"#also to avoid confusion you Gould probably define those things in terms of sex which has nothing to do with gender" i do that. i mean being transgender is feeling like your sex is wrong and you should have been born another sex. gender is sex. the thing is, sometimes i get confused bc in radfem context gender roles are shortened to gender. 1/2
+ the correct word to call us is transgender and not the porn/fetish term transsexual. as someone who is anti-porn myself and hate this word, i will never call myself or anyone else that. i have seen some radfems insist on calling transgender people this and i hope to appeal to their disgust of porn but then again when they see gender they automatically think in radfem terms and yeah, there's a misunderstanding sometimes. 2/3
the radfems i really can't understand are those who think you can wish away sex dysphoria with some therapy and meditation, completely disregarding what transgender people tell them. we can't get rid of dysphoria in any other way but through transition and this talk is kinda pointless. for many of us is transition or death and it's the right thing to do. 3/3 (btw not talking about you, i just had a radfem truscum friend of mine be banned from a radfem safe space for saying this :( )
i think we’re actually on the same page wrt most things. however, gender IS gender roles, and it’s not just “radfem terms”. Though most people either use “gender” as a more socially-acceptable alternative to “sex” or to refer to some ambiguous internal “identity” (*coughs* tumblr), it really refers to the social roles of masculinity and femininity, which are imposed on males and females, respectively. it is really important that the distinction between gender and sex be made, because if not then we end up obfuscating terms like “transsexual” and “transgender.”
As you probably know, transsexual is the older term and refers to people with sex dysphoria who transition medically. to my knowledge (and bear in mind it isn’t all-inlcusive by any means, so take what i say with a grain of salt) it wasn’t until the 70s when these people were clumped into the transgender community, which included non-dysphoria people who were simply gnc. why transsexual has fallen out of use is up for debate, but may be because “sex” is seen as indecent (much like how people began to use gender when they mean sex in the conservative era that was the 80s), or because it comes off as more medical/clinical and therefore stigmatizing (much like “homosexual”). I understand your concerns over its relation to porn, but frankly, anything can be the right term for something and still be used as a fetish category. A look at any porn site (which trust me, being a feminist, i avoid) will show categories like “asian,” “latina” and “lesbian”--words that are still used despite their connection to porn. also, to my knowledge, terms like “tr*nny” and “sh*male” are used more frequently than “transsexual.” finally, from my association with a number of gender-critical trans people, i’ve gotten the impression that “transsexual is the term they prefer, as it most adequately describes their situation. after all, transition has to do with sex characteristics (genitals, body hair, etc.) and no matter how you define gender, it doesn’t really change how you’ve been socialized.
that said, i totally have respect for people who don’t want the term transsexual used to refer to them, as it’s a complicated term with a lot of unpleasant social and etymological history. frankly, semantics in this context are really complicated, and the screwball nature of internet politics doesn’t help anything. As long as there is a distinction made between trans individuals with sex dysphoria and gnc people who erroneously claim the trans label, i don’t mind what people want to be called. i also personally believe, as do a lot of radfems of my generation, that sex dysphoria is legitimate and medically relevant, though less common than people think. we think that in a post-gender world, people who’s dysphoria comes as a result of discomfort with gender would not feel the need to transition, and fewer people would be trans as a result. however, in the meantime we support anyone who feels the need to transition to get the medical help they need, regardless of the nature of their dysphoria, and as such probably align pretty closely with truscum/transmedicalists. it’s a really hotly debated issue but i think the radfem community is coming to an understanding that transsexual/transgender people are not the enemy, but gender and the people who enforce it are.
sorry that was long af lmao
