Toward a Common Language. This is a blog for sharing ideas, experiences, stories, and conversations about trans, intersex, and gender-variant life. Please feel encouraged to ask questions and submit! People of all identities welcome.
For my first real post, I thought I’d start off with a topic that I was giving a lot of consideration to the other day, and one that contributed to my desire to start this blog. Being somewhat out of the loop with the American LGBTQ community (I live in Japan), I’m not always up-to-date on the new terms people are using to describe their identities. From browsing on Tumblr, though, I saw several people arguing for the usage of “trans” rather than any of the other, older variants, such as trans*, transgender, transsexual, and so on. I never got the full context on their thought processes, though, so I wound up working through the issue for myself.
There is a misconception that many people seem to have about being trans, and it’s one that I found particularly disheartening to deal with when I first came out to my family. It derives, I think, from the impression that trans identities are sexual or fetishistic identities, the goal of which is to become a gender that one is not in order to accomplish a particular role or lifestyle. This may indeed apply to some people, as “trans” is an umbrella term which covers a wide community, but for many of us, our gender has nothing to do with what we want. It’s simply what we are, under the skin, beyond the name people call us every day, in our hearts, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a part of ourselves: therefore, the point of being trans is not alter our genders but to affirm them. This, I think, is something most trans folks and other people ‘in the know’ understand. In a way, our gender is incidental: it is what makes us trans by definition when our self-realized gender doesn’t match up with our assigned gender, but the “transition” aspect of changing our personas over time to better accommodate who we are/are becoming is a common experience.
It’s important to dwell on this point before diving into the trans v.s. transgender issue because a gender transition always has a very specific purpose. It might not be the same purpose for everyone, but I don’t think anybody’s out there shooting up hormones for the kicks (though feel free to correct me if I’m wrong :)). Whatever your process is, and whatever your reasons, the goal is almost certainly to become more realized, embodied, expressed, and fulfilled as a person. To use myself as an example, I was none of those things when I was trying to live my life as a woman; instead, I was a mere caricature. Embracing myself as a man has allowed my personality to flourish and has improved my life immeasurably. And yet, critically, I embraced myself as the man that I am, with all my history and all my peculiarities. I’m no Arnold Schwarzenegger, and if I had realized I was trans but then proceeded to impel myself to become the manliest man who ever manned, regardless of my desires and whatever the cost, it would hardly have been any better than remaining a woman. If the people we become aren’t authentic, then the point of the gender transition has been missed: it is to allow us better to be ourselves, not to adopt a new but equally affected guise.
Incidentally, this misconception about the purpose of a gender transition -- that it is to become a gender at the expense of one’s true self and not vice versa -- probably contributes to the suspicion that trans folks are trying to deceive people by changing their identities. To the people who believe this, I say that it’s quite hard enough for me to trick people into thinking that I’m not perpetually loopy on ‘80s synthpop and happy pills without also corrupting the youth with my dad jeans, or whatever it is they think we do. But to return to the topic at hand, the distinction we’re making by saying “trans” rather than “transgender” is that it is not our gender which changes, but our expression of it. Transgender might imply that I was a woman but became a man; trans allows that I was always a man but underwent a transition to explore and expose it. By extension, to call myself a trans man could mean either that I transitioned into being a man (”transgender”) or that I am an individual man who transitioned to express it (”trans”).
Here’s where I have to diverge from the people I mentioned earlier, who favor “trans” over “transgender.” I think it’s necessary for us to differentiate our terms -- trans from transgender from transsexual, etc. -- but that doesn’t mean that only one of them is appropriate. In my specific case, I use trans, transgender, and transsexual to describe myself and highlight various facets of my experience. Bearing in mind that no one label can perfectly encapsulate one’s whole self or one’s life, I think it can be helpful for people -- and particularly trans people -- to acknowledge that there’s room for paradox, that on the level of one’s identity, the temporal distinctions of being and becoming, of knowing and not yet knowing, can become hazy. But the intricacies of working out whether or not you are trans definitely deserve their own post(s). I’ll mention before I wrap up that I understand the reason some people favor one term for “trans” over another has to do with the historical usage of some of them as slurs, but nevertheless, I’d like to put forth these questions for anybody who feels inclined to comment. Do you have a favored term or terms? Do you prefer them because they do a pretty good job of describing your experiences, or do you think there’s significant room for improvement? Have you come across or have you yourself invented any other terms that you’d like to propose as options?
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
