Definitions published in “Sexuality: The Essential Glossary”

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Trans - describing persons whose gender does not conform to norms, e.g., a trans man, the trans community.  This is taken from the prefix used with several words used to describe gender variance, i.e., transvestite, transsexual, transgender.  It is sometimes used as a less-controversial synonym of “transgender,” in that “trans” references, but does not specify, transvestite, transsexual and transgender people, as well as other gender variances.  This makes it a fluid descriptor which is a broad, yet specific reference depending on context, which avoids the problems of the term transgender. “Transgender” is problematic on several grounds. While the term “transgenderist” was originally created to contrast with the terms transvestite and transsexual, referring to those who whose live in a sex role different from their anatomical sex, but who do not desire sex reassignment surgery (Holly 1991:31), “transgender” has been extended by some to refer to all gender-variant people. Some criticize this extension on the grounds that it creates a problematic category which unites persons of differing, and perhaps conflicting political interests. Moreover, the understanding of “transgender” as implying that gender is a social or psychological construct can ironically result in a solidification of the binary nature of “biological” sex (Valentine 2001:2). Further complicating the picture, “transgender” is a “discourse in motion,” a term controversial even among those whom it purports to describe, and is primarily a white middle class US and UK identifier, reproducing social hierarchies of race, class and gender. (Ibid:7-8). For these reasons, many people prefer to use the term “trans.” The dispute surrounding the term transgender, leading to a preference for trans, has been described as follows: "Who knows what to call transpeople these days?  The dominant discourse in the transcommunity is at best a moving target. . . .  Transgender began as an umbrella term, one defined by its inclusions rather than its boundaries, coined to embrace anyone who was (in Kate Bornstein's felicitous phrase) 'transgressively gendered.' . . . Increasingly, the term has hardened to become an identity rather than a descriptor. . . . But at some point such efforts simply extend the linguistic fiction that real identities (however inclusive) actually exist prior to the political systems that create and require them." (Wilchins 1997:15-17)

Transwoman - referring to one who was assigned male sex at birth, but who lives as a female, with or without medical or surgical intervention.  This has a different connotation from "MTF" ("Male-To-Female"), a term which emphasizes the male origins of the subject. It is also contrasted with the term "woman of transsexual/transgender experience," which emphasizes femaleness (as opposed to femininity) by placing "woman" first and gender variance second. (Valentine 2001:186n2) "She-male" is a term associated by some with the sex industry, but adopted by some transwomen as a marker of both their hypersexuality and their nonoperative status. While it might seem to some that "transwoman" is a simple opposite to "transman," politically, transwomen are distinguishable from transmen because of 1) the different histories of transmen and transwomen, 2) different social locations, including transwomen's male privilege and FTM social invisibility, and 3) superior MTF surgical technology (the reasons for which may lie in the prior two distinctions). See also Transman.

Transman - a man of transsexual experience, referring to one who was assigned female sex at birth, but who lives as a male, with or without medical or surgical intervention. "In its original coinage, transman was intended to be an encompassing term that included anyone assigned female at birth but who identifies somewhere on the so-called continuum between male/female and man/woman.  They may or may not take testosterone and may or may not have body-altering surgeries but live either some or all of the time as men. Some transmen still use 'FTM' as a way to reinforce the fact that they have a female socialization and history.  Others use 'transman' instead to distance themselves from anything that connotes female or feminine.  Still others use the term to distance themselves from their transsexual status."  (Cromwell 1999:28) See also Transwoman.    

Trans studies – an academic field of study focusing on the experience of "trans"
people and the insights provided thereby into such traditional academic subjects as medicine, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, law and history.  This is a relatively new field of study which "promises to offer important new insights into such fundamental questions as how bodies mean or what constitutes human personhood."   (Stryker:1998:155)  It is not limited to "gender theory" or "cultural studies",  but presents basic challenges to the foundations of epistemology, ontology and ethics.  While it is often subsumed under gay and lesbian studies or "queer theory", it is at the same time disruptive of structured sexualities such as "gay" and "lesbian." (Stone 1991:296)  It encompasses many disciplines, such as medicine (Benjamin 1977), sociology (Devor 1997), anthropology (Valentine 2000), psychology (Brown and Rounsley 1996), philosophy (Butler 1991), law (Whittle 2002), and history (Meyerowitz 2002).  Some of the main tensions of the field include debates over why trans people are not accepted by society, whether transgender is properly a part of the “GLBT” community, whether there is a spectrum of genders between or beyond male and female, whether those who do not “change sex” are transgender, whether those who are trans are properly classified as men, women, both or neither for social, legal and other purposes, and the truth of the fundamental hierarchy of gender upon which our civilization is founded.

Genderqueer – An identity descriptor mostly adopted by young people coming of age in the early twenty-first century. It refers to a combination of gender identities and sexual orientations. One example could be a person whose gendered presentation is sometimes perceived as male and sometimes as female but whose gender identity is female, gendered expression is “butch” and sexual orientation is lesbian. It suggests nonconformity or mixing of gendered stereotypes, conjoining both gender and gayness, (Wilchins 2002:27) "pluralistic challenges to the male/female, woman/man, lesbian, butch/femme constructions and identities." (Nestle 2002:9)   Genderqueerness is both unintelligible and abjected in the binary sex/gender system. "[O]ur embodiments and our subjectivities are abjected from social ontology: we cannot fit ourselves into extant categories without denying, eliding, erasing, or otherwise abjecting personally significant aspects of ourselves . . . When we choose to live with and in our dislocatedness, fractured from social ontology, we choose to forgo intelligibility: lost in language and in social life, we become virtually unintelligible, even to ourselves." (Hale 1998:336)

Hypersexualized - a stereotype of excessive, predatory sexuality applied to abjected groups, such as gay men, lesbians, transsexuals, transvestites, blacks and Jews. It has also been used to refer to a self-presentation of one's self mainly or exclusively as an object of sexual attraction based on masculine or feminine stereotypes; also seen as hyperfeminine or hypermasculine.  Its pejorative connotation stresses the essentialist, reductionist nature of stereotypical gender presentation, stripping the person of other human qualities.  “Their sexuality is increased to the point that they become creatures of their contrived sexuality and nothing more….The Filipino, whom we have already seen stripped of his sexuality, could not possibly constitute a suitable partner for the hypersexual Filipino; this is what American society would have us believe.” (Arguelles 1991) “….Post Abolition imperial cultural representations hypersexualize blackness, particularly along the lines of simultaneously feminizing and hypervirilizing black men – the general lasciviousness of savages is a trope that cuts across genres and disciplines throughout the nineteenth century.” (Hoad 1998)

REFERENCES

Arguelles, J.R. (1991) ‘A History of Filipino Sexuality’, Maganda Magazine Vol. 3 (http://www.magandamagazine.org/03/content.html)

Benjamin, Harry (1977) The Transsexual Phenomenon (New York:Warner Books)

Brown, Mildred L. and Rounsley, Chloe Ann (1996) True Selves: Understanding Transsexualism (San Francisco:Jossey-Bass Publishers)

Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New York:Routledge)

Cromwell, Jason (1999) Transmen & FTMs: Identities, Bodies, Genders & Sexualities (Urbana and Chicago:University of Illinois Press).

Devor, Holly (1997) FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press)

Hale, Jacob C. (1998) ‘Consuming the Living, Dis(Re)Membering the Dead in the Butch/FTM Borderlands’, Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 4:311 (1998).

Hoad, Neville (1998) ‘Neoliberalism, Homosexuality, Africa, the Anglican Church: The World Conference of Anglican Bishops at Lambeth, July 18-August 9, 1998’. (http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/english/media/workshop/papers)

Holly (1991) ‘The Transgender Alternative’, TV/TS Tapestry Journal, 59:31-33.

Meyerowitz, Joanne (2002) How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (London and Cambridge:Harvard University Press)

Nestle, Joan (2002) ‘Genders on My Mind’, pp.3-10 in Joan Nestle, Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins (eds.) Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Los Angeles:Alyson Publications, 2002.

Stone, Sandy, ‘The Empire Strikes Back: a Posttranssexual Manifesto’, in Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (eds.) Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity. New York:Routledge, 1991.

Stryker, Susan (1998) ‘The Transgender Issue: An Introduction’, Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 2:148.

Valentine, David (2000) “I Know What I Am”: Transgender Ethnography. Unpublished Dissertation, New York: New York University Anthropology Department. 

Whittle, Stephen (2002) Respect and Equality: Transsexual and Transgender Rights (London, Sydney, Portland:Cavendish Publishing Ltd.)

Wilchins, Riki Anne (1997) Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender (New York: Routledge).

Wilchins, Riki Anne (2002) ‘It’s Your Gender, Stupid’, pp.23-32 in Joan Nestle, Clare Howell and Riki Wilchins (eds.) Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Los Angeles:Alyson Publications, 2002.