Vocabulary Lesson
May12
on May 12, 2015
at 11:55 pm
Some of you will note that Ken’s explanation to Krys is not the preferred language for describing a trans person—for example, instead of “born a girl”, it’s preferable to say “assigned female at birth”. Ken knows this, but he’s focused on getting the idea across to Krys, who’s apt to be confused.
Hey, I want to give a shout out to all the cool people I met at the Queers & Comics Conference last week. I met people whose work I first read 26 years ago, like Howard Cruse and Gerard Donelan. I can’t adequately explain how cool this was, and how much it meant to me.
Also I saw Fun Home on Broadway, and damn, that show is good.
In the community where I’m most familiar with, (at least some) people distinguish between “transgender” and “transsexual” people: “transsexual” is for those who unambiguously identify with the sex not assigned at birth and who have the intentions to seek SRS, while “transgender” is for those who do not identify with the sex assigned at birth, but who can be more ambiguous, vague or even fluid in their gender identity. I’m not sure if that distinction applies to the communities in the US / in other countries nowadays.
(btw this is Alast from the other comments)
Thanks… even for someone like me, who is paying attention and has many trans friends, it can be difficult to know the right vocabulary to use. When in doubt, I listen to the words people use themselves and try to use them too.
Same for me. 🙂 And to my understanding, even within my community there are disagreements over the meaning of these terms, so I try not to pigeonhole and think of the terms as having a rigid definition, and try to educate myself on each different person’s self-perception and identity when interacting.
For peeps who wanna learn more: http://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender
Thank you!
this is awesaome!!
Language… oh man, it’s awesome.