Trans-lations: a trans vocabulary lesson

June 1, 11:11 PMTransgender & Transsexual Issues ExaminerMatt Kailey

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You probably hated this in school, but now that you're reading about transgender issues, it might be helpful to have a brief vocabulary lesson to make sense of some of the posts as we move on.

I have a vocabulary list at home that contains no fewer than 45 words with definitions. I use it for education and training purposes. Don't worry — I'm not going to reproduce it here. But if you would like a copy, feel free to e-mail me and I will send it to you.

For now, we're going with the basics. I've included some of these in earlier posts, but I think it's helpful to have them all together, like a little dictionary. While not all trans people agree on some of the subtleties within the various definitions, the important thing is to have a jumping off point, because you are going to be jumping back here — right?

The basics:

Gender identity or gender: who you think you are — male, female, both, or neither.

Sex: your physical body, which usually reflects male or female characteristics.

Transgender(ed): a transgendered person is someone whose gender identity and physical sex characteristics do not agree, either all or part of the time. In other words, there is an incongruity between that person's gender identity and that person's physical sex.

Transsexual: a transsexual person is a transgendered person who makes physical changes to the body in order for the body to match the gender identity. This is called gender transition, gender reassignment, sex reassignment, or sex change — depends on who you ask. Not all transgendered people undergo a gender transition, so not all transgendered people are transsexual.

Trans: short for transgendered or transsexual or both.

FTM: female-to-male, or a person who was born female and has transitioned to male. Another term is transman.

MTF: male-to-female, or a person who was born male and has transitioned to female. Another term is transwoman.

Crossdresser: a (usually) heterosexual male who dresses in women's clothing frequently or occasionally, but generally has a male gender identity and does not need or want to go through gender reassignment.

Whew. You made it this far, and that's all we're going to deal with for now. There is a lot more to this trans business — more than we could possibly cover here. But this basic vocabulary lesson will help you with some of the posts you'll find here as we examine transgender issues in Denver.