Its a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world

[raybear]

I need to come out about something. I really, really dislike the use of the word "tranny/trannie". I'm not even talking about that Project Runway dude. I'm talking about my friends and neighbors.

I'm more okay if its used to describe some sort of event/space/concept that is about being intentionally provocative, like "Trannyshack" in SF. I'm not okay with it being used a general noun or descriptor of a category of people, e.g. "you could come, its full of trannies!!" or even things like "tranny yoga class" or "tranny dance night." Even if this is supposedly being used as a positive selling point. If a trans person uses it self-referentially, I don't notice as much, since I respect any homos right to call themselves a fag, a dyke, a lesbian, a queer, etc. But non-trans people saying it really gives me the willies the most. Its like all the gross fetish buttons get lit up on my emotional switchboard.

So, I'm curious to know what others think.

[Poll #1226144]

Please don't be shy about checking any box, as all of them are things I've thought myself while pondering this question.

Comments

[raybear.livejournal.com]

i don't really like cisgendered either! it sounds like the latin name for a disease. i've never really had much issue with bio-male or bio-female as terms, probably because male and female have always felt pretty technical and medical anyway.

[unscrambled.livejournal.com]

I like cisgender because I like chemistry, and it makes me think of cis- and trans- molecules with double bonds, and it makes sense in my head.

I would be happy with (E) and (Z) gender as well. Bonus for German!

[unscrambled.livejournal.com]

That's for Entgegen (opposite) and Zusammen (same)--I needed to look it up.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, I was about to ask what E and Z stood for.

While I like how those words sounds, I'm not so keen on the meaning of 'same' and 'opposite' with regards to biological sexing, because it tends to keep the focus on the extreme poles, rather than the spectrum in-between that the majority of people live on. Because I'm a fan of the physiological/sexologisy studies that say the number of differences between two female bodies is the same as the number of differences between a male and a female body.

[unscrambled.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about insufficient words for the gender spectrum--I think of "same" and "opposite" as about being "sex of medical assignment" vs. "gender identity in life"

I chafe at bio--for the same reasons you suggest as dislike of opposite and same--"bio-female"'s opposite (trans) suggests that the person in question is not biologically female, which I totally don't buy.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

Ah, I get the same/opposite thing you were describing now -- I had thought you were putting the "two sexes" opposite each.

I get why certain people don't like the "bio" term, it is certainly imperfect. Part of it is my own personal semantics because I don't believe I'm biologically male....or biologically female. I think I am biologically an FTM or biologically a transexual .....though I'm realizing right this second, am I using 'biological' and 'physiological' interchangeably and/or incorrectly? Most often I think of myself as a trans-bodied man. But I don't call all FTMs "trans-bodied men" either, because I know not all of them feel/identify that way. Oooooh, I really really hate being referred to as "female-bodied", which was another thing people were using for awhile, mostly to describe their dating choices, as some sort of umbrella as to why they would date FTMs but not bio.cis.men.

[unscrambled.livejournal.com]

We have talked about your self-description before, it makes a ton of sense to me. Of course, it also makes sense that other people don't feel that way. Insufficient words.

Even physiological isn't quite right to me, as I think that the psychological is also physiological, and that it can't be untangled. And I think there are serious as-yet undiscovered endocrinological gender components that we don't understand that impact all of this.

Also, I don't mind non-trans as an adjective.

But fucking "female bodied!" This is very likely not true of everyone who might describe their dating choices this way, but any time I hear that I think--you don't respect people's gender/bodies/identities/you are an external genital essentialist.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

I agree with non-trans. It has the added bonus of disrupting the norm placement! Aww, this makes me want to bring back my campaign of always mentioning that a person in a story is white, especially if it has no bearing on the story at all. Just so people can ask "why did you point out that he/she's white?" and I can respond, "well, they were."