As many of you know, I have another blog that’s rather dry and is only focused on recording the interesting bits of trans history I come across. A great deal of what I post has to do with the language used to describe the non-cis experience. Here’s a few bits that I’ve not yet shared on this blog:
1885: “Male-Woman” Transgender Person Discovered After Death
1976: Transvestite = An Umbrella Term Inclusive of all Trans Folk
1981: Trans-Gender = Across Genders
1982: Transgenders = Transsexuals, Christine Jorgensen
1986: Transgenderism ≠ Transsexualism; GID = Umbrella Term
1988: Transgender = Transsexuals & Crossdressers
Enjoy 🙂
Tags: language
Words transition. What Christine meant is not the same as what VW tried to convey which is not the same as Leslie foisted upon society. Your simplistic idolatry of etymology fails the high school equivalency test to say nothing of college level requirements. Since you apparently love walls of text here is the wikipedia entry for another word …. gay.
The term was originally used to refer to feelings of being “carefree”, “happy”, or “bright and showy”… [blah, blah, blah… I thought posting the text of an entire wiki article would be a real zinger! *Mwhahaha*]
Wow… you copy and pasted a wikipedia article. So, not only did you go for the strawman (my supposed position that words do not evolve) you went for the argumentum verbosium too.
The idea that I've asserted that words do not change meaning is absurd; the posts listed here contradicts your argument. In fact, practically every post I've made about terms is about the evolution of the term. If your best critique of the information I've made available is to pretend that I'm making assertions that you'll never be able to actually quote me making, then I guess that says a lot about your position.
So, if I understand your post correctly:
A.) You're not happy with me.
B.) You felt you needed to attack my position and therefore, instead of dealing with my actual assertions, you instead invented an imaginary position for me to take.
C.) You felt posting a wiki article was really clever.
No. I am very happy with you. You continue to do exactly what I expect.
No, I have no need to attack your position.
No, actually I found the wiki article rather boring and posting it was not clever at all. But you seem to love walls of text so I thought you might enjoy one as a response. You might want to read the wiki on the term transgender. That one is rather long also and in a phrase says “the term is still evolving”.
Do you believe that my position is that the term is not evolving? Do you believe that it is my position that the term has never evolved?
Is your critique that I'm too detailed when I dispel Separatist memes with historical fact?
2012-02-24 extracted from pages 09-10 “a’top a dung-hill…” © 1987 – 2012 Brenda Lana Smith, R.af D.:
Christine Jorgensen—the third and definitely the most outstanding of my late American housemates—privately decried her late friend, and mentor Dr Harry Benjamin having coined the term “somatopsychic transsexualist” to differentiate persons registered male at birth who sought chemosurgical therapeutic relief to become anatomical facsimiles of women from transvestite males. Benjamin’s postulation in effect retroactively relabeled Christine’s till then “transvestite” status: “Transsexual.” Much as Chris privately opined displeasure that the term misleadingly connoted a sexual preference instead of a gender preference, I have a notion that Chris’ dislike of Dr Benjamin’s label might have subconsciously emanated from the fact that—while it medically distanced her from her former transvestite status and transgenderists—it upstaged “Sex-Change,” a term that till then had universally been synonymous with “Christine Jorgensen!”
UNQUOTE…