A Modest Trans Proposal

Over the last few months, we've has this internecine sniping going on in the Transosphere between the WWBT slice of the community that hates the transgender term that has been in use since the 90's to describe the community and a group of people who just as vehemently on the other side don't want to use transsexual as an identifier either because of its medical roots.

Personally I'm in the camp of the peeps who don't like transsexual as a community identifier.   I supported the adoption of transgender because at the time it was proposed it was and has become an inclusive umbrella term that encapsulates a very diverse gender rainbow of people.

However, you have elements of this community that want to do as I call it 'narrowcasting', claiming they are being 'ignored, dismissed and oppressed' by the other side in the debate that has raged over the last few months.

So what I would like to do on this Valentine's Day is propose a compromise solution that will hopefully be acceptable to both sides of this debate so we can squash it and move forward in terms of passing the trans civil rights legislation we desperately need instead of rearguing a terminology battle we thought we'd solved with the adoption of the transgender term back in the 90's.


What I'm proposing is that we use the term 'trans and intersex community'.    I use trans as a shorthand for transgender/transsexual when I write posts on this blog.  Personally I don't use 'transsexual' as an community identifier on this blog because it is a medical condition.    People with medical conditions don't use them to identify themselves.         

We should be focusing on getting trans rights coverage on a national scale like our trans cousins in Canada are, not arguing over who is more 'trans than thou'.

Where we're at the point where this community's civil rights rights are secured, then we can deal with the semantic BS..