When I was pre-operative & transitioning, I used to refer to myself as a -woman in transition- but now that I'm post-operative & done with transition, I'm only a WOMAN, GIRL, and FEMALE (take your pick), nothing else.

Why go through all the pain and agony of laser, electrolysis, FFS GRS, SRS, BA, therapy, depression, with the possible loss of friends and family, financial loss and loneliness.

You do most of all the above to become a female no less and you still want to be called 'trans' or whatever label you like after all of that?

I have read all the comments and there is a strong indication that nearly everyone identifies as a female.  That is the way it should be.  The only time we need to refer to our past is in the medical sense.  Everything else should be referred to the gender that we identify with.

Why do we have to display anything about ourselves?  Just live your life the way you want to live your life.  Who cares what anyone else thinks so long as you are happy with the decision you have made in the end.

Sarah B
Kind Regards

I, of course, can't speak for other people & they can identify themselves as a pot of tea for all I care.  But speaking for myself, I'll be damned if I ever call myself trans-anything after having transitioned fully.  I'm female & that's all.

I was trans for a long whilst, and I'm quite tired of it.  If there comes a time when I've got to reveal my medical history, I'll just say that I'm a woman with a transsexual past.  If people don't like it, it's their problem not mine.

Ideally, at least from this girl's opinion, the term should encompass the entire gender continuum, that is, everyone who doesn't fit into the gender binary.  That's a lot of people.  And by making it so encompassing, you can make it more acceptable.

What we know as a transgender person today would just be another person within the gender continuum.  Also included in that would be the straight effeminate man or the tomboy girl.  This would break down the gender binary concept and help open people's minds to the fact that gender binary is really a myth.

As you know, the only term and label I will ever use in or put up with is Female.  I suppose thinking about this labeling issue probably gives me one of the reasons why I never was really involved with the 'community' before.

Over 21 years ago I started to change my gender, and believe you me I was totally ignorant in relation to what I was undertaking, operation, hormones the community, even the fact 'I did not know then 'I was a female' at that time.

In the begining I mixed with the community and even then I knew instinctively I hated the terms 'trans...', that were being used liberally.  So I avoided the community, for several reasons, one because my life could have been exposed, I am a very private person and with those terms and labels beiing used around me, I would not have been able to work effectively or productively (a result of being exposed) and on several ocassions at the time I heard that once the operation was completed some girls just wanted to go out into the suburbs and become housewives.  When I heard that, I knew what I wanted with all my heart and as they say, the rest is history.

As for my thoughts on gender binary issues, well this is a much bigger can of worms than the 'trans' label issue we are currently discussing, for example do we get rid of gender identificatin at birth, what happens with the structure of our language and of course we must never foget those in favor of and those against changing the gender binary, the biggest problem in both these issues.

Kindest regards
Sarah B

Quote from: Julie Marie on April 02, 2010, 03:08:04 PM
Ideally, at least from this girl's opinion, the term should encompass the entire gender continuum, that is, everyone who doesn't fit into the gender binary.  That's a lot of people.  And by making it so encompassing, you can make it more acceptable.

What we know as a transgender person today would just be another person within the gender continuum.  Also included in that would be the straight effeminate man or the tomboy girl.  This would break down the gender binary concept and help open people's minds to the fact that gender binary is really a myth.

Well, then the term you're looking for is "not a stereotype"?

Unique.

Tranette or tranetta! 

Transista - give it that left-wing/fashionista edge?

Quote from: tekla on April 03, 2010, 03:11:24 AM
Transista - give it that left-wing/fashionista edge?

Let's be equitable here...

Transista  for the mtf's

Transbro for the ftm.

I'm still geeky enough to get a bit of a chuckle out of the term transistor.

But if I called my self a transistor, I'm sure someone will identify as a capacitor, and then things start getting silly...

-Sandy

Quote from: Miniar on April 02, 2010, 04:49:31 PM
Well, then the term you're looking for is "not a stereotype"?

If you think about it, how many people that you know well are totally male or totally female?  No pretense, no hangups (like overly macho or girly), totally at ease with society's gender stereotype?  If a new term was created to include every person who isn't totally comfortable fitting in today's societal gender stereotype, eventually that stereotype would be replaced with a new one, and it would step outside the accepted gender binary rules.

We have to think outside the box, the trans box that is.  If it has trans in it, only those who are comfortable with being labeled trans will accept it.  Hell, there are gays and lesbians who totally cross the gender lines who run from the trans label!  We may be comfortable with it but that's partly because it's better then she-male, freak or pervert.

People who cross gender lines but have never been labeled trans want nothing to do with that term.  So trans-anything is out.

Quote from: Julie Marie on April 03, 2010, 08:20:14 AM
If you think about it, how many people that you know well are totally male or totally female?

Zero.

I can't think of any person I know that is in no way at all outside the stereotype.
So it seems you want a term so broad in it's umbrella meaning that it refers to the whole human race.
Why not use "human" then?

Quote from: Sandy on April 03, 2010, 07:50:28 AM
Let's be equitable here...

Transista  for the mtf's

Transbro for the ftm.

I'm still geeky enough to get a bit of a chuckle out of the term transistor.

But if I called my self a transistor, I'm sure someone will identify as a capacitor, and then things start getting silly...

-Sandy

Nah, I'm a transformer

Oooh, ooh, can I be a semiconductor? 01001110101010

Only if I can 'transmit' those numbers.

Kind regards
Sarah B

Quote from: PanoramaIsland on April 03, 2010, 12:14:34 PM
Oooh, ooh, can I be a semiconductor? 01001110101010

As they say in computers, "It's all just ones and zeros..."  BTW 01001110101010 = 13aa (hex) 19170 (dec)

And back on to the main topic, it does not matter what term we come up with.  As long as society is entrenched in the idea of a gender binary, there will be no acceptance of those who are not.

The term gay, or black, or Hispanic, did nothing for society except provide a consistent label by which those of that group can be identified that was non pejorative.  We can do the same (and to my mind that is what the term transgender is turning into), but I don't think it will have any real impact on society to cause it to think outside of the gender norm.

We here know that gender is a spectrum, not a binary.  And that it can be fluid not solid, but we are the few that understand that.

I think greater understanding of the issue will come as people outside of the norm gain greater visibility.

This has been echoed some number of times, but most people are actually outside of the norm, in spite of the great amount of advertising that seems to suggest to the contrary.  I don't think you can draw a strong conclusion here in general necessarily, but you can offer it up as an example that sometimes society is wrong about gender, and if it can be wrong on gender roles, it might mess up in detecting someone's gender (even when we've got bits leading us to believe something).  It doesn't break the gender binary, but it might put another crack in it.

For anyone who thinks transgender people are treated fairly, you might want to read this:
http://transequality.org/Resources/NCTE_prelim_survey_econ.pdf

It supports one of the primary reasons I feel it's in our best interest to adopt a different term and one that does not conjure up any thoughts of trans anything.

I don't think anyone believes we're being "treated fairly".
The disagreement is over what can be "won" by changing titles, especially in comparison with what can be won by working on changing opinion and knowledge.

And also on just how all-encompassing a term can be without being rendered pointless.

Well that's why humans invent so many different words, some broader, some more narrow.  Depends on who is using them and why.  I suppose a classic example is how the  Eskimo-Aleut languages have several words for 'snow' while the Mayan cultures (where snow was very rare) had only a few.  Even in English someone born, raised and having always lived in Florida might only have one word for snow, while ski bums and bunnies have a handful.

Or, we have 'engineers' - but there are some huge differences between a mechanical engineer, a sound engineer, an electrical engineer and the guy driving the train who is also called an engineer.  Sometimes you need to distinguish, you're not going to get much help from any of the sound engineers I know if you need to move the train. 

There are people who are 'artists' - a very broad definition.  But within that group of people doing arts, there are people who do 'fine arts' but a further breakdown will show that a dancer is not the same as a sculptor.  They do different things, with different tools, for different audiences (though they may overlap, hence the coverage of both as 'artists').

Though it's possible to use such 'labels' to the point of irrelevance, they can also serve a very real purpose too.  So you have to be careful in using language.  And at times understand that it may not even suit your purpose.  The famous art quote - one of them anyway - is that: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.  That one can never really be used to capture or describe the other.