psychologically, and spiritually - only nobody's doing the torturing. It's real, it's happening to you, only nobody's doing it, and you're not doing it. At least with other forms of torture, abuse, or imprisonment, other people can have eyes and ears to it. And there's some hope that somehow, someday someone will help you. Make it stop. But with this, it's all coming from inside you. And that alone drives you nuts.
Or maybe I'm describing puberty. After puberty, it's like Stockholm's.
Disclaimer: Not trying to make light of what some torture victims have really gone through, it's just the closest feeling I can come up with.
Quote from: Alyssa M. on December 19, 2009, 04:47:01 PM
No, I think she's looking for a simile.* :P ;) ;D
* as though there's a meaningful difference between simile and metaphor
:laugh: Yes there is, but cut me some slack, will you? English isn't my first language; it's actually my fourth.
I'm Swiss! :P
Since I mentioned 'metaphor', I'll give you one, KB.
Transsexualism was a fire that was consuming me inside.
Quote... imagine a girl that would be raised as a boy...
That's very good Joandelynn!
I had SRS and 'transitioned' at 24 a
LONG time ago and a short time later I looked back at my childhood and saw how all the pain and confusion was exactly that - a very normal girl's response trying to deal with to a horrible situation. Any normal girl would have responded exactly the same way and gone through exactly the same feelings.
Kate
You are not born transxual. Its how you are brought up,
Im female treated as a male and I hate it.
Being a transexual is like feeling trapped in a lightless hallway groping for the door of escape. If your lucky enough to find the right door, your reward is freedom.
Dawn
Quote from: Krissy_Australia on December 22, 2009, 09:14:44 AM
Kate
You are not born transxual. Its how you are brought up,
Im female treated as a male and I hate it.
I don't want to derail this thread, but the whole nature vs nurture argument is still out but there is some very significant early evidence that it is more nature than nurture.
In other words, it is not all about how we are brought up. Were that the case, I would not have had to transition at all...
Perhaps I have misinterpreted your meaning, if so I apologize.
-Sandy
Hi Sandy
I meant I was born female, transexual is the term used because thats how society sees me and thats how Ive been treated
Transsexual simply means that your brain and your crotch(and chest) don't match (the current scientific information available supports this supposition anyway).
It's a birth-defect, and as such, it stems from birth, not nurture.
Quote from: Dawn D. on December 22, 2009, 05:38:35 PM
Being a transexual is like feeling trapped in a lightless hallway groping for the door of escape. If your lucky enough to find the right door, your reward is freedom.
Dawn
Oh I really like that one.
"silent Lucidity" your vary lucid to the pain suffering and inability to look in the mirror and not want to slit your wrists yet its all in silence no one knows very few care and with each passing day your soul dies just a little more
jessica
Quote from: jesse on December 24, 2009, 04:52:47 AM
"silent Lucidity" your vary lucid to the pain suffering and inability to look in the mirror and not want to slit your wrists yet its all in silence no one knows very few care and with each passing day your soul dies just a little more
What Jessica said.
Quote from: Miniar on December 19, 2009, 06:43:22 PM
"Being a transsexual is Like... "
... Being the only human being on the face of the planet that sees the colour blue and finding yourself forced to explain the colour of the sky to everyone who's remotely involved in your life.
wow Miniar I really like this
as for how being a transsexual feels, since I've never been non trans, I wouldn't really know how to describe it cos I have nothing to compare it to :icon_shrug_no:
It's a lot like Freud's Unheimliche--uncanny.
Remember that show Quantum Leap from the eighties? Sam would "leap" into another person's body and live that person's life for a short time, then leap into someone else. There was always a moment when he would see his own reflection--but it wasn't his own reflection; it was a reflection of the body he was occupying at that moment. I loved this show not just because it was science fiction and pretty good but also because every day of his life Sam had to pretend to be someone else, just as I was doing in my own life. And he had to have that moment of looking in the mirror and seeing what everyone else saw...but it was someone else, not him. Nobody ever saw him.
Nobody ever saw me.
I'm still very hesitant about this word 'transsexual'. I know a lot of us use it, but I'm a bit of a word nut and at least when applied to me, it doesn't feel accurate. I don't mean that I feel any different than most of the people here, but sometimes words sneak into our vocabulary and we use them without taking a deeper look at what's behind them.
My issue is this: what exactly is 'trans' about being 'transsexual'? Dictionary.com gives this definition for the prefix 'trans-':
1. a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin (transcend; transfix); on this model, used with the meanings "across," "beyond," "through," "changing thoroughly," "transverse," in combination with elements of any origin: transisthmian; trans-Siberian; transempirical; transvalue.
Now, for people who are on the outside watching us, I can see how things like 'across' or 'changing thoroughly' could make sense when applied to our sex/gender situation. But from my perspective, on the inside, there's nothing 'across' or 'beyond' or 'changing thoroughly' about my sex/gender situation. I'm just me, I've always been me, it's just I've spent 27 years playing the part in a script that other people have given me. I mean this is what happens to 99% of people: the doctor pulls you out of the womb and looks between your legs. Depending on whats there, they say 'boy' or 'girl' and that defines the entirety of your experience for the rest of your life, not because it says anything about you, but because everyone else in the world will treat you one way or another because of what the doctor said.
So for me, 'being transsexual is like' having the courage to tell everyone in the world, you know what, the doctor was wrong, and I'm done playing by his/her script for my life. And by 'tell' I mean either through words (which some of us are okay with), or just action and presentation (for those of us who may want to put past gender scripts behind us).
As for the word 'transsexual', people can use it for me if it helps them talk about me without tripping over themselves, but it's not a word I use for myself.
Quote from: Dictionary.comtrans-:
1. a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin (transcend; transfix); on this model, used with the meanings "across," "beyond," "through," "changing thoroughly," "transverse," in combination with elements of any origin: transisthmian; trans-Siberian; transempirical; transvalue.
Quote from: Merriam-Webster Dictionarysexual:
1 : of, relating to, or associated with sex or the sexes <sexual differentiation> <sexual conflict>
Based on these two then transsexual is changing thoroughly ones sex. Which means then being a transsexual is like changing one sex. But I am not changing my sex, I have always been a woman, I am only changing my genitals. I am actually Transgenital, or better yet Transgendered?
Whichever I am only changing the package, so does that make me Transpackaging? ~giggles~
Being Transsexual is like having a 450 cid engine in a Tank. It gets the job done, but it would be better in a slick hot Maserati. Vroom Vroom Boys.
Janet
I mean, you could say some people are transblonde or transbrunette :P.
The other thing I don't like about the word is that it comes with a bunch of externally imposed negative connotations, and one particular slur in specific. I'm of the mind that we should do away with all of the labels -- by saying 'I am X', it just puts up a divider -- some people are X and some people aren't X, and human nature just leads to conflict in any of those situations.
I am not transsexual, or homosexual, or heterosexual, or transgender, or WBT, or bisexual, or christian, or atheist, or agnostic, or muslim, or man, or woman, or boy, or girl, or any other divisive word. I'm just me.
So true, Ketsy. So true
Janet
Id love for there to be a word that didn't have "sexual" in it and didn't imply some variability in our innate gender but I don't know what it would be. Perhaps someone who knows latin could come up with something that means "appearance mismatched with identity" or something...
I like the catch-all word of simply "trans" by itself, because the transitional experience is something I feel I share most in common with other trans-people. :)
I also agree that having the word "sexual" involved just has all kinds of horrible connotations associated with it I'd rather not have non-trans people floating around their heads.
... and same with "gender" because it implies that there was a gender that could be pinpointed as being the "right" or "wrong" state of being and... *phew* ... it's just confusing as hell to explain to people.
Anyhow.
Quote from: Laura Hope on December 27, 2009, 02:53:49 AM
Perhaps someone who knows latin could come up with something that means "appearance mismatched with identity" or something...
That would be:
vultus mismatched per identity
(I love the internet...)
Not very satisfying, but there it is...
-Sandy
mismatched didn't translate
I fiddled with a translation machine and got "Appearance differs from identity" = "vultus distinctus ex identity" or "appearance different from identity" = "vultus diversus ex identity"
Appearance differs = Vultus distinctus, eh?
Interesting for a motto perhaps but unwieldy...
So much for that idea lol.
I haven't found an English to Latin translator to experiment with.
There are surely some words that would produce a smoother label but latin might not be the right root language to use
nefas pars sicco puella - wrong side out girl
Quote from: Laura Hope on December 27, 2009, 08:41:06 PM
I haven't found an English to Latin translator to experiment with.
Try this one...
http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php?from=English&to=Latin (http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php?from=English&to=Latin)
It's what I used. I don't think it has all the latin nuances though.
-Sandy