No, grandtran, you do not get to define the word transgender. The common usage, as developed by the transgender community and associated researchers, is as an umbrella term for all types of gender variance.
Here are are the ways leading trans activists and health organizations define transgender:
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, WPATH
“[Transgender:] Adjective to describe a diverse group of individuals who cross or transcend culturally defined categories of gender. The gender identity of transgender people differs to varying degrees from the sex they were assigned at birth”
The American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5 definition)
“Transgender refers to the broad specter of individuals who transiently or persistently identify with a gender different from their natal gender.”
American Psychological Association
“Transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.”
American Medical Student Association
“'Transgender’ is an umbrella term used by people in a number of different groups, including but not limited to cross-dressers (those who wear clothing of the other sex some of the time) to genderqueer people (those who feel that they belong to either both genders or neither gender) and transsexuals (an older term for people who take hormones and have sex-reassignment surgery (SRS) in order to transition to a different sex.“
The UK National Health Service (NHS)
“Trans and transgender are terms that are used to describe people who don’t conform to the traditional division of male and female.Trans embraces many different types of people and lifestyles, including:
People who cross-dress (transvestite people). These people sometimes wear the clothing of the opposite sex, but don’t want to live full-time as a member of the opposite sex.
People who feel that they’re both male and female, or neither male nor female.
Drag queens, drag kings and other people who don’t appear conventionally masculine or feminine.
Transsexual people. These are people who have a strong and constant desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex. Many transsexual people have gender reassignment treatment to make their appearance more consistent with their preferred gender. This often involves hormone therapy and surgery.”
Gender Equity Resource Center, Berkeley
Transgender people are those whose psychological self (“gender identity”) differs from the social expectations for the physical sex they were born with. For example, a female with a masculine gender identity or who identifies as a man.
An umbrella term for transsexuals, cross-dressers (transvestites), transgenderists, gender queers, and people who identify as neither female nor male and/or as neither a man or as a woman. *)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
“[Transgender:] of, relating to, or being a person (as a transsexual or transvestite) who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth.”
Trans activist Cristan Williams
“[Transgender is] Anyone whose physical makeup, emotional, sexual and/or self-expression is in conflict with current cultural gender stereotypes.”
Professor Susan Stryker in the book Transgender History
“I use [the term transgender in] this book to refer to people who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over(trans-) the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain that gender.”
Trans activist and philosopher Julia Serano
“Transgender is a big umbrella word that includes all sorts of people who in one way or another defy other people’s expectations regarding gender. It not only includes transsexuals, but also people who are gender queer that is who don’t identify exclusively as either male of female. In its broadest definition it includes people who are feminine men and masculine women.”*)
The broad umbrella interpretation is also shared by most other leading trans activists, including Janet Mock, Andrea James and Laverne Cox.
None of these definitions require gender dysphoria. There are definitions of the word transsexual that require dysphoria, but this does not apply to the broader terms trans or transgender.
References here, here and here. See also: What the DSM-5 says about terms like transgender, transsexual and gender dysphoria
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