So, I just wanted to share an 1985 article in which out transsexual woman, Christine Jorgensen states the following:
I am a transgender because gender refers to who you are as a human.
The Leader-Post Regina reprint of mass-media article, Wed., Dec. 18, 1985
Oops! I guess we can’t go blaming non-transsexuals for using the word “transgender” to describe transsexual people anymore. Looks like the most popular transsexual in the world may have been responsible for that one…
Also, consider how the word was used in the 1970s…
This was the context used in 1974 by Dr. Novello in the book, A Practical Handbook of Psychiatry.
When debating about who began to use the term and what the term meant in society, you might want to consider the cultural context of the 1970s and 1980s:
Chicago Tribune, Aug. 23, 1975
The Sun, Apr. 26, 1975
In the 1980s world of gender transgressing fashion:
Ellensburg Daily Record – Sep 25, 1984
And in the 1980s world of transsexualism:
Anchorage Daily News reprint of LA Times, Aug. 1, 1988
So, can we please stop with the whole “crossdressers pushed that identity on us” stuff? The word was obviously used by clinicians in the 1970s, in the mass-media by transsexuals in the early 80s and then used to describe transsexuals by media in the late 1980s. Our culture was obviously using the term to talk about atypical expressions of gender, concepts of having gender neutrality, cross-gender expression and transsexuality since the 1970s.
All of the concepts covered in the above media pieces exist in the modern usage of the word transgender, so please lets stop pretending and/or claiming that our modern use has nothing to do with its use over the majority of the last 40 years. Our current use of the word evolved in the context of a culture that was using the word “transgender” in a way more closely aligned to the word’s current context than what Virginia Prince had ever intended. Virginia Prince may have coined the term, but our American culture defined it.
4/12/2012 EDIT: Prince DID NOT, in fact, coin the term transgender. Read the history of this term here.
Tags: TS vs TG
Excellent work! I just love it when facts help broaden the discussion!
How did you find these clips? Do you have access to some kind of historical media database?
By the way: I have added this info to the debate on the separatist over at my own blog http://www.crossdreamers.com/2011/06/you-are-not-…
Jack
Google is great for doing research. For instance, check this out:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gX5WAAAAIBAJ…
Boo yah! Thank you for this one Cristan…I knew I'd read somewhere that transpeople hated the 'transsexual term because of the instant connotation with bedroom behavior' , but it's even more delicious in that it's Christine Jorgenson who had the problem with it.
LOL! I know, right?
But that doesn't mean she wanted lumped with nonops and other men in drag. She just didn't like the word itself. I am willing to take ANY label that the TGs don't want for themselves.
And another Christine fact….she didn't have SRS, but a penectomy and castration, much like some gay men get today – except they do that underground with amateur surgeons.
Great job researching this! I'm also interested in hearing about how you found the newspaper clips.
Thanks! Google is my friend 🙂
Photoshop anyone?
Did you buy a creationist playbook from somewhere? When confronted with reality your response is to assume that the reality must have been faked?
There's a truth here and that truth is either you are a delusional or I am a dishonest asshat who has published photoshop'd images that will inevitably be exposed as being fake since I've cited the names of the publications, page and volume numbers as well. Rest assured that one of us will be exposed as being a fraud. I'm willing to make the prediction that it won't be me.
As this debate goes round and round, we should just reduce it to "trans" and be done with it… http://3rdsideofthecoin.blogspot.com/2009/01/bran…
🙂
LOL! I wish. The problem is that a minority of TS people want to build some ideological wall between all TS people and other types of people of non-cis history, expression or identity. They want to create a world in which TS people are never included with other types of trans folks when talking about people who all share a non-cis history, expression or identity.
One TS-not-TG person responded to this post by stating, "The real issue is the transgender movement that came about in the early 90's…"
The real issue is elitism IMHO. The TS-not-TG minority are basically the creationists of the trans world. They want a specific world view and the demonstrably evolution of the trans community and language be damned. For them, bothering them with facts like this seems to have little to no impact on their narrative that non-transsexuals stole away each and every transsexual person's identity in the early 1990s by grouping all types of non-cis people together. It doesn't matter that it's a demonstrable fact that all types of non-cis people have banded together as one community for the past 40 years… they believe they were personally wronged, transsexuals are a special type of non-cis person and that's all there is to it.
I think you hit the nail right on the head with elitism. That there are still very vocal people in our community out there who support gatekeeping and supporting barriers put up between trans identities is unfortunate and scary. At the same time, I think that opinion and elitism is decreasing to some degree. Here's to a more inclusive future.
While I admit there are differences among the peeps in this big ol' trans umbrella, there are also many commonalities, and, more importantly, there is strength in acceptance and numbers. These people are just trying to pump themselves up by saying, "Oh, I'm *this* and you're not," while throwing their collective noses in the air. Or, like you said, elitism… stemming (as it most always does) from insecurity. Boo on them. Boo on their segregation of what's already a small minority of people… and while I'm at it, boo on labels all together! 🙂
True-TS women are cisgendered women from the womb and belong in the cisgender/TS community from day one, not the TG/LGBT one.
TSs start out as lower than mainstream then fix their birth condition to be seen as EQUAL to mainsteam. TGs confuse wanting to be seen as equal to mainstream people who don't commit most of the lewd acts that TGs commit with elitism. TGs would have the SAME chances as mainstream people if they acted as equals. TGism is about committing oral and anal sodomy while pretending to be a woman. It is all a choice. TSism is about destroying all difference in oneself to the extent possible.
TSs and TGs have different needs. TSs need all differences destroyed and need full recognition as having been female all their lives and being treated the same as having had a vagina all their lives. TSs need a MEDICAL approach to activism, and rights based only on having a birth defect and the motivation to destroy that condition to the extent possible.
Yah… I stopped reading right there. If you're just going to make stuff up, I see no reason to give your position a second thought. Look up the definition of "cisgender", use the term in a manner constant with the English language and then we can talk.
I agree with this. Also, part of the problem with using transgender or transsexed/transsexual exclusively is that it can suggest that gender or sex are mutually exclusive, and at times people use one or the other to deny the identity of transfolks; the typical "well if gender is a social construct, then you're not really a man (in the case of tranmen)/woman (in the case of transwomen) like you say you are/you're delusional blah blah" argument. If trans usurped transgender and transsexed I wouldn't see a problem with it. It would be more inclusive, imo.
Trans is always short for transgender, and I am proudly not transgender. Either call me a TS, female, or my name. I am proud I transitioned my physical sex back to what it was supposed to be. I prefer TS, because TGs are overly sensitive and politically correct, and anyone too proud to call themselves a TS, probably isn't.
Ok, so Christine Jorgensen refers to herself as transgender, not transsexual. From the article, "the word sex, she believes, refers to only what one does in bed. I am a transgender because gender refers to you who are as a human." OK, I can roll with that. Next sentence. "People who think they want to switch sexes should go to gender identity clinics…"
Hmm. Wait a second, here.
I thought she said that "sex" only refers to what one does in bed. This is confusing. Does she mean that those who wish to change their sexual orientation or what they do in bed should go to gender identity clinics? No, of course not. She is referring to changing her body.
Anyway, to me, if one "switches sexes," what she is transcending, is her physical sex. She's not transcending her gender identity. Personally, I'm not behaving, dressing, or presenting in ways inconsistent with my gender identity. I'm not transcending it. It is and always has been female. Thus, I do not identify with the word "transgender." I do identify with the word "transsexual."
If someone else doesn't, that's cool with me. Just don't refer to me as transgender, and I won't refer to you as transsexual. Yay!!
Using this article about Christine Jorgensen, with the word "transgender" highlighted, when in the next sentence refers to her switching sexes, doesn't support your point, IMO.
Ciao!!
Then you probably either missed my point or your're making a strawman argument. My premise isn't a guess about what she thought the word transgender meant. My premise is that the term has a demonstrable evolution that lead to today's current English language dictionary definition. There's a reason a majority of transsexual people began to self-identify as transgender people over the last 40 years. It is unreasonable to conclude that how the world's most famous transsexual identified herself in mass media had nothing to go with how later transsexuals identified themselves.
Here's my premise:
And here's the context from my premise… which would be my argument:
If you'd like to address my premise, please address the evolution of the word. If you're not doing that, you're probably offering some type of strawman argument. When addressing my premise, please (as much as possible) be evidence-based in your response. When you make an assertion to support your premise, cite evidence to support your assertion. Otherwise, it will just look like conjecture, assumption and speculation and frankly… most of us will simply disregard what you have to say because you didn't make the effort to proved a cogent rebuttal.
As I've said before…
http://www.cristanwilliams.com/b/2011/06/02/trans…
I was addressing the premise in one of your above comments where you wrote, "The real issue is elitism IMHO."
If that's not the real issue, then don't state that it is. I was addressing the fact that for some of us, it's not about elitism.
Are you suggesting that I waited until a commenter happened to make a point a agreed with in the comment section to only then expose the real premise of my post? As someone representing the TS-not-TG group, do you really want to make that your follow-up argument to your original post?
Ugh. I'm not representing the "group." I don't purport to speak for all TS people.
I'm not posting here to play foolish logical games. I saw your comment and responded to it. If that's not good enough for you, that's fine.
I know that you're purpose is not to represent the TS-not-TG group; however, as a member of the TS-not-TG group, the way you make your points do reflect on that group. If you feel you need to cast my requirement to discuss the premise of the article rationally as a "foolish logical game" in order to move the goal posts, that's fine. I tend to deal with this type of behavior from folks in the TS-not-TG group.
In your first comment, you never talked about anything in the comment section; rather, you commented on my post by claiming to know what Christine Jorgensen knew about the word "transgender". So I guess I won't ask you to explain what your 1st post (what Jorgensen personally thought about the word "transgender") has to do with the idea that elitism is the problem within the TS-not-TG group since you now claim that your 1st post was a response to that particular comment and not the article. I'm guessing you'd simply claim that I'm playing anther "logical game", amirite?
Teagan, this next part isn't a reply to you; rather, it's a comment to those who read through these comments:
This is a good example of the type of behavior I encounter with the TS-not-TG group. For many of them, if they're not pressing their point peppered with emotionally appealing buzz-words like "assimilation" and "Borg Consciousness" to bowl you over with BS, they tend to resort to logical fallacies (usually strawman, moving the goal post and/or a non sequitur) and if that doesn't work, they attack using ad homs.
Seriously folks, if all you have are baseless conjectures (If ABC was the way I want it to be, then XYZ would be the result. Why? Cuz I say so!) then you have no argument. Conjecture, fallacies, various appeals to emotion, buzz-words and personal attacks ARE NOT arguments; they are what people use when they have no argument.
I'd love to see some evidence-based claims from the TS-not-TG side of the road. Start with reporting on an apples-to-apples example of how transsexuals alone achieved what the Houston transgender community (TS people working with non-TS people as equals) has achieved – in one of the most inhospitable parts of the country, I might add.
Offer some historical documentation proving that TS and non-TS people never wanted to form a more inclusive community that worked together for a common cause. When you make an assertion about something, back it up with evidence. If the the TS-not-TG group can not do that, I can not take their arguments seriously.
Teagan, that's and interesting choice of words "transcending". If one considers the main definition of the word "transcend" it would be "to move beyond the limits". Just got me thinking of the limits nature puts on things. No point to make there, it just got me thinking.
It seems obvious to me that Christine Jorgensen's statement showed what she saw as a very strong link between gender and one's physical sex. It doesn't seem she was considering crossdressers or transvestites in that statement. Yet even if she was what is wrong with those so identified going to a gender clinic? It doesn't mean they are hoping to become transsexuals. More like seeking help on understanding themselves in regards to their feelings of gender identity. Most of the world doesn't separate gender and sex. So though gender may seem like a social construct it's still the main way we define what sex a person is. Of course if the world stops wearing clothes that could change.
Personally I'm fine with transsexuals not wanting to be called transgender but there are also many who prefer it. It's the claims that CDs and TVs are trying to co-opt transsexualism which I find absurd. I just haven't seen any facts to back such a claim.
Teri, if I lived my life by what "most of the world" thought or did, I sure as heck wouldn't be transitioning!!! 🙂 It's surprising that many will go through transition, cross these very ingrained norms which are Not.To.Be.Crossed, and then be afraid of the word "sex," because of what people will think. Ironic, or funny, or something.
But, like you say, if they prefer to be referred to as transgender, transgender it is!
One thing has become real real clear. I am just going to come out and say it nicely…a broad brush on I'm transsexual but not transgender. Total pure unadulterated childish behavior and very much lacking intelligence. Puberty doesn't last 3 months. It is a years-long continuum. As males that we were all born, yes transsexuals believe it or not….you are "real" women now and I'm really Ritchie Rich….but you were once a testosterone-laden, hairy armpit, hairy-legged male….like the rest of us transgendered "less-than-real" females. How dare you, I'm speaking to the "transsexual, real-woman, not-transgender" crowd….in reaching the final phase of a gender transition, or "transition gender"…"transgender" for short….how dare you reach down and draw a line stenciled onto concrete and exclude other "men who became women" (of which I too am one)….and patently disown the 95% of trans* females for no other reason than 1 of the two (1) being non-op as I am or (2) merely because the label "transgender" has lost favor with you all! How dare you, having completed your final phase of transgender puberty, having arrived across the dangerous transgender waters, now reach down and untie the footbridge and banish the rest of us to the very riverbank you once stood on! I have reached the point where I now want absolutely NOTHING to do with the "HOLIER THAN THOU" hypocrites of the cloth TRANSSEXUAL "real women" because you want to know why? You all have proven to ALL the rest of us, in consequence now, to be more dangerous, venomous, essentially now more phobic than "mainstream" non-trans America. Wake the hell up! Your arguments about exclusion for all the rest of us who are in the "transgender" phase is like me (Hispanic) trying to deny that I am Hispanic merely because I was born a U.S. Citizen, speak, read, and write English far above the average American! I don't dwell on my "Hispanic-ness" because I'm not so self-centered that I have to constantly re-boot my brain so I know who I am! I do speak, read, and write spanish but that's it! It is only a skill…nothing more. I don't like much of the traditional Mexican foods, don't celebrate the customs, don't mingle with Hispanics (I should more)….but I still identify as Hispanic because that's who the hell I am!….just a matter of physical fact, that's all. You "real-women" transsexuals, by denying your "former life" as a transition-gender or transgender female for short….are much better off trying to convince us that the ocean is really blue koolaid! We all went to the doctor, and/or therapist (although my visit to therapist consisted of one session)…began taking hormones….grew breasts and rounder buttocks…got ID name/gender changed like the rest of us….and if lucky got bottom surgery which who cares! It isn't required (most places) so if you all are arguing about "op" status, which as I said is optional….then you are trying to self-impose a RULE that no one else is! So you disown your transgender past, you impose a rule about—what "transsexual" is what some of us/you are because you got it cut off….when as I've said it's an option to do so?….I mean last I checked transsexual meant sex change….as in physical sex change. You've already created a war over two very very stupid reasons to create one in the first place….this war has made all of us look like the men we used to be….guess what? We continue to be the laughinstock the movies have made us out to be. Thanx. Thanx a lot. And you wonder why I think its non-trans men who are behind this intra-phobia within our own community. You all pissed me off so bad I went and wrote this http://transendgender.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/th… Deny your transgender past all you want….let me guess you were "never" transgender an I was never Hispanic….just a red-blooded American veteran—-Air Force served. You all can deny you ever were transgender until the cows come home because news flash….you "transitioned gender" did you not?…..or are you still a man…..same gender as always….but now without a weenie? So I'm still gonna call you transgender because YOU ARE and you get to call yourself Metta World Peace if you want. What a horrible horrible sense of insecurity you all are expressing. Guess what?…you all been trying so hard to secede that we who ARE transgender need your presence as much as we need transphobic persons in our midst…..because all the I'm Transsexual but not Transgender have done is proven to be no less phobic! This whole thing has taken on a cancerous-like life of its own that must be removed from our community! Don't ask me…as the other transgenders here!
You were supposed to be born with male features, we were not. TGs are supposed to have penises, be sweaty, hairy, and sex-craved, and live as men. But not TSs. Give us both an EEG and a CT scan, and I guarantee you there will be differences. And if we are both willing to leave our brains to science they can test both of our BsCt regions. I bet there will be a difference, not that I would be around to know or worry.
That is it. MtF TGs were supposed to be born with penises and live as men. MtF TSs were supposed to be born with vaginae and live as women. TSs remove the offending parts to make the body back to what it was supposed to be all along. It is just as much child abuse to raise a TS girl as a TG as it would be to usher a GG girl into the TG life and tell her she could never be fully a woman.
TSism is a birth condition, TGism is a choice, act, orientation, lifestyle, and/or recreation. Pure and simple. As my IS friend says, "TGs are just a bunch of men playing sex games."
Actually, TGs are the cancer. Persecution is the chemotherapy. TSs grow stronger from persecution, while TGs get weaker from it. That is why they need collective bully power to force their agendas down people's throats and harm the cisgender/TS community since unlike TSs, each TG is too weak to stand alone and go it alone. Cisgender is ten times the size of the LGBT community, and any self-respecting TS sides with the biggest one.
I've never transitioned my gender, just my sex.
And have you won? Please cite the case. If you can't cite your case, I think I'll need to conclude that you might be just some nut from the internet making stuff up to make themselves sound important and/or relevant.
Finally! Thank you for making my entire point right there. Transsexuals are not exactly the same (in physiology or social experience) as cisgender woman. Thanks.
Hrm… But according to the English language (the presumed language with which we are attempting to communicate) is very explicit about what the term "transgender" means and any English language dictionary I've looked at disagrees with you. So who's wrong? You or the all the dictionaries and everyone else in the world who uses the word in a manner consistent with the English language?
uuuuuuuuuuu….yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…..right……..any more fiction to write?
The real fiction is that cisgendered women born with the birth defect of having a penis belong in the same community as men who dress up as women, lie about their gender, and love having penises. People confuse the surgery with the motives. The part that makes you even want a vagina is the same part that makes you a woman and makes your gender identity valid. If you neither have nor want a vagina, you are not a woman. The fact that you sometime in your life get the surgery, assuming you get it only for therapeutic reasons and not any reason linked to lust or pleasure, proves the femininity you were born with (rather than effeminacy adopted later in life).
TS and GG women are supposed to have vaginae and mainstream acceptance, while TG men who love their penises and merely pretend to be women for recreation, an act, attention, or any sexually-motivated reason are supposed to have penises and have LGBT acceptance. Anyone who prefers LGBT/TG acceptance over cisgender/mainstream inclusion and acceptance is not a TS.
I believe self-hate is why TGs demand that TSs be a part of their community. See, non-op TGs cannot admit that they are men who merely like to live as women. They somehow see their true nature (modified masculinity) as something degrading. They would face liberation if they could face, admit, own, and claim their masculinity and distance themselves from those seeking to deny or destroy any masculinity within. Feeling you are so rotten that you have to adopt the superficial veneer of another gender while still using features, qualities, traits, and advantages of your original true gender, has got to be a very painful and lonely place to be. This can be compared to addiction, since rather than heal oneself of the addiction, the addict seeks to enslave others in the same addiction.
Look! More Separatist…
<img src="http://cristanwilliams.com/kitty-derp_large.jpg">
u way too funny Cristan! Wow….why is it that you and I do not hide behind faceless icons? Could it be that real cisgendered transsexual females who hate their penises but worship femaleness…are real women…but not real women……huh? One would think that masculinity, penises, men, are such horrible traits of a human being…..
Hey Genius! Why don't you show some courage and put a face to that icon of yours?….that's really me in that picture and that is really Cristan…and stop looking at my penis!….or talking about it….I suppose using your analogy I would choose to redefine it and call it an anlarged clitoris—thats it! I now bless my penis in the name of Purple Girl nonsense and christen it an oversized clitoris—-because being nonfunctional that is now what it is!….so there….just like that…my womanhoodness is full and complete….surgery no longer required! I now have a clitoris—-why?….because (thumping chest) I am Queen and I get to redefine my world….just like Yellow—excuse me Purple "Girl"…
"If you neither have nor want a vagina, you are not a woman."
What about those who WANT a vagina but cannot undergo the surgery required to obtain one because of other medical conditions? Are those people women or just shit out of luck? What about those people WANT a vagina but who live in abject poverty and struggle just to make enough to live and so can't utilize their middle-/upper-class station to obtain one? Are those people women or do they fall into the category of "just not wanting a vagina ENOUGH"? And what about the actual natal women who define "woman" only as someone born with all the anatomy that renders someone capable of having children? According to their definition, if you never had functional ovaries and a uterus to go with your surgically-created vagina, none of us will EVER be a woman. It really sucks to have someone else's definition of who you are imposed on you.
"TGs demand that TSs be a part of their community"
I personally, don't demand a thing from you or anyone else, including that you be a part of any group. All I've been hearing are demands from some people that EVERY TS should NOT be a part of the TG community, when in reality I know of a number of people who meet your criteria to be called TS who prefer to be called TG. (Unless I missed one of your criteria as being "Vehemently objects to being called TG".) If you get pissed when someone says "TG" and includes "TS", that is YOUR problem. YOU seem to be the one who thinks they're speaking of you, personally. When someone says "ape", I don't get pissed off because I know that term doesn't refer to me, even though humans and apes are both in the same simian family, which appears to be a closer link than the one between TS and TG by your definitions. If someone yells out, "Hey, Bob!", I don't answer because that's not who I am.
And I have no idea what shows up as my icon when I post comments here, but I don't really care. Clicking on my name takes you to my well-neglected blog where you can see who I am, though.
One of the more popular surgeons on the East Coast runs "The Transgender Surgery Center," but since I'm a transsexual, does that mean I shouldn't get anything done there? (big sarcasm intended)
Seriously, all of these separatists, or exclusionists, should get a grip because they're going to lock themselves out of a lot of things they previously had access to.
Yes, the narrative they spread is that folks didn't start saying stuff like "transgender surgery" until after the mid-1990s. I thought that you'd get a kick out of this:
http://research.cristanwilliams.com/2011/08/15/tr…
I reamin irrevocably a trans separatist. I could care less about a bunch of old newspaper articles. My position has nothing to do with the evolution of words or their dictionary defintitions. I dont get all worked up about someones surgical status either. I do refuse to associate my condition with the largest group of transgenders (this is not all) who are sexual fetishists. Not because I am against sex or fetishes but because they have nothing to do with who or what I am. I dont want to be confused as a cross dresser or a drag queen. I dont want to confused as being gay when I am not. If it makes everyone happy they can invent a new word to describe those who choose to transition. The names mean nothing – who cares? But what does mean something is who associates with those names. That is important.
Awesome! I can really respect your position then. My problem isn't that "I'm a trans separatist…", my problem has always been "… because of where the word came from." If someone wants to be a separatist, fine. What's not fine is propping up that position with demonstrably false history.
Well i was just wondering if any of you sexy trans women would like to date a handsome trans man.im singel and burned out with bio women and would like to try something new since i find a lot of you to be very cute.what u say gypsyrose?