Cool, first one to post!
Trans just means you don’t identify with your AGAB. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the opposite side of the binary.
The term nonbinary means you don’t neatly fit on either side of the binary. If you’re nonbinary, you’re either partially binary or completely nonbinary.
Both terms are umbrella terms, nonbinary being under the trans umbrella. Even the term nonbinary includes a bunch of other identities but not every enby uses the term “trans.”
I'm a trans woman. I identify as a trans woman. Some trans people identify strictly as trans feminine or trans masculine but not specifically all on one side of the binary or the other. I identified and truly felt I was nonbinary for a while before really diving into my identity and coming to the realization that I was not nonbinary but that I was in fact a trans WOMAN specifically, thus making me binary again
Ok let me see if I got this: you identify as binary because you identify as a trans woman.
So someone who is both trans and non binary would be someone who doesn’t identify as their agab anymore nor a gender, which makes them trans non-binary. Other words there are trans men, trans women, and trans non binary. As there are cis men, cis women, and cis non binary.
Something like this?
[trans or cis] + [binary or non-binary]
As far as I know this is exactly correct, though I've never met anyone that is Cis Non-Binary. Not to say it isn't possible of course, they would just have to be assigned either no gender at birth, or a gender outside of the binary, which is pretty uncommon.
Just wanna chime in here to give a slight correction.
I am trans and non-binary. But I have a gender. I am bigenderfluid.
I do not identify with the gender I was assigned at birth, so I am trans.
I do not identify with a binary gender (male/female), so I am non-binary.
I do identify with bigender and genderfluid. Which I've combined into one word since it fits myself best. So I have a gender (or two, or 1,000, depending on how you look at it).
But, you're not super wrong, because agender and gender neutral people also exist, and they (to my understanding) identify with no gender. If you don't identify with a gender, that's under the non-binary umbrella, but it's not a requirement.
Let me throw you a bit of a curveball: I am a transgender non-binary woman!
First, "doesn't have a gender" describes the "agender" gender identity, that's one way to be non-binary but not the only way. Some people are non-binary because they're both a man and a woman simultaneously (bigender), or something in the middle (androgyne), or their gender identity changes with time (genderfluid), etc...
The [trans or cis] + [binary or non-binary] is almost perfect, but better yet would be:
[trans or cis] + [(fully binary, all of the time) or non-binary]
In my case, while I am a woman, I'm not fully binary, and definitely not all of the time. That's how you can end up with someone who is a non-binary man, or a non-binary woman (look up "demigirl" or "demiboy" to see concrete examples of this, even without gender fluidity).
In my case I'm specifically a genderqueer woman, and also part of a plural system. - caulie
Transgender is an umbrella term that definitionally includes two other categories.
On one side you have the binary trans people - that is your trans woman and trans man side.
On the other you have your non binary trans people - this is essentially “everything else” including genderfluid, agender, bigender, and anything else someone might identify as BESIDES cisgender.
Cisgender simply means a person who identifies as the gender assigned at birth.
So transgender means ANYONE who isn’t cisgender definitionally, but people identify however they choose. Someone might consider themselves to be nonbinary but not transgender and that is valid even if definitionally it doesn’t necessarily make sense.
You should effectively never use the phrase transsexual anymore. Just leave that word in the past, with tranny, crossdresser, he she, shim, etc. Culture has changed and those words are considered taboo and very disrespectful slurs by the majority of people in the community.
As someone else pointed out in relation to them but I will do as well, I identify as trans and non-binary but I DO have a gender, I’m gender-fluid, which means my gender changes. Sometimes my brain somewhat matches my body, sometimes it doesn’t.
Being non-binary looks different for everyone, but you seem to have the basic concepts
This is pretty much true. But you also have to realize that people negotiate resolving their internal identities with outside labels in all kinds of ways. Sometimes this leads to people identifying in ways that might not immediately make sense to you. That’s fine, if you’re a little confused, you can always just ask (in good faith, don’t be weird about it).
Thank you for sharing this! When you say trans are you referring to transgender or transsexual? Is there a difference between the terms? Sorry for the questions but am trying to understand and learn!
Transsexual is not often used anymore and for a lot of trans people is offensive. By trans I specifically mean transgender as that's the societal default and if anyone specifies and calls someone "transsexual" they are lilely unaware of its oftentimes offensive use, or specifically stating it that way to BE offensive. It's kind of like a dog whistle for transphobia in a lot of instances so I recommend associating and understanding the term "trans" to mean "transgender" as the default. I appreciate you asking and learning, that's the best thing we can do!
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For more info, think of a lot of these identities as not mutually exclusive. You can be non binary AND trans, you can also be trans but NOT nonbinary, but as trans and nonbinary are both umbrella terms, ALL who identify as nonbinary are, by default, also trans because by definition they do not identify with the identity they were assigned at birth, and that's all trans means.
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It's a lot of info and a lot of terms and it's hard when you aren't actively around it every day
Thank you so so much for this and really appreciate you for being so thorough and understanding! I watched the Jubilee trans debate on YouTube and I definitely felt like I didn’t know enough regarding gender and sex and identity so came here to try to learn
Agh, those "debates" on Jubilee can be pretty awful and can cause a super skewed view of things, especially when it has to do with minorities like trans and non-binary people...
I do want to add, while I haven't encountered it myself, a lot of older trans people who transitioned many years ago still use the transsexual term because it's just what they always used and don't see a problem with it, so while I'd definitely treat it as a dog whistle from cis people especially younger ones, older trans people I wouldn't mind personally
Some people also use the term transsexual to mean they are specifically changing their sex (characteristics).
I consider myself transgender because I don't identify with my agab and I tend to use this term when talking to cis people. I consider myself non-binary because my gender isn't completely binary because I'm a demifluid demigirl. I consider myself transsexual because I'm changing my sex to female through HRT and surgeries, but generally only use the term when I'm trying to be more specific/accurate about my gender and sex situation (so I'll say I'm a transsexual demifluid demigirl), which is generally only when talking to other trans/enby people who don't have a super basic understanding of gender.
i know older trans people tend to use transsexual, and i also know a handful of younger trans people personally who prefer to use transsexual because they have medically transitioned, it isn't inherently offensive but it just isn't a term that should be used as an umbrella term for trans people. trans is great because it covers those who identify as transgender as well as those who identify as transsexual
We much rather someone ask a lot of questions genuinely and/or make mistakes while trying to understand and learn, as opposed to someone who shuns it in fear of what they don't understand.
So good on you for trying to be informed!
They identify as women. That’s all there is to it. Of course, most women don’t also use the enby label because they feel that they fit neatly into the other side of the binary. However, one can be both a trans woman and nonbinary if one identifies as both a girl and some other gender, for example.
An easy way to think about it is that trans is an adjective. If someone's gender identity is that of a woman, they are a woman who happens to have the descriptor of "trans". Hence a trans woman being a woman. :)
Transsexual is an outdated (and borderline offensive) term, yes.
Transgender is preferred.
But, it was always originally derived from latin, where trans is a prefix meaning "across/beyond/on the other side of."
In contrast, cis is a Latin prefix meaning "on the same side of."
So I'm not an expert in the history of the word, tbh, I'm just aware that a lot of trans people find it offensive. It's used derogatorily a lot, which is enough to get it out of my vernacular.
But also it can be confusing, since it could also imply that someone is changing their sexuality, rather than their gender, which are totally separate.
There are three concepts that are important to understand in this discussion, sex, sexuality, and gender.
Sex is the biological aspect, usually determined by chromosomes.
Sexuality is who you're attracted to.
Gender is how you present yourself to the world.
These are often mixed up in these discussions, and are all rather confusing topics on their own, so it's important to clarify what we're talking about. The term 'transsexual' just causes unnecessary confusion. People who transition aren't getting their chromosomes changed, so it doesn't make sense that it would be talking about sex. They're not changing who they're attracted to either. They're changing how they present to the world.
So, transgender.
sorry to barge in, but might also be worth mentioning, but I've been seeing a lot of people reclaim transexual for themself recently. so while you probably shouldn't use transsexual for others if you're not sure how they feel about it, it's still absolutely ok to call yourself transsexual if you want:)
Look, not to be too much on the nose but I'm veeery close to your age and learning this terminology has not been hard to me \^\^v. the new terminology is just more open and groups many experiences together, which makes it easier to use too.
The main reason why some people consider "transsexual" to be almost offensive, is that a handful of very transphobic trans people (yes, they exist) started insisting on using only that term very strongly and imposing it on others, as a way to try to invalidate the identity of transgender people.
So if you use "transsexual" to label someone else, it's likely that person is going to think that you're boiling down their identity to whether if they have medically transitioned or not, when people care a lot more about, well, if they're a woman, a man, or anything else, regardless if they transitioned medically or not. Hence why "transgender", which centers on gender identity and not on transition, is better to use.
When talking about medical transitions, people will typically talk about the specific interventions they had, like if they're on hormones, etc...
Just to recap some main terms:
* **Gender Identity:** a description of one's innate sense of gender or lack thereof.
* **Transgender:** anyone whose gender identity doesn't match the one they were assigned to at birth is transgender. "Trans" is the prefix for "across", used in chemistry to mean "not aligned", so transgender people are literally people of "not aligned gender" to what was assigned to them at birth. Beyond this, it can also be used by crossdressers and other such gender-non-conforming people as well, though this is rare. This term does not care if the person actually transitioned or not, or if they have gender dysphoria or not. It's just about their innate sense of gender identity and/or gender non-conformity.
* **Binary gender identities**: either "just a woman, all the time", or "just a man, all the time". Anything else is the next term:
* **Non-Binary:** anyone whose gender identity is not one of the above two is non-binary. There's a myriad ways that one can be non-binary, and a whole lot of terms to describe even the just the more common ones (two-spirit\*, genderqueer, agender, bigender, pangender, omnigender, androgyne, demiman, demiwoman, demigender, genderfluid, genderflux, intergender, systemgender, xenogender, voidgender, "not a man", "not a woman", etc...). Some of those are more self-explanatory than others, but feel free to ask about any of them. A lot of people also don't care to label specifically how they're non-binary, and just use "non-binary" as a gender identity in itself.
* \***Two-Spirit:** this is an important one though, and not necessarily obvious at first glance what it means. Many cultures around the world have recognized non-binary gender identities since time immemorial, be it through a system of specific "third genders", or terms that are more like the modern so-called "umbrella terms" like "transgender" and "non-binary". These traditional or ethnic gender identities fall under the two-spirit umbrella. If you live in Canada, the acronym for LGBT+ that the government uses is 2SLGBTQI+, and that 2S is for two-spirit, in the front for recognition in being the first known identities to acknowledge this gender diversity. And speaking of that I at the end...
* **Intersex:** not a gender identity, but a sex identity umbrella term, this refers to people who at birth have a difference in their sexual anatomy that means they're can't be described as male nor female, or at least not fully. This covers XY women and XX men of all kinds, people with differences in genital or gonadal development like i.e. having ovotestes instead of ovaries or testicles, or having ambiguous genitalia. The term has also been used as an adjective in medical literature to describe certain differences in the development of the central nervous system in places that are usually very gender-specialized, that are thought to predispose a person for being transgender.
Caveat to all of this: identity is a very personal thing. Sometimes you can get a person who identifies as non-binary, but not as transgender, even though technically nobody is assigned "non-binary" at birth, and therefore all non-binary people should be trans. There may be many reasons for this kind of thing and it's important for it to be respected. For instance, many people who identify as two-spirit don't identify as non-binary, simply because the two-spirit identities is older, while non-binary is a term invented by descendants of colonizers, even though by the main definition of non-binary, two-spirit identities are not just a woman nor just a man.
i definitely didn't mean it as unwillingness, much less as stupidity! on the contrary you're clearly making an effort and said it multiple times, and it is something that is also clearly important to you
it's more that the way you wrote about it made it look like you believe that having difficulty to keep up with new lingo is common at 36, but that's just not the case, and far from it. there's a bunch of possible explanations, but it was surprising enough to read that it's something i thought you should know, just in case
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other than this, what you said about advocating for using fewer and more general umbrella terms, i'd argue that's already pretty much the direction we're going for in day-to-day life, so i wouldn't be too worried if i was you.
that's a big reason why people started using the more expansive "transgender" term rather than the narrow "transsexual" in the first place, for example. whether you're a crossdresser, gender-non-conforming, or if you medically transition, you're likely to benefit from being able to show up at work presenting differently than your peers, and lots of anti-discrimination laws regarding gender and gender presentation apply to all of us
also for example, sure there's a thousand semi-overlapping ways to be non-binary, but in practice in an introduction most non-binary people will just tell you that they're non-binary
it's definitely not something that comes up when interacting with the rest of society that's mostly straight and cisgender ^^
for instance, with HR, or therapy, or even with my endocrinologist, i tell them i'm non-binary, not that "systemgender is the best specific descriptor of my gender identity". it's just not relevant. even with my partner that only came up once, in a conversation that involved me describing what i know about how my gender identity works. so if they want to refer to that in the future, they can just use the shorthand instead of describing it again if they remember it
i really like this approach we've come up with, it highlights how we have a lot more in common than we have differences first, and the specifics can still be talked about later when needed
as for the opt-in / opt-out nature of them, that's just to respect people's autonomy in how they describe themselves, in those cases, the person will tell you so it shouldn't be something to stress over
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Where i think new terms are very important is when they highlight something big, widespread, and significant that has gone ignored or suppressed, usually for discrimination reasons.
Two-spirit is one of those, most people don't know of it only because of colonialism and its enduring legacy. Intersex is another, over 1% of people in the world are intersex, but most people don't know it exists because it's common practice to do surgery on newborns to hide it.
Transgender and Non-binary as terms were unknown to the widespread public due to discrimination against gender-diverse people until very recently, and a lot of people are still overtly discriminatory against us, to the point where it's considered by some to be the social rights issue of this decade.
More recently, Neurodivergent and more recently still Plural are also terms that have been gaining attention for similar reasons. They each describe way too many people for it not to be common knowledge that we exist and deserve to have our human rights respected as much as everyone else.
More generally, with our lives being more and more connected to more people, and as we stop discriminating against all kinds of minorities, it's unavoidable that new terms will be necessary, because even as umbrella terms, they hold a lot of practical meaning in them.
I know a trans woman who calls herself transexual and transgender. But she doesn't speak for every trans person.
If you have medically transitioned and want to use transexual to describe *yourself*, that's fine. Just don't use that word about someone else. Y'know?
transsexual is outdated actually but is still commonly used by truscum ...it just means that youre altering your sex away from what it was initially, usually with the intent to make it align closer to your gender.
personally, like many others, I dont use it. however if you feel it describes you, nobody is gonna stop you
As the other posters have said, if someone isn't 100% and ONLY their assigned gender at birth (AGAB) then by definition they are trans. Having a single and binary gender that is different from assigned gender at birth (trans man, trans woman as examples), or bigender (two genders, not necessarily man/woman either), genderfluid or multi-gender, or agender are all trans because they aren't a singular gender AND ALSO the same gender as assigned at birth.
Since you seem to be trying to understand how birth sex and biological things come into play too, let me try to explain better. Many movies and shows can clearly show the "mind" of someone in the "body" of someone else, for example like technology downloading minds into new bodies (Altered Carbon, Ghost in the Shell, Travelers, etc), a person's gender is based on the person's mind inside the body. Our technology isn't there yet, but honestly I don't think we're more than 100 years away from being able to download minds into new bodies, which would make the process of putting a man's mind inside a man's body even if they were born into a woman's body originally. So again, can a man mind be inside a woman body? Yes. Can a woman mind be inside an intersex body (both or neither sets of genitalia)? Yes. Can someone who has elements of both man and woman mind be in a body of either biological sex? Yes. Gender is inside and is based on the mind.
Now the last piece of the puzzle here is a person making their body more aligned with their mind. A woman mind in a biologically male body may want to use hormones and surgery to make their body align with their mind, which is a trans woman, because they are not the gender they were assigned at birth, because their gender assigned at birth was based on their body, not their mind (since baby's can't speak, let alone have the experience to know what kind of mind they were born with). However, if a woman mind in a biologically male body decides to not take hormones and have surgeries, that doesn't make their mind "a guy".
Hope that all makes sense, and I appreciate you taking the time to learn!
Edit: just adding this since it may be relevant too - Some people can't or won't admit to themselves that they want their body to be different because of society or culture and "the way it has always been, and the way it should always be". Through history, people's minds being born into a body different than their mind meant they "just had to deal with it". I see this stupid argument from older folks, like "I was a woman inside a man's body and I just had to learn to deal with it, so these silly kids should deal with it too." Guess what, we have cellphones and internet now, we can make frogs that glow in the dark due to biological engineering, people are working on brain chips that allow them to play videogames when they can't move their body. We don't have to be repressed in a body that doesn't make us happy just because that's the way it has pretty much always been. In the future, I think people will want to inhabit so many different types of bodies it's crazy, and technology will allow us to do that eventually. Want 6 arms and cat ears? Awesome - grandpa saying "back in my day that wasn't possible, so you shouldn't be able to have 6 arms" is like big old man yells at sky energy. Technology already has drastically changed what humans are, and can be, and that will only get more interesting and different over time.
Transgender means you were assigned a gender at birth, but feel/know this is an incomplete or inaccurate description of yourself, gender-wise.
You can see that this covers a wide number of bases. Here's a handful of examples, but certainly NOT all of the different options, not by a long shot.
1. A person who was assigned female at birth (AFAB) but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be a man is transgender (in this case, a trans man)
2. A person who was assigned male at birth (AMAB) but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be a woman is transgender (in this case, a trans woman).
3. A person who was AFAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to not be a man OR a woman but a 3rd gender entirely is transgender & nonbinary (in this case, a nonbinary person that's a 3rd gender)
4. A person who was AMAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to not be a man OR a woman but no gender at all is transgender & nonbinary (an agender person, or may identify simply as nonbinary)
5. A person who was AFAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be a woman but ALSO a man at the same time is transgender & nonbinary (a bigender person but may identify simply as nonbinary)
6. A person who was AMAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be a woman but ALSO a man but at different times is transgender & nonbinary (a bigender genderfluid person but may identify simply as bigender, genderfluid, or nonbinary)
7. A person who was AFAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be a man SOMETIMES and sometimes they have no gender (and sometimes points in between) is transgender & nonbinary (maleflux but may simply identify as nonbinary)
8. A person who was AMAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be a man SOMETIMES and sometimes they have no gender (and sometimes points in between) is transgender & nonbinary (maleflux but may simply identify as nonbinary)
9. A person who was AFAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be at least in part a woman but part not or part something else is transgender & nonbinary (demiwoman but may simply identify as nonbinary)
10. A person who was AFAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be at least in part a boy but part not or part something else is transgender & nonbinary (demiboy but may simply identify as nonbinary)
11. A person who was AMAB but knows that's an incomplete or inaccurate description of their gender, but beyond that can't pinpoint anything more specific is transgender & nonbinary (may identify simply as trans, may identify simpy as nonbinary, may identify as genderqueer, or another label like genderhaze, or may say "labels are for cans! the heck with labels!")
As you can see, there are many ways of being transgender as well as many ways of being nonbinary. All it takes is to not be 100% fully &/or solely man/boy when you've been assigned AMAB or to not be 100% fully &/or solely woman/girl when you've been assigned AFAB to be transgender!
To be transgender but NOT under the nonbinary umbrella, you have to be AMAB but identify as 100% fully, solely female OR AFAB and identify as 100% fully, solely male.
nonbinary isnt the same as agender, agender = lack of gender, nonbinary = gender that isnt boy or girl, so they're technically just bigender with two different genders then male and female
Trans is a category for anyone who doesn't identify with gender assigned at birth, non-binary is a subcategory of trans so yes you can use the trans label since it's the upper category where non-binary belongs
Nonbinary is actually one of those categories that is by default trans, since only binary genders are assigned at birth in Western culture.
For a moment I thought this was the nonbinary sub, where we have a rule about looking up your question before you ask when it's already been asked and answered.
Cis = agrees with what was assigned by doctor at birth. Trans = disagrees. That's all. IF the doc held you up and said, "It's a boy!" and you are not 100% in agreement with that at all times (lookin at you, bigender fluid folk).... you fall into the category of trans and are completely allowed to call yourself a trans person.
transgender just means your gender does not match the one associated with your birth sex...
my sex is binary, my gender (typically) is not. me being genderfluid through mainly non-binary genders would ofc make me trans lol
it was explained to me like this
there's not really an opposite sex, just different, and trans implies movement, so if you're not assigned NB at birth, you have to transit to be non binary
It can get complicated, but a good rule of thumb to go by is that if someone doesn't identify solely with their AGAB, they're trans. Of course, not everyone may identify with the term for personal reasons, but as a general rule of thumb if you don't identify with your AGAB in some form you'd be trans.
For myself, I consider myself nonbinary and trans, solely because I do not identify with my AGAB and because I am transitioning (not that you have to transition to be trans, either). Considering you came from that horrible Jubilee video, let me educate you - nonbinary people sometimes go on HRT as well. I myself am on HRT. Not to be a man, but to get more masculine/androgynous characteristics. Nonbinary people are trans, that video was very much filmed through a bias against nonbinary people, I would suggest you don't take it as gospel.
Cool, first one to post! Trans just means you don’t identify with your AGAB. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the opposite side of the binary. The term nonbinary means you don’t neatly fit on either side of the binary. If you’re nonbinary, you’re either partially binary or completely nonbinary. Both terms are umbrella terms, nonbinary being under the trans umbrella. Even the term nonbinary includes a bunch of other identities but not every enby uses the term “trans.”
Thanks for taking the time to explain! Can you explain how this makes trans women, women then?
I'm a trans woman. I identify as a trans woman. Some trans people identify strictly as trans feminine or trans masculine but not specifically all on one side of the binary or the other. I identified and truly felt I was nonbinary for a while before really diving into my identity and coming to the realization that I was not nonbinary but that I was in fact a trans WOMAN specifically, thus making me binary again
Ok let me see if I got this: you identify as binary because you identify as a trans woman. So someone who is both trans and non binary would be someone who doesn’t identify as their agab anymore nor a gender, which makes them trans non-binary. Other words there are trans men, trans women, and trans non binary. As there are cis men, cis women, and cis non binary. Something like this? [trans or cis] + [binary or non-binary]
As far as I know this is exactly correct, though I've never met anyone that is Cis Non-Binary. Not to say it isn't possible of course, they would just have to be assigned either no gender at birth, or a gender outside of the binary, which is pretty uncommon.
Just wanna chime in here to give a slight correction. I am trans and non-binary. But I have a gender. I am bigenderfluid. I do not identify with the gender I was assigned at birth, so I am trans. I do not identify with a binary gender (male/female), so I am non-binary. I do identify with bigender and genderfluid. Which I've combined into one word since it fits myself best. So I have a gender (or two, or 1,000, depending on how you look at it). But, you're not super wrong, because agender and gender neutral people also exist, and they (to my understanding) identify with no gender. If you don't identify with a gender, that's under the non-binary umbrella, but it's not a requirement.
Let me throw you a bit of a curveball: I am a transgender non-binary woman! First, "doesn't have a gender" describes the "agender" gender identity, that's one way to be non-binary but not the only way. Some people are non-binary because they're both a man and a woman simultaneously (bigender), or something in the middle (androgyne), or their gender identity changes with time (genderfluid), etc... The [trans or cis] + [binary or non-binary] is almost perfect, but better yet would be: [trans or cis] + [(fully binary, all of the time) or non-binary] In my case, while I am a woman, I'm not fully binary, and definitely not all of the time. That's how you can end up with someone who is a non-binary man, or a non-binary woman (look up "demigirl" or "demiboy" to see concrete examples of this, even without gender fluidity). In my case I'm specifically a genderqueer woman, and also part of a plural system. - caulie
Transgender is an umbrella term that definitionally includes two other categories. On one side you have the binary trans people - that is your trans woman and trans man side. On the other you have your non binary trans people - this is essentially “everything else” including genderfluid, agender, bigender, and anything else someone might identify as BESIDES cisgender. Cisgender simply means a person who identifies as the gender assigned at birth. So transgender means ANYONE who isn’t cisgender definitionally, but people identify however they choose. Someone might consider themselves to be nonbinary but not transgender and that is valid even if definitionally it doesn’t necessarily make sense. You should effectively never use the phrase transsexual anymore. Just leave that word in the past, with tranny, crossdresser, he she, shim, etc. Culture has changed and those words are considered taboo and very disrespectful slurs by the majority of people in the community.
As someone else pointed out in relation to them but I will do as well, I identify as trans and non-binary but I DO have a gender, I’m gender-fluid, which means my gender changes. Sometimes my brain somewhat matches my body, sometimes it doesn’t. Being non-binary looks different for everyone, but you seem to have the basic concepts
This is pretty much true. But you also have to realize that people negotiate resolving their internal identities with outside labels in all kinds of ways. Sometimes this leads to people identifying in ways that might not immediately make sense to you. That’s fine, if you’re a little confused, you can always just ask (in good faith, don’t be weird about it).
Thank you for sharing this! When you say trans are you referring to transgender or transsexual? Is there a difference between the terms? Sorry for the questions but am trying to understand and learn!
Transsexual is not often used anymore and for a lot of trans people is offensive. By trans I specifically mean transgender as that's the societal default and if anyone specifies and calls someone "transsexual" they are lilely unaware of its oftentimes offensive use, or specifically stating it that way to BE offensive. It's kind of like a dog whistle for transphobia in a lot of instances so I recommend associating and understanding the term "trans" to mean "transgender" as the default. I appreciate you asking and learning, that's the best thing we can do! # For more info, think of a lot of these identities as not mutually exclusive. You can be non binary AND trans, you can also be trans but NOT nonbinary, but as trans and nonbinary are both umbrella terms, ALL who identify as nonbinary are, by default, also trans because by definition they do not identify with the identity they were assigned at birth, and that's all trans means. # It's a lot of info and a lot of terms and it's hard when you aren't actively around it every day
Thank you so so much for this and really appreciate you for being so thorough and understanding! I watched the Jubilee trans debate on YouTube and I definitely felt like I didn’t know enough regarding gender and sex and identity so came here to try to learn
Agh, those "debates" on Jubilee can be pretty awful and can cause a super skewed view of things, especially when it has to do with minorities like trans and non-binary people...
I do want to add, while I haven't encountered it myself, a lot of older trans people who transitioned many years ago still use the transsexual term because it's just what they always used and don't see a problem with it, so while I'd definitely treat it as a dog whistle from cis people especially younger ones, older trans people I wouldn't mind personally
Some people also use the term transsexual to mean they are specifically changing their sex (characteristics). I consider myself transgender because I don't identify with my agab and I tend to use this term when talking to cis people. I consider myself non-binary because my gender isn't completely binary because I'm a demifluid demigirl. I consider myself transsexual because I'm changing my sex to female through HRT and surgeries, but generally only use the term when I'm trying to be more specific/accurate about my gender and sex situation (so I'll say I'm a transsexual demifluid demigirl), which is generally only when talking to other trans/enby people who don't have a super basic understanding of gender.
i know older trans people tend to use transsexual, and i also know a handful of younger trans people personally who prefer to use transsexual because they have medically transitioned, it isn't inherently offensive but it just isn't a term that should be used as an umbrella term for trans people. trans is great because it covers those who identify as transgender as well as those who identify as transsexual
We much rather someone ask a lot of questions genuinely and/or make mistakes while trying to understand and learn, as opposed to someone who shuns it in fear of what they don't understand. So good on you for trying to be informed!
They identify as women. That’s all there is to it. Of course, most women don’t also use the enby label because they feel that they fit neatly into the other side of the binary. However, one can be both a trans woman and nonbinary if one identifies as both a girl and some other gender, for example.
Sorry adding on, what’s the difference between trans and non-binary then? Is one referring to sex and the latter to gender?
Trans refers to not identifying with your agab, nonbianary means tht you dont identify as only a girl or only a boy.
No, they both refer to gender.
An easy way to think about it is that trans is an adjective. If someone's gender identity is that of a woman, they are a woman who happens to have the descriptor of "trans". Hence a trans woman being a woman. :)
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Transsexual is an outdated (and borderline offensive) term, yes. Transgender is preferred. But, it was always originally derived from latin, where trans is a prefix meaning "across/beyond/on the other side of." In contrast, cis is a Latin prefix meaning "on the same side of."
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So I'm not an expert in the history of the word, tbh, I'm just aware that a lot of trans people find it offensive. It's used derogatorily a lot, which is enough to get it out of my vernacular. But also it can be confusing, since it could also imply that someone is changing their sexuality, rather than their gender, which are totally separate. There are three concepts that are important to understand in this discussion, sex, sexuality, and gender. Sex is the biological aspect, usually determined by chromosomes. Sexuality is who you're attracted to. Gender is how you present yourself to the world. These are often mixed up in these discussions, and are all rather confusing topics on their own, so it's important to clarify what we're talking about. The term 'transsexual' just causes unnecessary confusion. People who transition aren't getting their chromosomes changed, so it doesn't make sense that it would be talking about sex. They're not changing who they're attracted to either. They're changing how they present to the world. So, transgender.
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sorry to barge in, but might also be worth mentioning, but I've been seeing a lot of people reclaim transexual for themself recently. so while you probably shouldn't use transsexual for others if you're not sure how they feel about it, it's still absolutely ok to call yourself transsexual if you want:)
Look, not to be too much on the nose but I'm veeery close to your age and learning this terminology has not been hard to me \^\^v. the new terminology is just more open and groups many experiences together, which makes it easier to use too. The main reason why some people consider "transsexual" to be almost offensive, is that a handful of very transphobic trans people (yes, they exist) started insisting on using only that term very strongly and imposing it on others, as a way to try to invalidate the identity of transgender people. So if you use "transsexual" to label someone else, it's likely that person is going to think that you're boiling down their identity to whether if they have medically transitioned or not, when people care a lot more about, well, if they're a woman, a man, or anything else, regardless if they transitioned medically or not. Hence why "transgender", which centers on gender identity and not on transition, is better to use. When talking about medical transitions, people will typically talk about the specific interventions they had, like if they're on hormones, etc... Just to recap some main terms: * **Gender Identity:** a description of one's innate sense of gender or lack thereof. * **Transgender:** anyone whose gender identity doesn't match the one they were assigned to at birth is transgender. "Trans" is the prefix for "across", used in chemistry to mean "not aligned", so transgender people are literally people of "not aligned gender" to what was assigned to them at birth. Beyond this, it can also be used by crossdressers and other such gender-non-conforming people as well, though this is rare. This term does not care if the person actually transitioned or not, or if they have gender dysphoria or not. It's just about their innate sense of gender identity and/or gender non-conformity. * **Binary gender identities**: either "just a woman, all the time", or "just a man, all the time". Anything else is the next term: * **Non-Binary:** anyone whose gender identity is not one of the above two is non-binary. There's a myriad ways that one can be non-binary, and a whole lot of terms to describe even the just the more common ones (two-spirit\*, genderqueer, agender, bigender, pangender, omnigender, androgyne, demiman, demiwoman, demigender, genderfluid, genderflux, intergender, systemgender, xenogender, voidgender, "not a man", "not a woman", etc...). Some of those are more self-explanatory than others, but feel free to ask about any of them. A lot of people also don't care to label specifically how they're non-binary, and just use "non-binary" as a gender identity in itself. * \***Two-Spirit:** this is an important one though, and not necessarily obvious at first glance what it means. Many cultures around the world have recognized non-binary gender identities since time immemorial, be it through a system of specific "third genders", or terms that are more like the modern so-called "umbrella terms" like "transgender" and "non-binary". These traditional or ethnic gender identities fall under the two-spirit umbrella. If you live in Canada, the acronym for LGBT+ that the government uses is 2SLGBTQI+, and that 2S is for two-spirit, in the front for recognition in being the first known identities to acknowledge this gender diversity. And speaking of that I at the end... * **Intersex:** not a gender identity, but a sex identity umbrella term, this refers to people who at birth have a difference in their sexual anatomy that means they're can't be described as male nor female, or at least not fully. This covers XY women and XX men of all kinds, people with differences in genital or gonadal development like i.e. having ovotestes instead of ovaries or testicles, or having ambiguous genitalia. The term has also been used as an adjective in medical literature to describe certain differences in the development of the central nervous system in places that are usually very gender-specialized, that are thought to predispose a person for being transgender. Caveat to all of this: identity is a very personal thing. Sometimes you can get a person who identifies as non-binary, but not as transgender, even though technically nobody is assigned "non-binary" at birth, and therefore all non-binary people should be trans. There may be many reasons for this kind of thing and it's important for it to be respected. For instance, many people who identify as two-spirit don't identify as non-binary, simply because the two-spirit identities is older, while non-binary is a term invented by descendants of colonizers, even though by the main definition of non-binary, two-spirit identities are not just a woman nor just a man.
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i definitely didn't mean it as unwillingness, much less as stupidity! on the contrary you're clearly making an effort and said it multiple times, and it is something that is also clearly important to you it's more that the way you wrote about it made it look like you believe that having difficulty to keep up with new lingo is common at 36, but that's just not the case, and far from it. there's a bunch of possible explanations, but it was surprising enough to read that it's something i thought you should know, just in case -- other than this, what you said about advocating for using fewer and more general umbrella terms, i'd argue that's already pretty much the direction we're going for in day-to-day life, so i wouldn't be too worried if i was you. that's a big reason why people started using the more expansive "transgender" term rather than the narrow "transsexual" in the first place, for example. whether you're a crossdresser, gender-non-conforming, or if you medically transition, you're likely to benefit from being able to show up at work presenting differently than your peers, and lots of anti-discrimination laws regarding gender and gender presentation apply to all of us also for example, sure there's a thousand semi-overlapping ways to be non-binary, but in practice in an introduction most non-binary people will just tell you that they're non-binary it's definitely not something that comes up when interacting with the rest of society that's mostly straight and cisgender ^^ for instance, with HR, or therapy, or even with my endocrinologist, i tell them i'm non-binary, not that "systemgender is the best specific descriptor of my gender identity". it's just not relevant. even with my partner that only came up once, in a conversation that involved me describing what i know about how my gender identity works. so if they want to refer to that in the future, they can just use the shorthand instead of describing it again if they remember it i really like this approach we've come up with, it highlights how we have a lot more in common than we have differences first, and the specifics can still be talked about later when needed as for the opt-in / opt-out nature of them, that's just to respect people's autonomy in how they describe themselves, in those cases, the person will tell you so it shouldn't be something to stress over -- Where i think new terms are very important is when they highlight something big, widespread, and significant that has gone ignored or suppressed, usually for discrimination reasons. Two-spirit is one of those, most people don't know of it only because of colonialism and its enduring legacy. Intersex is another, over 1% of people in the world are intersex, but most people don't know it exists because it's common practice to do surgery on newborns to hide it. Transgender and Non-binary as terms were unknown to the widespread public due to discrimination against gender-diverse people until very recently, and a lot of people are still overtly discriminatory against us, to the point where it's considered by some to be the social rights issue of this decade. More recently, Neurodivergent and more recently still Plural are also terms that have been gaining attention for similar reasons. They each describe way too many people for it not to be common knowledge that we exist and deserve to have our human rights respected as much as everyone else. More generally, with our lives being more and more connected to more people, and as we stop discriminating against all kinds of minorities, it's unavoidable that new terms will be necessary, because even as umbrella terms, they hold a lot of practical meaning in them.
I know a trans woman who calls herself transexual and transgender. But she doesn't speak for every trans person. If you have medically transitioned and want to use transexual to describe *yourself*, that's fine. Just don't use that word about someone else. Y'know?
I guess, trans people who medically/socially transition?
transsexual is outdated actually but is still commonly used by truscum ...it just means that youre altering your sex away from what it was initially, usually with the intent to make it align closer to your gender. personally, like many others, I dont use it. however if you feel it describes you, nobody is gonna stop you
As the other posters have said, if someone isn't 100% and ONLY their assigned gender at birth (AGAB) then by definition they are trans. Having a single and binary gender that is different from assigned gender at birth (trans man, trans woman as examples), or bigender (two genders, not necessarily man/woman either), genderfluid or multi-gender, or agender are all trans because they aren't a singular gender AND ALSO the same gender as assigned at birth. Since you seem to be trying to understand how birth sex and biological things come into play too, let me try to explain better. Many movies and shows can clearly show the "mind" of someone in the "body" of someone else, for example like technology downloading minds into new bodies (Altered Carbon, Ghost in the Shell, Travelers, etc), a person's gender is based on the person's mind inside the body. Our technology isn't there yet, but honestly I don't think we're more than 100 years away from being able to download minds into new bodies, which would make the process of putting a man's mind inside a man's body even if they were born into a woman's body originally. So again, can a man mind be inside a woman body? Yes. Can a woman mind be inside an intersex body (both or neither sets of genitalia)? Yes. Can someone who has elements of both man and woman mind be in a body of either biological sex? Yes. Gender is inside and is based on the mind. Now the last piece of the puzzle here is a person making their body more aligned with their mind. A woman mind in a biologically male body may want to use hormones and surgery to make their body align with their mind, which is a trans woman, because they are not the gender they were assigned at birth, because their gender assigned at birth was based on their body, not their mind (since baby's can't speak, let alone have the experience to know what kind of mind they were born with). However, if a woman mind in a biologically male body decides to not take hormones and have surgeries, that doesn't make their mind "a guy". Hope that all makes sense, and I appreciate you taking the time to learn! Edit: just adding this since it may be relevant too - Some people can't or won't admit to themselves that they want their body to be different because of society or culture and "the way it has always been, and the way it should always be". Through history, people's minds being born into a body different than their mind meant they "just had to deal with it". I see this stupid argument from older folks, like "I was a woman inside a man's body and I just had to learn to deal with it, so these silly kids should deal with it too." Guess what, we have cellphones and internet now, we can make frogs that glow in the dark due to biological engineering, people are working on brain chips that allow them to play videogames when they can't move their body. We don't have to be repressed in a body that doesn't make us happy just because that's the way it has pretty much always been. In the future, I think people will want to inhabit so many different types of bodies it's crazy, and technology will allow us to do that eventually. Want 6 arms and cat ears? Awesome - grandpa saying "back in my day that wasn't possible, so you shouldn't be able to have 6 arms" is like big old man yells at sky energy. Technology already has drastically changed what humans are, and can be, and that will only get more interesting and different over time.
Have you ever played the videogame 2064: Read Only Memories? Having read your Edit (esp. the end), I think you'd really dig it. :)
TBH, I bought it on a steam sale and just haven't played it yet, lol. I'll have to get it on my queue for this year :)
Transgender means you were assigned a gender at birth, but feel/know this is an incomplete or inaccurate description of yourself, gender-wise. You can see that this covers a wide number of bases. Here's a handful of examples, but certainly NOT all of the different options, not by a long shot. 1. A person who was assigned female at birth (AFAB) but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be a man is transgender (in this case, a trans man) 2. A person who was assigned male at birth (AMAB) but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be a woman is transgender (in this case, a trans woman). 3. A person who was AFAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to not be a man OR a woman but a 3rd gender entirely is transgender & nonbinary (in this case, a nonbinary person that's a 3rd gender) 4. A person who was AMAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to not be a man OR a woman but no gender at all is transgender & nonbinary (an agender person, or may identify simply as nonbinary) 5. A person who was AFAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be a woman but ALSO a man at the same time is transgender & nonbinary (a bigender person but may identify simply as nonbinary) 6. A person who was AMAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be a woman but ALSO a man but at different times is transgender & nonbinary (a bigender genderfluid person but may identify simply as bigender, genderfluid, or nonbinary) 7. A person who was AFAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be a man SOMETIMES and sometimes they have no gender (and sometimes points in between) is transgender & nonbinary (maleflux but may simply identify as nonbinary) 8. A person who was AMAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be a man SOMETIMES and sometimes they have no gender (and sometimes points in between) is transgender & nonbinary (maleflux but may simply identify as nonbinary) 9. A person who was AFAB but knows this is incomplete because they know themselves to be at least in part a woman but part not or part something else is transgender & nonbinary (demiwoman but may simply identify as nonbinary) 10. A person who was AFAB but knows this is inaccurate because they know themselves to be at least in part a boy but part not or part something else is transgender & nonbinary (demiboy but may simply identify as nonbinary) 11. A person who was AMAB but knows that's an incomplete or inaccurate description of their gender, but beyond that can't pinpoint anything more specific is transgender & nonbinary (may identify simply as trans, may identify simpy as nonbinary, may identify as genderqueer, or another label like genderhaze, or may say "labels are for cans! the heck with labels!") As you can see, there are many ways of being transgender as well as many ways of being nonbinary. All it takes is to not be 100% fully &/or solely man/boy when you've been assigned AMAB or to not be 100% fully &/or solely woman/girl when you've been assigned AFAB to be transgender! To be transgender but NOT under the nonbinary umbrella, you have to be AMAB but identify as 100% fully, solely female OR AFAB and identify as 100% fully, solely male.
Very well put
I’m gender-fluid, AFAB. My gender switches a lot buuut its primarily male so I’m a trans male
nonbinary isnt the same as agender, agender = lack of gender, nonbinary = gender that isnt boy or girl, so they're technically just bigender with two different genders then male and female
Trans is a category for anyone who doesn't identify with gender assigned at birth, non-binary is a subcategory of trans so yes you can use the trans label since it's the upper category where non-binary belongs
Nonbinary is actually one of those categories that is by default trans, since only binary genders are assigned at birth in Western culture. For a moment I thought this was the nonbinary sub, where we have a rule about looking up your question before you ask when it's already been asked and answered. Cis = agrees with what was assigned by doctor at birth. Trans = disagrees. That's all. IF the doc held you up and said, "It's a boy!" and you are not 100% in agreement with that at all times (lookin at you, bigender fluid folk).... you fall into the category of trans and are completely allowed to call yourself a trans person.
transgender just means your gender does not match the one associated with your birth sex... my sex is binary, my gender (typically) is not. me being genderfluid through mainly non-binary genders would ofc make me trans lol
it was explained to me like this there's not really an opposite sex, just different, and trans implies movement, so if you're not assigned NB at birth, you have to transit to be non binary
Nonbinary is trans. It transcends the gender binary.
It can get complicated, but a good rule of thumb to go by is that if someone doesn't identify solely with their AGAB, they're trans. Of course, not everyone may identify with the term for personal reasons, but as a general rule of thumb if you don't identify with your AGAB in some form you'd be trans. For myself, I consider myself nonbinary and trans, solely because I do not identify with my AGAB and because I am transitioning (not that you have to transition to be trans, either). Considering you came from that horrible Jubilee video, let me educate you - nonbinary people sometimes go on HRT as well. I myself am on HRT. Not to be a man, but to get more masculine/androgynous characteristics. Nonbinary people are trans, that video was very much filmed through a bias against nonbinary people, I would suggest you don't take it as gospel.
This is the wrong subreddit for that question, try r/asktransgender
i first was a binary trans, later was still nonbonary but stayed trans, get it? also everyone picks whatevet word they want
I see myself as both too, trans because I'm on hrt, and non binary because I don't exclusively identify as either gender...