I hate the term "transsexual"

[BloodLeopard]

I hate it with a burning passion. I find it rude, derogatory, and just as bad as calling someone a hermaphrodite, faggot or >-bleeped-< or what have you.

I'm transgender, not a transsexual... there's nothing "sexual" about this. It's who I am and it doesn't get me off. So why is this word word used?

Does anyone else feel this way? Or am I the only anal person about this?

[LordKAT]

Well it sounds grosser than transgender but  the fact is,...I'm changing my sex to match my gender. not the other way around.

[lilacwoman]

i prefer transsexual and find transgender too vague.

[niamh]

I find the term transgender to be too broad that it is often meaningless, transsexual has teeth.

[Kev]

Well, there's nothing wrong with everybody finding a term he/she is comfortable with.
I don't know if there's an english term for that, but in german there's "transidentity" and I feel it fits me. The word would be "transident", I don't know if that exists in english as well.
I like it because it cover the whole identity.

[BloodLeopard]

I don't know if there's an english term for that, but in german there's "transidentity" and I feel it fits me.
I like it because it cover the whole identity.

Omg. I like this. Alot.

And I dunno. I just guess I hate the word "sexual" in it. Makes it feel like it's some sexual orientation, and while I really love transpeople, I just.. no. I hate it. I guess because so many people in my life have thought it meant I was a lesbian or something?

[Dana Lane]

i prefer transsexual and find transgender too vague.

This is how I feel. I am a "transsexual woman". Not a crossdresser, not a (everything else under the T umbrella). Me being 'transsexual' allows me to get treatment for it. Transsexual is (or was) a medical diagnosis.

I actually get a bit pissed when I hear a 'transgender woman' was appointed by Obama. I want to hear 'transsexual woman'.

[Aegir]

I like to hear transman/transwoman. I feel like those fit the best; but having been initially confused by who they referred to I understand people not wanting to use them.

[Darner]

Omg. I like this. Alot.

And I dunno. I just guess I hate the word "sexual" in it. Makes it feel like it's some sexual orientation, and while I really love transpeople, I just.. no. I hate it. I guess because so many people in my life have thought it meant I was a lesbian or something?

I think what bothers you is that the letter T is always connected to the acronym LGB and people tend to mix it with a sexual orientation because this is the only context where they hear about it. Transgenderism/transsexualism doesn't get enough "promotion" for general society to understand that the word "sex" doesn't describe just an act but also a state of being. But sadly, I think it will take a really long time before people realise the difference.

And I agree with Aegir. I also feel transman describes me best but it is also of all three namings (transsexual, transgender, transmale/transfemale) the most confusing one for people who don't have enough experience in the field. It actually happened to me when I came out to a not-completely cis-guy as a transman, that he was shocked and I realized fifteen minutes later that he understood I was born a man and transitioned to a woman and the manliness about me was what was left from my previous sex. He even said they did a good job in my operation.  So no, I use the word transsexual because with this one the most people are familiar with.

[Aidan_]

I think I remember the words having two meanings.

Gender = One's identity. We'd be transgendered for saying we're male instead of female, for instance.

Sex = One's biological and genetic makeup. We might be born male and grow up female, but our sex can be changed later.

So a transgender is one who hasn't crossed over to the other sex. A transsexual has had GCS/SRS.

At least that's how I see it.

[Dana Lane]

I think I remember the words having two meanings.

Gender = One's identity. We'd be transgendered for saying we're male instead of female, for instance.

Sex = One's biological and genetic makeup. We might be born male and grow up female, but our sex can be changed later.

So a transgender is one who hasn't crossed over to the other sex. A transsexual has had GCS/SRS.

At least that's how I see it.

This isn't true. There are non-op transsexuals. Some people can't afford surgery. The amount of money you have should never be a determining factor on if your are TS or not.

[Muffin]

To me transsexual is a medical condition, to trans from one sex to another it makes sense (for me at least) and because I don't feel comfortable identifying as a medical condition I just use woman as it's what I identify as.
I don't relate to transgender at all because my gender has been the same since birth it hasn't trans'ed anything. My gender-roles have changed but that's about it, that hardly requires a label in my eyes/situation
Each to their own, further proof we are all different

[Cruelladeville]

The word works on a tech' level if you be betwixt sexes... but hermaphrodite works for that too as well, if you choose to stay in flux...

But once you moved physically completely over all the way.... you're hardly trans anything then are you?

I'm a woman, physically, mentally, brain-sex wise, brain config' wise, and I have a female passport, driving licence, work history,  passport and birth certificate...

I might have had an interesting life's journey...

But so did Cleopatra....lol

[Arch]

Omg. I like this. Alot.

And I dunno. I just guess I hate the word "sexual" in it. Makes it feel like it's some sexual orientation, and while I really love transpeople, I just.. no. I hate it. I guess because so many people in my life have thought it meant I was a lesbian or something?

To each her own! (Or his, as the case may be.)

I still haven't found a good short term to describe...what I am, if you know what I mean. And the preferred terminology varies from person to person. I sometimes identify myself as a transsexual because, well, I haven't found a better term that people will understand. I am male. I am a guy with an atypical male body and an atypical male history. I sometimes think of my body and upbringing as hybrid because, well, they were. Somebody else tried to bring me up as a girl; I resisted by living as a tomboy, identifying with male book and movie characters, and inventing whole male lives in my head. In a lot of ways, I brought myself up. My parents only did part of the job. And later, when I was living as a woman, I was still masculine, I still identified with male characters, and I was still a boy in my head. So I think "hybrid" work in a historical context.

For references to myself only, I really hate terms like "trans-identified" or even "male-identified" now because they only applied to me when I was in a pre-transition or early-transition stage. I identified as trans back then, but I really don't anymore. "Male-identified" seems kind of silly because I'm living as a man now. I suppose I could be a female-identified man, so the term has some use, but I think most people assume that if you look like a guy and are presenting as one, you're male-identified. (Could be a very bad assumption...)

"Trans"-anything is not an identity for me, it's a vague description of my history. But that's my perspective for me.

[Aidan_]

This isn't true. There are non-op transsexuals. Some people can't afford surgery. The amount of money you have should never be a determining factor on if your are TS or not.

Such creates the problem with the term "transsexual". I was just playing with the definition of gender and sex.

[Shang]

I use "transgender" and "transsexual" in the context I was taught in my psychology courses in college.   

Transgender = someone who identifies as male/female when their body is female/male.

Transsexual = someone who has changed their sex to fit their gender identity (male to female, female to male, male to andro., female to andro., etc.).

But that's just how I see it and use it because it's what I was taught.  I have issues marking "f" for "gender" because I see gender as what's between your ears, not between your legs and I see "sex" as what you physically are so I'm ok putting "f" in the "sex" section. 

That being said, even if I do transition, I'm not going to let myself be called "transsexual" until society (for the most part) understands what it is and what it means. 

[Nathan.]

I dislike the word but I use it instead of transgender as I am not transgender.

[Sly]

I don't have a problem with the word, just people who think that because it has 'sex' it in it's just a fetish or something.  Generally when I'm explaining it to people I avoid using the word transsexual because it makes them assume things... I say something like, "I have a girl's body, but I don't really consider myself to be one"

[Sean]

The problem is that most people use the words gender and sex interchangeably. They think that transgender and transsexual ARE the same think, except using gender instead of sex or transgender instead of transsexual is "nicer" or "more polite" because they are squicked about things involved the word sex.

As a result, the convention is now to use the word transgender to describe everyone who falls into the T of LGBTQ, even if it is not technically correct about ourselves. It's really a political and rhetoical choice.

I think it's a misleading term, because we are not changing our gender. The semantics may make sense from the context of other people who assumed your gender matched the bio-sex and it doesn't. To them you are switching genders. But so what? People who are in the closet and come out  as gay do not have a trans-sexual orientation. They didn't switch from being straight to gay simply because someone else found out about it.

That said, I pick my terms carefully based on who I'm speaking to as well too. I won't use the word transsexual very much on its own. Sometimes I'll say female-to-male transsexual, sometimes I'll refer to the trangender umbrella, deliberately picking that broader term. Depends if I'm educating as part of the discussion, depends if I need to soften the impact, and so on.

Personally, I don't really think of myself as a transsexual though. I think of myself as a guy who has atypical physiology and hormones.

[Alyssa M.]

It's just a word. It turns out that words have meaning unto themselves, often only vaguely related to their etymology, and their connotations (and denotations, too) can vary drastically over time and location. The word email used to bother me; I thought it ought to have a hyphen. Language used to describe concepts that are in flux within the culture -- and trans identities surely fit that description -- tends to shift around until the concepts settle down. If being trans wasn't controversial, you just wouldn't care -- you'd be fa'afafine or something, and you wouldn't even think about it. And you'll probably get over it eventually.

I use transsexual to describe myself in certain instances when the clinical aspects are relevant. When the social aspects are what I'm after, I'm more likely to use transgendered. (I don't like transgender because it sounds incorrect to my ears -- the way I see it, I'm a gendered individual, and trans- is an appropriate prefix to specify the way in which I'm gendered. I probably use trans more frequently than either, which is my way of saying "It's really none of your damned business whether I'm transsexual or transgendered, just that I'm gender variant in some way, and that's only relevant in this specific context." If other people use different words to mean the same thing (more or less), it doesn't particularly bother me anymore.

Mostly, I'm female (if you want an adjective to describe my gender) or a woman (if you want a noun). It certainly does bother me if people describe me as anything other than that, or as trans-anything in any context in which they wouldn't describe women who aren't trans as cis-anything.

But I do think alots are pretty awesome.