The Toast’s previous coverage of trans* issues can be found here.
I’m not comfortable with the word ‘transgendered’. That might potentially make you think I am a self-hating transgendered person, but that is not the case; I don’t hate transgendered people at all, and I only hate myself some of the time for things completely unrelated to my condition. I just don’t like using the word, because it’s a word that comes with with a history and expectations and a sense of identity attached. When I do use it in reference to myself I usually tend to do so in a strictly medical sense – scientific and sterile and describing a condition I happen to have and will always have in some sense, that I am being treated for. That the condition happens to be transgenderism instead of say, diabetes or alopecia seems kind of irrelevant.
When I first came out I did use the word as part of my identity however, and I did it constantly – even when I was passing! I was proud of my diagnosis, and for finally having gotten it after years of misery and pathos. I was proud to be transgendered. But slowly, as I lived longer and longer as Molly it began to feel strange. When I thought about transgendered people, myself, I thought about genderqueer people, and the faux-outrage of Jezebel’s hysterical white female readership over every trans issue I’ve never experienced, and all of the support groups and forums I’d never been to and had no interest in. I thought about the million-million documentaries that have arisen out of the muck just as I started to come out, and how they present transgendered people who have a million-million problems in their personal and professional lives, and how my life has been easy as hell. And more and more I began to think, if those are transgendered people, I’m not transgendered. I felt more like an otherwise normal person who happens to have the wrong plumbing than any of these trans people presented to me by the media and medical professionals.
It’s fair to say I’ve had a relatively easy, quick transition, to date. I saw my first psychologist in December 2012 and was living full-time by the end of July 2013. I’ve had exactly one and a half shitty experiences with bigots in that entire time, and have passed like, 99% of the time all the time for a long time (you can tell by the pronouns.) My family have been supportive, on both sides, since day dot, my work has been super great, and my friends have gone out of their way to accommodate me, even as early as when I still dressed male. Everything has been pretty fucking breezy. But the message I’ve been given by the media is that a transgendered person is a person who fights against adversity and is beat down again and again and only experiences hard-fought victories, not easy ones like I seemed to. There was elevated suicide risk, and bashings and even murder involved. And when I would tell people I was transgendered, they would apply then those texts to me.
“Oh you’re so brave!” they’d tell me. “It must be so hard! And you look so good! It must be so much work!”
But I was none of those things, not now, and not then. It’s not bravery to pass almost all of the time, and it’s certainly not hard to interact with the world when passing. I was just a girl with a condition. To think of me as anything more than that seemed insulting to the transgendered people who did have just shit after shit piled onto their plate. Eventually without quite realising it, I stopped saying using the word when referring to myself completely.
I’d be having a discussion about my transition, and not once refer to myself as transgendered. A male friend I hadn’t seen in forever would be giving me the Penis Talk (it is the talk where they first try to convince me to keep, then bemoan the eventual loss of my apparently magnificent penis) and I wouldn’t say it out loud once. My Mum, a minor celebrity in Australia, at one point put a post on her Facebook page about me becoming a woman and how I am transgendered and blah blah blah and the hundreds of declarations of my bravery and strength from her followers made me feel embarrassed. That’s what the word ‘transgendered’ made those people think of, and like, none of it was true about me. I felt like a fraud, even though I hadn’t written the post at all.
Eventually it clicked with me what I was doing and feeling when my talking to my eyebrow lady. I had been making same vague reference to ‘girls like me’ and as she doesn’t make much (any) distinction between trans girls and normal girls to begin with, she didn’t understand to what I was implying. If I’m talking about an issue specifically related to being transgendered with her during my tri-weekly torture sessions, I’ve really gotta spell it out for her. And I found myself struggling to find the words until I realised…
Hold on. There is a fucking word for this. Why am I not using it.
So I said it, out loud, for the first time in what must have been a long time and that little bit of guilt and discomfort and unease washed over me and I realised instantly why I hadn’t said it in recent memory. But now that I was aware of my avoidance of the word, I kind of became frantic trying to understand why I was avoiding the word. I wrote page after useless page trying to unpack it, and make it make sense to me. I tried to talk to some straight friends about it, and they just didn’t understand my discomfort one iota (or attempt to). It was my gay friend who made it all make sense to me, somehow.
For background, my gay friend is a woman who gets hung up on language, and meaning and intention, until it drives me fucking mental, but what this means is that she doesn’t really find a lot of the words (and attached identities and scenes) generated by and for the LGBT community representative of who she is, and isn’t content to use them when they’re not accurate. To simplify for people she will often call herself ‘mostly gay’, because though she has had, and enjoyed, relationships with men before, she largely prefers women, to the point that ‘bisexual’ would be less than a truth…but not purely enough that declaring herself ‘just gay’ would be any more correct. She is the same woman who spent years trying to find a word to describe her internal feelings about her own gender because the word ‘genderqueer’ is politicised and also, most importantly, Not Quite Correct for her situation.
She is a woman who understands not fitting into an L G B or T mold.
Over our chats she kind of un-muddied the waters for me, and eventually I realised I had stopped using (and identifying with) the word transgendered for the same reason I stopped trying to fit my sexuality into a box (“I like boys and I like girls.” “So you’re bisexual?” “No.”), and the same reason my friend refused to be labeled genderqueer when it didn’t quite fit – what transgendered meant to other people, wasn’t what it meant to me, and, over time, I had gotten to a place where I (subconsciously, at first) refused to be classified by a set of circumstances and assumptions that did not apply to me at all. I didn’t identify with the scene, and I didn’t identify with the struggles and shared history of so many transgendered people that the word brought to people’s minds. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t what I wanted transgendered to mean when I said it, so I guess I had just stopped saying. In fact, I didn’t know what ‘being transgendered’ meant to me at all anymore.
And I’m still not sure. The way I use it has become increasingly inconsistent; sometimes I use it to describe what is strictly a medical issue, and sometimes I use it to describe who or what I am and proceed to feel weird about it for the rest of the day, and sometimes I don’t use it at all, when even by my own very loosely defined standards it would be totally appropriate. About the only thing I do know is that my relationship with the word is complicated and conflicted and hard to define personally and even harder to explain to anyone else without sounding like a jerk.
English is stupid.
Tags: language, lgbt, linguistics, molly, the trans* series, trans* issues
Ugh, yes! Labels are on the one hand so important and necessary for those who want/need them (for a sense of belonging, for simply being able to say ‘this is who I am’ and for other reasons) and so friggin’ annoying. What’s even MORE annoying is having to defend peoples’ right to self-identify to other people who think they’re just ‘overcomplicating’ things or ‘making shit up’ while at the same time having a complicated relationship to the act of labelling itself. Like on the one hand I want everybody to be able to call themselves whatever they want and for no one to give them shit over it or question it or their ‘credentials’… on the other hand it’d be nice to get to a place where we don’t have to worry about any of that. I’m not hopeful we will in my lifetime, though. :-/
lolll from now on all of our articles must end with “english is stupid” like cato and “carthage must be destroyed”
I really like this. Labels are the pits.
This was good! And a good reminder that fawning over someone for being so brave and #inspirational is its own kind of Othering, no matter how well-intentioned.
This is such a great piece. It’s really important to remember that labels are just a shorthand to help somebody understand something about us, but sometimes we assume too much based on them, and then they become *less* useful.
(also I really really want to know who your mum is. Australia!)
I loved this. Language has such a strange way of both liberating us and putting us in boxes. A label that relieves one person of their anxiety and allows them to feel like they have found their community will make another person feel like they’ll never belong. It’s always good to be aware of both sides of that.
I love this. Language is so slippery sometimes. Labels are powerful, but that power cuts both ways – it can give us ways to understand and connect to each other, but it can also make us feel like other ways of thinking and talking about ourselves are foreclosed, like if we don’t fit into our own or others’ conceptions of what those words mean, then there are no other words to describe us. We fall into a gap characterized by silence, go literally and intellectually tongue-tied.
English is stupid, and life is tricky, but this is still good, and I’m glad you shared it.
Thank you for having the same problems that I do re: terminology / not having that many problems overall. It’s nice to know other people had a fairly easy time with their transition stuffs.
“the faux-outrage of Jezebel’s hysterical white female readership over every trans issue I’ve never experienced”
I’m kind of surprised to see that pejorative “hysterical” here, esp. in a piece that’s otherwise so thoughtful.
hey if the shoe fits…
(I know what you mean but Jezebel does have that feeding-frenzy feel to it)
I hear you, but “HYSTERICAL!” has such a long history of being used to dismiss women who voice opinions that it really makes me cringe to read it. Even more than I cringe reading Jezebel, heyyyy-o!
i can promise you that that was not the intent. it just seemed an apt word for how offended they get on behalf of every minority which they are not, and stridently and loudly at that. i read jezebel every day because i am a total gawker tragic, but i avoid trans posts because it is kind of awkward having all these people getting upset and/or belligerant on behalf of trans people when, per my own experience, i can only very rarely relate to the offense in question. i did not mean offense. xo
Hey, thanks for the reply. No offense taken, and I can definitely see how the word would seem apt if you’re not as familiar with its history.
I’m not sure how the word “hysterical” is ever a shoe that fits anyone other than misogynists. It’s etymology is inherently sexist and the word has a history of dismissing women because they’re crazy. There’s really no need to ever use it, although it’s often helpful for identifying misogynists.
I agree that it has sexist connotations and is probably best avoided, but I’m not sure the etymology is that relevant. A word’s etymology doesn’t necessarily have much to do with its current meaning.
I don’t think it’s possible to disregard the etymology of a word like hysterical, at least not if there’s an attempt to make a space safe for women. The word is historically gendered and used against women. I don’t know how to ignore that.
It being historically (and currently) gendered and used against women is the problem, and I certainly agree that it’s a problem. How it came to be gendered and used against women is a side issue.
If “hysterical” had originally meant something gender neutral and then had come to have its current meaning and connotations, then it would still be sexist. On the other hand, if the English language’s use of “hysterical” had developed differently, such that it was now used in a gender-neutral way and didn’t have sexist connotations, then I don’t think I’d object to its use based only on its sexist etymology.
Diving further off-topic here–I avoid “hysterical” because of its usage history rather than its etymology, but there are definitely words I don’t use purely because of their origins. For example “pudenda,” a word for a woman’s external genitals that is derived from the Latin for “to be ashamed.”
“Oh, was my uterus climbing up into my throat again? I’m sure that’s why I was shouting just now. Down girl! DOWN!”
Right? Anytime I see that word “hysterical” I hope the user doesn’t know what it means/the etymology but it’s been my experience that people defend its use all the time.
Since we're getting into grammar and language and all that fun linguistic stuff don't get mad at me for pointing out that it's "err" on the side of caution (for instance) and not "air" on the side of whatever. I make similar mistakes all the time and maybe by correcting this we have learned something…mainly that it's err and not air–whatever it doesn't matter sorry.
Not mad! That was actually just an oversight on my part. I usually don't mess that up! Thanks for catching it.
Since I was explicitly asking for explanations and open to understanding why many people strongly prefer "transgender" over "transgendered," despite the fact that the grammar issue is not in fact clear cut, you are hardly correcting me. You neither need to apologize nor position yourself in such a way.
Ah, that was intended to be more general than specific, and more sardonic than serious (prompted by whizzdumb's comment above, aha).
I fully support people who prefer "transgender" over "transgendered", as everyone should have the right to identify with whatever words (or forms of words) they feel most comfortable with. But I have to point out that all of the grammatical arguments against it (including GLAAD's) are simply false. You can be green-eyed, two-legged, red-haired, dark-skinned, talented, gifted and opinionated. All of those are adjectives that end in -ed and none of them come from verbs.
There could very well be other compelling reasons against using the word, but in my opinion the fact that people don't like it should be reason enough.
OMG WHO IS YOUR FRIEND ARE THEY ME
because I’ve been feeling much the same way about my sexuality AND gender, and I thought I was alone.
Pretty sure her friend is ME, ahem. And if it is neither of us, we three need to meet and be linguo-philoso-socio-processy together.
Technically, this is not an issue with “language” per se, because etymology is quite straightforward, but with context, which is added by society, which is more an issue with psychology and sociology. Then again, language often manifests as an expression of social norms, so we’re kinda back where we started…
There is indeed a really fine line between language and culture, and as a person who studies world cultures I enjoy playing jump-rope with said line. I still feel that any discussion regarding the meaning of a word merits a disclaimer, even if a short one, about the hand of culture and context in the exact meaning/ usage of words in ANY language.
Anyhow! This was an insightful post that I do very much identify with, as I am also gay/Kinsey 5, but feel as though all the labels are much too polarized and not always accurate. It doesn’t help that, as Tubatoothpaste said earlier, it’s all just different forms of “othering”.
*sigh* why can’t we all just be people?!
I can really relate to not wanting to label oneself and I also experience conflict in this regard. I am what might technically be called a transwoman but I just think of myself as a woman as my primary identity. The trans part is my condition or state but it is not who I fundamentally am. That being said, I have the great luxury of being able to pass and can live without harassment, a luxury many of my sisters don’t enjoy and I keep the word as a form of solidarity with them while not really using it in my daily life and communications because though our physical circumstances differ, we all had to undergo the same basic process. It is confusing and I feel the need to honor the process all of us have had to go through by using the “trans” but I can’t relate to the term emotionally and I feel the ambivalence of not liking the fact that people use it to think of us as “womanish” but not women when I think of myself and my “trans” sisters exclusively as women. I think that the important point here is just to be honest with ourselves and not buy into socially premade categories so in my case, I think of myself as a woman, full stop but a woman with a trans experience.