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Transgender Transitioning vs Transexual Transition
I was revisiting some old bookmarks today and came across again the web pages by Lynn Conway titled “Basic TG/TS/IS Information”
I’m not sure how much these articles have been updated since they were written, nor how much they need updating, but I was interested to read her views on Transitioning.
A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the need to understand transitioning in a broader context. I re-read Lynn’s take on this – where she in fact proposes there are two types of transitioning.
Quote:Over the past few decades many transsexual women have undergone transsexual transition, including both a social change of gender and a surgical “sex change” of the genitalia, and have then gone on to live successful lives in their new gender. Many media stories about these cases have helped society gradually become more aware of, tolerant of and accepting of the notion of transsexual transition. Most states now have well-established procedures for changing public records of name and gender for those who complete a transsexual transition. Many employers now even have procedures in place to accommodate people going through transsexual transitions.More recently, many transgender people who do not have intensely transsexual feelings, have begun to openly undergo transgender transition. Some are crossdressers finally overcome by TG feelings and the need to take on a female social identity. Others are drag queens who’ve long enjoyed participating in drag shows, but then who finally recognize the strength of their mixed-gender feelings. Most of these transitioners begin transition by taking modest doses of female hormones (enough to produce some degree of feminization) and by undergoing electrolysis to remove facial hair. When feminized to some degree, they shift their full-time social gender by dressing to some degree as women, modifying their voice and mannerisms to varying degrees, taking on a female name, and obtaining some forms of formal identification in the female gender. Thus they achieve varying degrees of social gender transition WITHOUT transsexual SRS surgery.
As transgender people have become more aware of the opportunities for social transition, the number of these TG transitions has risen dramatically. Many gender counselors now see far more transgender transitioners than transsexual transitioners, especially among their older clients. Acknowledgement of the validity of transgender transition in an important new trend, since there clearly are many more transgender people than transsexual people in the wider gender continuum.
Some TG transitioners migrate into a “transgender” social role instead of trying to pass as women. These transitioners may actually feel uncomfortable about becoming “fully female” in presentation and mannerisms, and they are especially uncomfortable about modifying their genitalia. They instead feel a need to take on a transgender or androgynous social role that better matches their mixed-gender identity. Such transitioners often remain visibly transgender and are comfortable in that identity, and their social lives outside work usually involve people in the transgender community. Many TG activists, support group moderators, speakers on TG issues, etc., are people having such openly transgender identities.
Whilst I can relate to much of what Lynn describes, I don’t feel that she makes a compelling distinction between transgender and transexual transitioning. It seems to me to just depend on whether you have or have need to modify your genitalia.
Lynn goes on to say in the article:
Quote:the casual use of the term “transition” sometimes leads to confusionI certainly have experience of this confusion, in conversations with those who in their mind are puzzled that my transitioning has no need of a surgeon’s knife. Embracing the concept of two types of transition would I feel only make this confusion more widespread.
What do others think?
Is Lynn correct in identifying two different types of transition. Or is the concept identical and not dependent on the surgery undertaken?
This post is in my public blog if you want to share it outside TgR
http://adrian.tgr.net.au/blog/archives/17-Transgender-Transitioning-vs-Transexual-Transition.html -
6 Replies
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I see it more as a transition that can have many paths driven to express your female self which may not have specific end point, depending on what your personal needs are. Sometimes we try and use definitions to prove a point but lose sight that not everybody fits the definition.
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I think Dianne is 100% right. I think the distinction amongst transitioning TGs has as much to do with opportunity and practicality as desire.
Speaking as one who suppressed my desires for a long while for family and work reasons, I now find that however hard I want to ditch my maleness there is a lot of history in the way. Learned social behaviour to be unlearned. Male bone structure which cannot be wound back. Hair issues and voice which take a lot of time and money to fix. If I can get all that sorted in a reasonable amount of time (I’m on hormones and having electrolysis), I’ll be able to choose between life as an openly trans person or maybe even as a woman. Oh sorry I forgot to mention SRS.
I won’t even think about that until everything else is sorted because at my age (66) I’m pretty much asexual and surgery is a big deal. Also surgeons have fiddled with my plumbing before and I avoided incontinence by a hair’s breadth. Is a functional vagina, that I don’t intend to invite anyone to admire or use, worth the risk of incontinence.
So I agree we are all individuals with different transition routes and potential end-points but SRS is not a relevant dividing point down the middle of our multi-faceted group. -
Speaking of boys turning into girls heres another story of the child deciding what gender they shall be
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-ross/transgender-children_b_1441773.htmlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-ross/transgender-children_b_1441773.html
hugsSuzz
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I agree AA, that to split the meaning of transition any further will only serve to confuse things even more.
Given that the term Transgender was originally coigned in order to cover the whole spectrum of gender diverse folk, to split the term yet again can only confuse the differing degrees of what I feel is a continuum rather than separate “species”. This can only weaken us further at a time when I feel we need to be more united.
As has been discussed in past threads, transition is a social and psychological journey rather than a physical one. If you feel that you are moving toward your own ideal of what you want to be then you are transitioning and the state of your genitalia does not dictate your place in that journey. That is what I believe. -
I don’t necessarily agree with the distinction “transgender” versus “transsexual”. I am fully transitioning legally and physically to female, and I use the term “transgender” to describe myself. From what I see, the “transgender” is the modern generally accepted term for transitioning people AND for anyone who is gender diverse.
I really don’t like the term “transsexual” as it just feels as though there is a sexual connotation to being trans*. Which there most certainly is not for me.
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This is my second go at this topic. As you probably realise I self-identify as MtF Transsexual, albeit a late bloomer and with medical issues that suggest I may never manage SRS. I am happy to consider myself falling under the umbrella of Transgender.
Browsing http://www.femulate.org recently I came across a reference to a new book “Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Modern Manual By and For Trans People”
It sounds to be a great book. Full of positive stories by trans people. scrolling down through comments on the book and past initial positive reactions I came to a series of comment posts by Transwomen which were disappointing, even disturbing.
In the disappointing category were those women who didn’t want to be included in the umbrellas of LGBTI or Transgender. They were successful TS and women, full stop.
In the disturbing category were the above group who thought putting them in an umbrella group was a conspiracy to devalue them.
Worse, others denigrated TG people who wanted to transition without surgery and or hormones as “fetishistic transgenders” not real TS.
It really is disappointing that even trans people can’t accept the validity of other transpeople.
I hope this link works:
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/17/332051691/trans-bodies-trans-selves-a-modern-manual-by-and-for-trans-people
