I have some questions about the words transgender and transgendered.

[Zorra]

Can someone please answer these questions for me?

Here goes: At the GLAADS transgender resources page, it states this:

'Transgender' should always be used as an adjective, never as a noun. For instance, instead of saying, "Max is a transgender," you should say, "Max is a transgender man."

The word transgender never needs an extraneous '-ed' at the end of the word.

http://www.glaad.org/transgender

My questions are:

A) What is offensive/insulting/inappropriate about the word transgendered? I don't understand this. It doesn't seem like some kind of slur.

B) Who was it that decided, and then decreed, that the word transgendered is inappropriate, and that transgender is appropriate?

I'm always all about respect, and using appropriate language according to an individual's, and a group's, wishes.

But I simply don't understand the reason for this. Was this voted on by some large body of transgender persons somewhere at some time?

I'm really into Occupy, and we do consensus, rather than follow the leader, and I totally get my panties in a wad about being told "what I should do" if I don't know who is telling me "what I should do", and what the reason(s) behind "what I should do" are. (Yeah, I have some serious authority issues, I suppose; is that wrong?)

I have no problem using the word transgender from now on, and maybe I'm having another one of my all too frequent "duh" moments, but could someone please explain this to me?

Thanks!

[dipsydoodle]

1. Without professing to understand this

isn't the mistake to include "a" ? In its absense transgender is an adjective.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. I don't think 'transgendered' is a slur

but it is a redundancy.

[Morning Dew]

8. To me, there's a beauty to the word "transgendered" .

that I didn't truly get for a long time.

The beauty is that, like "annoyed" or "bothered" or "bewildered", it can be a temporary state and may well not define a person on a permanent basis.

Generally, post-op transwomen or men can be said to have been transgendered but aren't now.

That's pretty great - to not be defined by that part of your life.

[The Philosopher]

3. Here

This link answers your first question quite well, I think.

As to your second question, that's like asking when did the gay community decide "faggots" was inappropriate for people to call us. Some things don't need a ruling body. It may not seem obvious, because we're all supposed to come from a place of ignorance and even I question the concept of common sense (as it actually doesn't exist, in the way it's used); which is why "Why transgender instead of transgendered" doesn't require the ape-shit response that "Why gay instead of faggot?" would call for.

(I do acknowledge "faggot" and "transgendered" isn't exactly the same; but I'm not trying to be to get quickly to the point)

Thanks for asking, it really does need an answer at hand.

[Zorra]

7. Thanks. I'm having a bit of trouble with the logic at the link, but

since at least some transgender folks want to be referred to as transgender, that's the term I will use.

[William769]

4. I am guilty of using "transgendered" myself.

But if you read it in the context, you will see it was never used as a slur.

Thank you for this thread.

[enlightenment]

17. As have I been . . .

dang.

mea culpa.

[MadrasT]

5. I, too, did not know

that "transgendered" is incorrect. From this, I get the sense that it is more that it is just incorrect (as opposed to being offensive). Thanks.

[xchrom]

6. I've trained my self to just say trans and leve the gender off.

Not every body goes through the whole process - but they are still Trans?

[Zorra]

14. Another good question. Transgender is simply a general, blanket term

for a wide spectrum of gender alternatives to being exclusively male or female. Many folks who identify themselves as transgender, such as, for example, a weekend cross dresser, never take any steps at all to physically and/or legally transition.

Transsexual, on the other hand, is a much more specific term, and while it falls under the general category of transgender, transsexual folks almost universally desire and undergo physical and legal transition.

(So the short answer to your question,

"Not every body goes through the whole process - but they are still Trans?"

is, IMO, yes, as far as "trans" can cover both transgender folks and transsexual folks. I believe I'm going to start using trans as a general descriptor also, unless new info changes my mind.)

Websters Dictionary illustrates a difference in meaning between the words sex and gender:

sex

: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures

gender

: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex

Anyway, in order to complicate the subject even more, here is kind of a caveat to all this that many folks are not aware of:

A substantial number of transsexual folks do not particularly care for being referred to as transgender. This is because transsexuals know that they were born as the gender that they know they are, and identify as. They do not ever change or alter their gender. Transsexuals do not transform from one gender to another. Transsexuals usually alter their physical sex characteristics, but sex characteristics are not at all the same as gender/gender identity. Transsexuals may change, transform, their bodies, but they don't, and can't, transform the spirit/soul/mind that they were born with/as.

Transsexuals desire to, and most often do, change their sex characteristics in some way, to conform their bodies to the gender to which they were born. FTM transsexuals were born with a male spirit. MTF transsexuals were born with a female spirit. Their bodies, at birth, simply didn't conform to their minds/spirits/souls (speaking from the context of what is considered "normal" in the perception of many modern societies). This is an extremely distressing condition for most transsexual folks, as you can imagine. (Think about some poor two year old kid trying to process this in this society). Many transsexual folks attempt suicide. Not only do transsexual folks get bullied like other members of the LGBT community do, they also constantly carry with them an awareness of having to reconcile total complete disparity between their bodies and their mind/spirit/soul.

A tough gig in this Judeo-Christian influenced society. The current Director of the Kinsey Institute said to me many years ago, "Being transsexual and transitioning are often among the most difficult things a human being can experience". (That's actually paraphrased, but it's close to the original, it was a long time ago).

This is from the American Psychological Association:

What does transgender mean?

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. Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or something else; gender expression refers to the way a person communicates gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice, or body characteristics. “Trans” is sometimes used as shorthand for “transgender.” While transgender is generally a good term to use, not everyone whose appearance or behavior is gender-nonconforming will identify as a transgender person. The ways that transgender people are talked about in popular culture, academia, and science are constantly changing, particularly as individuals’ awareness, knowledge, and openness about transgender people and their experiences grow.

http://www.apa.org/topics/sexuality/transgender.aspx

From Transsexual.org:

What Transsexuality Is:
Definition, Cause, and History

SUMMARY DEFINITION:

Gender Dysphoria, literally a misery with regard to gender, is the condition of being in a state of conflict between gender and physical sex. A transsexual is a person in which the sex-related structures of the brain that define gender identity are exactly opposite the physical sex organs of the body. Put even more simply, a transsexual is a mind that is literally, physically, trapped in a body of the opposite sex.
---
Gender and Sex are very separate things, though the terms are often considered interchangeable by the less aware. Sex is physical form and function while Gender is a component of identity. There can be considered to be some legitimate overlap in that the brain is structured in many sex-differentiated ways, and the brain is the seat of identity. However, with regard to the dilemma of the transsexual, the difference between sex and gender are at the very core of the issue.

A transsexual person, born to all appearance within a given physical sex, is aware of being of a gender opposite to that physical sex. This conflict, between gender identity and physical sex, is almost always manifest from earliest awareness, and is the cause of enormous suffering. It is common for transsexuals to be aware of their condition at preschool ages.
---
Transgenderism can refer to those who crossdress, those who are intersexed, those who live in the opposite societal role of their physical sex, those who play with gender expression for any purpose whatsoever, and transsexuals as well. While there is potentially great survival benefit in this mutual association labeled as 'transgenderism', the primary function is social and political, and not clinical, despite the efforts of some to legitimize this essentially meaningless term.

http://transsexual.org/What.html

(If that last sentence seems kind of snarky, it may, again, be because some transsexual folks don't particularly care for the term transgender).

Realistically, every individual has a different overall experience of being, and labels we attach to human beings such as transgender and transsexual, are often incomplete general concepts used for facilitating communication.

So, some folks will surely disagree with what I've written here, some may even get pissed off at me, but this is the best I can do to in a short period of time to try to convey what I perceive from personal experience, discussion, research, and some very serious contemplation of this subject over a long period of time.

[MadrasT]

15. Interesting

The distinction between sex and gender is an important one and is not well understood in the mainstream.

It is interesting to see transgender described as an umbrella term for gender nonconforming.

I have more often heard "transgender" used to refer to folks who identify and choose to express as the gender opposite the one assigned at birth (the one that usually matches sex).

The larger umbrella terms I am more familiar with to include all flavors of nontraditional gender identity are either genderqueer or simply gender nonconforming.

I am nonbinary gender nonconforming, female sex and present as a woman, more or less. I don't identify as a woman, I identify as "meh, take your gender assignment fetish and shove it". I am not "woman" but since I am not "man" either, I would never call myself "transgender". "Trans" to me means you adopt the other one, and that seems to be the conventional usage I encounter in gender studies literature and in the real world.

On the other hand, could the folks who wrote that could be using "transgender" simply to mean that a person has rejected the gender they were assigned?

Always interested in gender language and passionate about freedom of gender identity and expression though.

[Zorra]

18. Interesting.

Like I wrote in my post,

"Realistically, every individual has a different overall experience of being, and labels we apply to human beings, such as transgender and transsexual, are often incomplete general concepts used for facilitating communication."

There's obviously a huge "gray zone" of self-identification out there, and in there.

You wrote:

"On the other hand, could the folks who wrote that could be using "transgender" simply to mean that a person has rejected the gender they were assigned?

No.

The folks (from the APA) who wrote that would have written. like you suggested, that "transgender" simply means that a person has rejected the gender they were "assigned" - if that condition actually existed to any significant degree, and was the one and only circumstance under which folks would consider/believe that they did not fit our societal "norm" of "appropriate" gender identity.

But obviously, that's not what they wrote, or what they have come to believe through large amounts of research and observation.

They wrote what they wrote because they have studied/observed a a large number of diverse, separate, and distinct patterns of consistent similar respective feelings and behaviors among large numbers of people with regard to gender identity. They subsequently concluded that there are somewhat definable diverse reasons for alternative gender identities, the foremost and most common of which being that transgender folks are born transgender, just like every other LGBT person is born as who they are, and have not simply rejected their socially prescribed gender role or sexual/attraction orientation for the hell of it.

I guess it's possible that someone, somewhere might say, hey, I'm not this or that, I choose to be this way; and I suppose that would fit under the transgender umbrella as well, if these people actually do exist in significant numbers somewhere in reality. I've never actually met one, but I did actually read about a self-described lesbian that said she chose to be lesbian in the news recently. (Actually, I can totally understand why someone would choose to be lesbian, but don't believe it's very common).

When all is said and done, the T in LGBT is there for everyone's protection, straight folks included. The overwhelming majority, or maybe all, of LGBT folks are born LGBT, and if anyone, (if there is actually anyone), that is not born this way but chooses to be LGBT, then they also need to have equal protection and rights under the law.

I absolutely know, to the very core of my being, that I was born this way. I've known it since I was two years old. I am more sure of this than I am of anything else in this world.

But anyway, it 's the APA that put that it out there in that paragraph, after all, if that means anything to ya.

[MadrasT]

19. OK

Well the APA's statement about transgender as an umbrella term does not match my experience with the use of that term. I am glad to know that in some cases "transgender" is considered to be an umbrella term.

There is sometimes a disconnect between people with very strong gender identities and people who have no strong gender identity at all. It is impossible for me to really understand what it is like to strongly identify as man or woman because I never have. But I absolutely do understand that gender is a core part of many people's identities and is not a "choice".

It seems it is also very hard for people with strong gender identities to wrap their heads around what it is like to not identify as any gender at all.

I just want a world where everyone is free to express gender -- or not -- without judgement and with full acceptance of that expression.

I think maybe sometimes I can unwittingly sound dismissive about gender because I truly don't have a gender. I was literally born this way too. A nongendered "other" who didn't even realize there was anyone else like me until a few years ago.

I never mean to be dismissive about other people's gender identities, if I came across that way I do apologize.

[Zorra]

21. Oh, good. Thanks. And you are definitely not alone.

I've had 2 partners in the past, both of them extremely intelligent, talented, gifted and educated women, who also said that they had no gender identity that they are aware of, that they were not aware of feeling like either female or male. Both of them said that they had never really explored the subject to any real depth.

I thought this was interesting, and we conversed at great length about the subject, and never found any common ground for understanding each others experience. I suggested that maybe because they had never had to confront any gender identity issues, except those that might be slightly incidental to same sex attraction, that they didn't really ever have to think a whole lot about what it actually feels like to be a woman or a man. And so maybe didn't know what either felt like. Or maybe they never considered that they might actually feel different if they were male.

Or maybe they are indeed genderless. I don't have any idea, but I've thought about it a lot; I only know what is true for me.

Personally, I have no clue about what it must be like to feel genderless. I have no idea what it is like to view the universe as genderless. So obviously, yeah, there is a major disconnect between me, and someone who has no gender identification.

I'm very active and athletic and I do a lot, and have always done a lot, of things that are generally considered to be more masculine endeavors. I'm definitely not, and never have been, what most people would view as overly (relative stereotype) feminine by any stretch of the imagination.

For me, my gender awareness has nothing to do with how I am, and everything to so with who and what I am. It's something I've always known, and, as far as I know, it does not compel me to behave in any stereotypical gender mode.

I have always felt everything in the natural world as being either masculine or feminine. Mother Earth is an good obvious example for me to use as to how I view gender in the natural world.

Although I can't feel "genderlessness", I fully acknowledge, respect and honor your perceived state of being.

Like you, I also want a world where everyone is free to express gender -- or not -- without judgement, and with full acceptance of that expression.

That's awesome common ground. Thanks for the intriguing discussion!

[MadrasT]

23. I hear you.

My partner is very strongly gender identified and wow, do we have some interesting conversations. But we both accept that neither of us is "wrong", just that we experience life from very different places.

When we met we weren't even sure it could work. He didn't know if he could have a genderless partner (he had no understanding of what that even meant), and I didn't know if I could stand being with someone who sees everything as gendered. We are both so curious we talk and read continually and eventually those gender questions were not a barrier.

I also know exactly what you mean about gender identity not always being reflected in "expression" or stereotypically gendered behavior. That the identity part is the "who I am" part.

There are so many different facets of gender (identity, expression, role, etc) and most people I encounter have no idea how to parse it all or what the difference is or why it even matters to anyone.

Being nongendered, I am fascinated by this concept I can't understand through direct experience, so I talk with people and read about it a great deal. I still have alot to learn, but furthering understanding of gender and gender rights for everybody, no matter who they are, has become my passion.

This has been a lovely conversation, I am pleased to "meet" you here on DU.

[Zorra]

24. Since you are fascinated by the concept of gender,

I very highly recommend this book. It explores gender from a primarily alternative cultural perspective on gender, and I believe it may be a very interesting and thought provoking read for you.

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/97crs4ns9780252066450.html

"Makes spectacular contributions to current understandings of 'third gender' constructions in American Indian societies and in other settings. . . . This volume converts a lifeless, stereotyped image into a vast array of living, breathing, thinking, and talking people who are in no sense dependent for voice on non-Indian scientists."--William L. Leap, coeditor of Out in the Field: Reflections of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists

Here's a short documentary I found interesting that also explores and illustrates concepts and feelings of gender from a Native American perspective.

[MadrasT]

26. Thank you so much, Zorra!

I have recently learned that there were/are some cultures that recognize gender alternatives to the binary M or F model, and I knew there was a Native American connection there. Have not yet dived into that further, and I do appreciate your input!

"Choose M or F" seems so restrictive and limiting to me.*

You rock.

*Edit to add, while gender seems like a bewildering, incomprehensible "choice" to me, I stress again that I know it is a pure, certain "what is" for most other people!!! I beg forgiveness and understanding if my careless use of the word "choice" due to my own gender bewilderment offends anyone.

[Zorra]

27. You're very welcome. I believe you may find something you can relate to there.

S'all good, no problem...words do matter here, and some words matter more than others.

And that's one of the reasons for the OP of this thread.

[Evasporque]

9. I know a lot of homosexualed people...including the lesbianed and gayed men...

See....

[Neoma]

10. That puts things into perspective.

[Zorra]

11. Excellent! Thanks! nt

[TriMera]

12. Nicely done!

[yardwork]

13. That does help! Thank you!

I used to use transgendered too, until I read on another board that "transgender" was preferred.

Probably 95% of DU doesn't understand much at all about transgender issues. We're all learning this together, finally paying some attention to the need for equal rights for our transgender brothers and sisters. It's been a long road for them. The gay rights movement mostly left them behind. A lot of feminists threw them under the bus. It's time for us all to make amends.

[MadrasT]

16. Nice illustration.

Thanks.

[Duncan Grant]

20. :)

I'm so going to steal this.

[Fearless]

22. Having these discussions is very valuable to the community!

Thanks for bringing it up!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

25. no one wants to be called

" a gay" either. doesn't make the word gay offensive, just the usage