T

T — The T in LGBT+ is for TRANSGENDER. It’s also short for TESTOSTERONE.

T-GIRL — Short for “Transgender Girl.”

TEA ROOMS — see: COTTAGING.

TERF/TERFS — Acronym for “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism/Feminists.”

TERF ideology is a specific strand of transphobia. It is a subset of feminism which actively denies the legitimacy of trans people and insists that gender is predetermined by biology. Some TERFs actively advocate for the eradication of trans women (and by extension, all trans people, though their focus is overwhelmingly on trans women). TERFs see trans women and AMAB trans people as a direct threat to cis women and cis womanhood. Although TERFs claim to be “radical feminists,” they’re closer to the right-wing than the left. They share several key ideological viewpoints with Nazis, and have adopted many of the same (modern Nazi) trolling and (historical and modern) rhetorical strategies, building on the fascist legacy of vilifying queer people.

TERFs have been a part of the discourse around trans people and feminism since the 1960s, when hormone replacement therapy became widely accessible for trans people (those who could afford it). TERFs saw trans women as stereotypes of femininity (a parody or mockery of womanhood), who reinforced sexist ideas about what it means to be a woman. Trans women were (and largely still are) forced to perform exaggerated femininity in order to access transition-related healthcare—only trans women who wear traditionally feminine clothes, are heterosexual, and behave in a stereotypically “ladylike,” respectable way were/are allowed to medically transition. This isn’t the fault of trans women; it’s the fault of psychiatric and medical establishments, which themselves are extremely sexist and transphobic. But instead of analyzing the systems which harm all women, TERFs have instead attacked (and continue to attack) trans women.

In 1979 Janice Raymond published Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She Male, which said: “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves… Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive.” She concluded that “transsexualism should be eradicated through denial of medical care.” In 1980 Raymond was hired to write a US government white paper for the National Center for Health Care Technology on transsexual healthcare. It was called “Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery” and was used as the basis to stop gender affirming surgery being covered by Medicare; private insurance companies followed suit. Transition-specific healthcare was only covered again in the US under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which required insurance companies to include it, beginning 1 January 2017.

TERFs deny that trans women are women, that trans men are men, and that non-binary people are non-binary. TERFs are biological essentialists: they equate genitals and internal reproductive organs with gender. They actively misgender trans people and claim to be “pro-science,” despite the fact that biologists have long since acknowledged that both biological sex and gender exist on spectrums. Amusingly, TERFs online often put “XX” in their usernames as a declaration of their chromosomes (as if the connection between womanhood and chromosomes is obvious and undeniable). There is a shared TERF and Nazi obsession with genetics and “scientific reality,” a positivist “truth” about bodies which is beyond critique. TERFs use “XX” to signify womanhood, like Nazis used “race science” to “prove” the superiority of whiteness. These views have been so thoroughly debunked that there is no need to explain them here. In all likelihood, most TERFs haven’t had their chromosomes checked, and most Nazis haven’t had their ancestry professionally traced (e.g., the “purity” of their whiteness confirmed). The point here isn’t that some TERFs aren’t XX and some Nazis aren’t “purely” white (an imaginary category); it’s that their bigotry rests on assumptions about biology and genetics which are scientifically lazy, as if you can “see” race and gender in a meaningful yet simplistic and binary way. TERFs and Nazis both suggest that people who are “genetically undesirable” should be sterilized, or worse.

Both TERFs and Nazis police and punish deviations from the majority identity groups—this begins by dehumanizing an entire class of people and denying them access to public space. Giving basic civil rights to a minority group (trans people) is framed as a threat to the dominant majority group. (TERFs are not a majority group, but they claim to represent and protect the views of a majority group which they belong to: cis people.) Identity is heavily policed, and the minority group is denied access to public life to “protect” the majority group. Opposition to violent rhetoric and policy is dubbed “silencing legitimate concerns”; hate speech is coded in dog whistles (TERFs use “gender critical,” “transgenderism,” “transwoman” instead of “trans woman”) and concern trolling (“protect our women and girls,” a line used by both TERFs and white supremacists). Biological essentialism is used to justify denial of rights based on social categories. Mental illness is vilified, and the minority group is coded as dangerously unstable.

TERFs fan the flames of moral panic on the far right—the same moral panic that vilifies many of them for being lesbians. TERF rhetorics are violent because they encourage a transphobic culture where trans people are denied agency and “rationality”; denied access to medical care, public life and support services; and ultimately denied personhood. Some TERFs directly encourage violence against trans women, including physical attacks and corrective rape.

TERFs declare that all trans people are pedophiles, carrying on a long tradition of categorizing proximity to queerness as child abuse. The minority group is painted not only as a threat that needs to be contained; it also needs to be exterminated in order to guarantee the safety of the majority. Today, this is most often weaponized with fear-mongering about sexual violence—trans women are labeled as inherently hyper-sexual, perverse, and a dangerous threat to (cis) women and girls.

The vilification of mental illness is another theme shared by TERFs and the far right. TERFs not only dismiss trans people as being mentally ill (thereby delegitimizing our genders) but they code us as dangerously unstable, using the pathologizing language of “sexual perversion” and linking transness to sexual violence, without evidence. They fan the flames of moral panic on the far right—the same moral panic that vilifies many TERFs for being lesbians. These are all rhetorically violent positions because they encourage a transphobic culture where trans people are denied agency and “rationality”; denied access to medical care, public life and support services; and ultimately denied personhood.

TERFs are only noticable online, and in the UK, where they are a small but loud and dedicated group. The same 100 or so people will tour the country to attend anti-trans events, which often get shut down or moved at the last minute due to public pressure to no-platform their hate speech. While they occasionally host anti-trans seminars and protest outside of trans events or events with trans speakers, the majority of their activism takes place online (under pseudonyms because their position is increasingly considered unacceptable).

One notable counterexample was London’s 2018 Pride parade, where a handful of TERFs hijacked the parade and were allowed to lead it with transphobic and transmisogynistic banners. (Though Pride London [the corporation] failed to adequately deescalate or later address the TERF protest, subsequent UK Pride marches that year were often led with explicitly trans-inclusive banners.) Outwith the UK, trans rights are not positioned as oppositional to feminism.

Modern TERFs are defined as much by their ideology as their relationship to trolling. Their praxis is doxxing, harassing, outing, lurking, publishing pre-transition photos of trans women, creating fake accounts, creating accounts whose sole purpose is to index trans accounts and harass them, sabotaging surveys about trans people, and generally vying for space in online forums, especially on Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, and Mumsnet. Rather than do anything meaningful to help cis women and girls, TERFs essentially terrorize trans women and try to force them out of physical and digital spaces. There are some explicit connections between UK TERFs and white nationalists on Twitter: mutually following each other, retweeting each other, and discussing attending each other’s events (e.g., Women’s Space UK events and UKIP). TERFs are only able to push legislation when their goals align with the goals of Nazis, fascists, and other white supremacists (e.g., the Bathroom Bills, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in the US).

TERFs insist that it is their “free speech” right to be given a platform to espouse their ideology, whilst actually silencing the free speech rights of the minority group. Being granted an audience (e.g. on a university campus or in the national press) is neither a right nor an aspect of free speech. However, facing expulsion for starting a petition to no-platform a hate group (as is currently the case with a trans student at the University of Bristol), is a violation of free speech rights. TERFs are very vocal about how “silenced” they are by being no-platformed, despite several high-profile TERFs enjoying regular columns in international newspapers. In the UK, TERFs hold influential cultural positions within the media, community organizing, NGOs, government, and academia; the same cannot be said for trans people.

TERFs position themselves as victims of a powerful “trans lobby” which threatens to “replace” them, when in fact they have heaps of structural power over the groups they claim to be threatened by. The victim narrative is particularly noteworthy: TERFs claim to be victims of silencing and violence, with no attention paid to how their ideologies structurally silence and incite violence against marginalized people. For example, if a trans person allegedly punches a TERF at a counter-protest, the focus is then on the legitimacy of punching as a tactic (even in self-defense, assuming the punch actually happened). Centrists and fair-weather “allies” are quick to pick up on this narrative, claiming a middle ground of non-violence, not realizing that they’re legitimizing an extremely violent ideology. This takes the heat off TERFs’ tactics and their ideology, which are of course both extremely violent and about protecting abstract ideas of womanhood at the expense of actual living people who are not threats in the first place. Their ideology and tactics are indefensible, so they’d rather we talk about the merits and drawbacks of counter-tactics, like punching oppressors. The bullying is overlooked and the focus is on the victims’ response to bullying. Victims are scrutinized for being less than perfect, but the bullies are not under any such scrutiny. Instead of playing into their victim narratives, we should stay focused on their tactics and goals: to deny trans people healthcare (trans-specific and otherwise), to bar us from public space, to harass us, and to terrorize us.

TERF arguments are predicated on the false idea of a monolithic womanhood that trans women aren’t women because they don’t “live as” women and they have a “male experience.” But what is a “female experience”? The experience TERFs refer to is white, cis, and middle-class; the experience of a citizen, of people who have access to respectability, and in the UK, access to national media platforms. There is no universal experience of womanhood; suggestions otherwise mimic racist rhetoric which positions the experience of whiteness as “default” and “authentic” and “normal” while people of color are dehumanized and their experiences are “special interest.” Many TERFs hate butch cis women for “role-playing” masculinity, but also hate very feminine women for “performing” for the male gaze.

Lesbian TERFs exclude trans women from their spaces and their analyses of feminism, lesbianism, and womanhood. Lesbian TERFs sometimes exclude trans men as gender traitors; others fetishize them as butches who need saving from being “transed,” erasing and ignoring their genders as men. TERFs sometimes trawl trans message boards looking for young trans men to groom, feeding into insecurities that AFAB trans people have about abandoning womanhood and being bad feminists.

TERFs are terrified that trans women are men seeking not only to “co-opt” the struggles of women, but to gain access to women’s spaces and, most terrifying of all, to deceive and fuck them as lesbians. This is essentially gay panic; they are absolutely horrified at the possibility of being attracted to a trans woman because it would undermine their status as the bastion of lesbian separatist feminists, being attracted to someone they incorrectly consider a “man.”

TERFs say that the “trans lobby” refuses to acknowledge the differences between trans women and cis women, which is ironic because trans people are quick to talk about how being trans greatly affects our experiences of patriarchy, sexism, and gender. Trans people are acutely aware of the biological differences between us and cis people; that’s a huge part of why many of us medically transition. Trans people aren’t trying to “erase” biological differences, we’re trying to secure our basic rights, and highlight shared struggles when we talk about activism and justice. Trans people not only belong in feminism; we are leading it.

TESTOSTERONE (T) — A hormone used by some trans people in hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to alleviate dysphoria, to masculinize, and/or to de-feminize the body. It is used by some trans men and other trans people who were assigned female at birth.

The most significant effect of taking testosterone is an increased sense of confidence and a stronger, more comfortable sense of self.

The reversible physical effects of testosterone, which require ongoing treatment to maintain, include: redistribution of body fat to a more “masculine” pattern, including reduction in breast size; increased muscle retention; change in body odor; coarser skin; increased red blood cell count; and cessation of menstruation.

The irreversible effects of testosterone, which start to manifest after about three months of treatment, include: increased body hair; facial hair growth; receding hairline and possible hair loss; enlargement of the clitoris; thickening of the vocal cords and a “drop” in the voice; growth of an Adam’s apple; and growth spurt in height, if taken before an estrogen-dominant puberty.

There are some short-term effects which are similar to going through puberty: change in mood, energy levels, and appetite; acne; and an increased sex drive. These subside within a few months, though the acne can be stubborn.

Autistic people taking testosterone also report noticing the “symptoms” of their autism more, which is probably because our diagnosis criteria is geared toward boys and men rather than accounting equally for women and girls and non-binary people.

There are myths that taking testosterone, or having testosterone as your dominant hormone (like many trans women do), makes you angry, aggressive, and violent. This is unsubstantiated; HRT does affect your mood, like going through puberty, but it does not dramatically change your personality.

Trans people who take testosterone are given a dosage to mimic the hormone levels of cis men; they do not have higher testosterone levels than cis men.

TG — Short for TRANSGENDER in certain online spaces, especially dating apps and personals.

THEY/THEM — A pronoun, which does not imply or assign gender to its subject.

They/them pronouns are used by lots of people, for different reasons.

It’s best practice to use they/them for people whose pronouns you don’t know (which is everyone who hasn’t told you their pronouns). However, it’s insulting to continue to use they/them for someone once they’ve told you that they use different pronouns.

They called

I smiled at them

Their skin glowed

That’s theirs

They love themselves

They love themself

Despite what transphobic pedants claim, they/them have been in recorded and regular use as a singular third-person pronoun since at least the 14th century.

People complain that they/them is confusing since it can be both singular and plural, but it’s much less clunky than saying “he or she,” and respecting people’s pronouns is worth the minor effort.

THIRD GENDER — A gender category which is outside of the man/woman gender binary.

Third gender is often employed as a catch-all term for anyone whose gender is neither man nor woman. It can describe anyone who is non-binary, gender fluid, agender, demi-boy, demi-girl, and any non-Western non-binary genders like hijra, Two-Spirit, or fa’afafine. In some places, third genders are given the gender marker X instead of the male M or female F; but in most places, there is no legal recognition of third genders.

Because it is such a broad category, third gender is not typically used by individuals to describe their specific experience of gender, and it should not be applied to people in place of other words that they choose themselves.

see also: NON-BINARY; GENDER BINARY; TRANSGENDER; X

THON — An invented gender neutral singular third-person pronoun, never recorded in actual use.

Thon is thought to be a contraction of “that one,” coined in 1858 by attorney and composer Charles Crozat Converse. It was first included in a dictionary in 1903, in the Funk & Wagnalls Supplement to a Standard Dictionary of the English Language. It was included in several other dictionaries in the 20th century, and remains a subject of academic curiosity, but has never caught on in verbal language.

Some people complain about “they/them” being confusing since it is both singular and plural, but thon is a testament to how difficult it is to introduce new words into language, especially commonly used words like pronouns.

TMA — Acronym for TRANSMISOGYNY AFFECTED.

TME — Acronym for TRANSMISOGYNY EXEMPT.

TOKEN, TOKENIZE — Token means a singular example of “diversity” or “inclusion” in a sea of hegemony and privilege. Tokenize means to only include in order to demonstrate inclusivity.

To be tokenized is to be objectified so as to prove someone’s progressiveness (e.g. the token Black friend, token gay, token woman). It flattens marginalized identities, as if all people with that marginalization are the same, and reduces the token’s complexity as a person to a stereotype of their marginalized identity.

People can’t be tokenized for their privileged identities; it doesn’t work in reverse. There is no “token white person” in a group of people of color, or a token cis person in a group of trans people. There might be jokes made about that, but the single person with the structural power is not being marginalized by being a “minority” in that circumstance.

see also: FETISHIZE; OPPRESSION; VIOLENCE

TOMBOY — Socially acceptable gender deviance in girls. It is usually expected that they will grow out of it.

The concept of the tomboy is currently widely used in debates to suggest that trans boys should not be allowed to take hormone blockers because they’re “just tomboys.” This is a conflation of gender expression with gender identity. Rather than declare all gender-variant assigned female at birth children are “tomboys,” we’d do better to ask them if they feel like they’re girls, or boys, or neither. Do they want to be a boy because they want to do things they think girls can’t do, or because they feel like they’re a boy? In either case, hormone blockers are a safe option for gender-questioning children since they essentially postpone puberty while the children decide what they want.

Some queer women call themselves tomboys.

The term emerged in the 1550s to mean “rude, boisterous boy”; its opposite was “tomrig,” for “rude, wild girl.” The first recorded use meaning “wild, romping girl, girl who acts like a spirited boy” is from the 1590s.

see also: TRANSGENDER; OTHER

TRANS* — Sometimes “trans” is given an asterisk in order to be “more inclusive.” This is based on the misguided belief that “trans” alone is binary and does not already include non-binary people. The * is also sometimes used to include people who are not trans, but are broadly gender variant or gender non-conforming, such as cross-dressers and drag performers.

TRANS-EXCLUSIONARY RADICAL FEMINIST — see: TERF.

TRANSFEMININE, TRANS FEMME — Someone who is transgender and assigned male at birth.

All trans women could describe themselves as transfeminine or trans femmes, but not all transfeminine people and trans femmes would choose to describe themselves as women.

The language is clunky, because not all transfeminine people are feminine or femme; but it describes a shared experience (and importantly, shared violence and oppressions) of transness when assigned male at birth. Common features of this experience include hyper-visibility and hyper-sexualization, frustration with cis people, and physical and sexual violence.

Many individual trans people will describe themselves as transfeminine, but when referencing all trans people who could be described as transfeminine, the term “transmisogyny affected” is often more appropriate.

TRANSFEMINISM — Feminism which centers trans women, and a trans/queer understanding of gender, in its politics.

Transfeminism stands in contrast to trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who are neither radical nor feminist.

Transfeminism explicitly acknowledges that trans women are women, and that they face particular struggles under patriarchy due to their trans status.

Feminism should center the most marginalized (poor trans women of color), rather than the most privileged (middle-class white cishet women); not to create an “oppression Olympics,” but to make a meaningful effort to focus on the people who are most disenfranchised, and suffer the most violence, under patriarchy.

see also: FEMINISM; TERF; PATRIARCHY; TRANSMISOGYNY

TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE — A community-based alternative to the criminal justice system which prioritizes safety and accountability rather than isolation, punishment, and perpetuating systemic and state violence.

Transformative justice seeks to acknowledge and address harm, interrupt the perpetuation of harm caused, and empower both the victim and the perpetrator to heal.

Transformative justice is not “restorative” or “reparative” justice, because we can’t restore things to a state where harm was not caused, and we can’t simply “fix” it; instead we must try to transform the situation. One key goal of transformative justice is harm reduction. Other goals include: empowering survivors by centering them and their goals, giving them agency, and prioritizing their safety; accountability and transformation for the person(s) who have caused harm; community action, accountability, and healing; and transformation of the social conditions which perpetuate violence.

Criminal justice focuses on punishment and exclusion, and is rooted in white supremacy, classism, and ableism. The criminal justice system—which includes the legislator, state surveillance, police, courts, prisons, immigration control, and detention centers—purports to solve violence through fear of consequences, which are extreme: isolation, the social stigma of being a prisoner, and the loss of freedom. Navigating the criminal justice system requires resources like time, money, knowledge, respectability, support, and collaboration. The people most likely to be targeted by it are also most likely to lack these resources.

Transformative justice is an important part of activism and community healing for trans and queer people because we are disproportionately harmed and not helped by the criminal justice system.

In practice, transformative justice is survivor-centered. The survivor is assumed to be telling the truth, and is supported and believed, rather than needing to prove their status as a survivor. The goals of the survivor are centered, as is their safety.

This is all in contrast to the criminal justice system, which doesn’t believe survivors, doesn’t center their goals, and forces them to reify trauma by engaging with doubtful police and juries. On top of disregarding their mental health, the criminal justice system also puts survivors’ safety at risk because it does not actively protect them—naming an abuser is a risky act, and abusers and their apologists retaliate. Survivors are also more likely to be criminalized themselves if they engage with the criminal justice system. They are liable to lose custody of their children, be prosecuted for defending themselves against their abusers, be imprisoned if they have unpaid debts, be charged with “harassing” their abusers in naming them, and be detained and deported if they have unstable immigration status. State violence is, to many survivors, more of a threat than violence from an abuser. State forms of violence are racialized; Black women are especially likely to be failed by the criminal justice system.

Abusers are everywhere: in the police, in the juries, in the judges’ chambers. The criminal justice system protects them. The criminal justice system uses many of the same tactics that the abusers use: controlling movement and how time is spent; isolation from community; surveillance of communications; control through power and fear; and verbal, physical, and sexual harassment from guards. Prisons also abuse prisoners through forced sterilization of inmates, solitary confinement, and denial of medical care. Transformative justice seeks to interrupt rather than perpetuate cycles of abuse, in tandem with movements seeking to abolish the criminal justice and immigration systems.

Abolition includes dismantling prisons and detention centers, and getting rid of police, deportation, and state surveillance, while simultaneously building institutions which ensure actual safety and justice. The only reforms to the current system that are welcome are ones which diminish the reach of the state and private institutions, rather than expand them. We want to reduce the number of people incarcerated.

Transformative justice is also strongly opposed to the disposability attitude of the prison system, and the idea that people should be scared into good behavior under threat of punishment, or that it is acceptable to exile and lock people in cages for having made mistakes. Putting people in prison does not keep “good” people safe and punish “bad” people; it perpetuates state violence and provides no meaningful safety for survivors.

What do we do with violent criminals who are “dangers to society”? We need to examine our assumptions about who is considered a violent criminal and whose violence is socially sanctioned (e.g., military generals and arms dealers). Next we must consider if locking up violent people genuinely prevents future violence, by them or anyone else. Aside from being inherently inhumane, is incarceration an effective strategy compared to, say, preventative intervention for people at risk of being violent? I have yet to find evidence that incarceration works effectively as a deterrent, a punishment, a process of rehabilitation, or a method of keeping vulnerable people safe.

Transformative justice only works in a community setting where relationships are fostered and built on mutual aid and solidarity. It also only works if the perpetrator is open to the process, and willing to engage with the fact that they’ve hurt someone and may be in the wrong.

Everyone is capable of making mistakes and causing harm. There is no good/evil, safe/dangerous dichotomy. Recognizing this helps us see the systemic conditions which cause harm and encourage violence (rape culture) and hopefully will inspire us to collective solutions which do not rely on purity politics.

The responsibility of the harm caused is primarily with the person who caused harm, and secondarily with the community for re/producing the conditions under which harm is caused; it is never with the victim/survivor. Too often the work of accountability falls on the victim/survivor and mimics the criminal justice system: if there’s no survivor to bear witness, there’s no crime. How do we center the survivor’s needs without necessarily placing them at the center of an accountability process (unless they want to be involved at that level)?

Accountability processes fail, and often. To have any chance at succeeding, they need to be collective rather than individualized processes. They cannot rest on a single individual to arbitrate who is right and who is wrong.

We should try to create an environment where it’s less stressful for survivors to name harm caused to them: right now, naming the problem makes you the problem (Sara Ahmed). We also need to make it easier for perpetrators to acknowledge and address the harm they caused. Regardless of how a court would interpret the evidence, perpetrators should be held accountable for their actions and their lack of communication or sensitivity, and the priority should be making sure that harm caused is reduced, and that it doesn’t happen again.

Feminist pro-survivor language is often weaponized against people; the person with the most social capital, sometimes gained through knowing the most political vocabulary or being most active in the discourse, wields power, which can be abused.

Assaulters are not doomed by default. Being called out (told you’ve made a mistake) or called in (invited to examine your problematic behavior, in good faith) is a gift. If you have hurt someone, the first step in transformative justice is to recognize that you hurt them, and to apologize. Ask them how they feel, and how they felt, and what they want or need going forward in order to reclaim their agency and feel empowered. Respect these needs, and ask for help if you need it. Get support from your friends to help you be accountable for your actions.

Thank the person you hurt for calling you out. This is a chance for you to grow as a person.

Yes, it’s lots of work to empathize with perpetrators, and to hold them accountable, to work through their feelings of defensiveness and guilt with them, to support survivors/victims. Exclusion is a last resort, because it pushes the problem elsewhere. But it still happens, often not because the survivor or community wants to exile someone but because they don’t have the resources to engage in a properly done accountability process.

Safety is a process you create through relationships, not a stable state of being. Safety should prioritize the people for whom society is unsafe: survivors, people of color, trans people, women and non-binary people, disabled people, neurodivergent people.

Community leaders should be held to higher standards, not be given more leeway. They benefit from a position of power (whether it is purely social, or institutional as well) and have increased access to resources, and are treated as authority figures. They have more power to control the narrative around events and to look “reasonable” or “right” or “sane” if there is a dispute or accusation made against them. They also have to deal with more scrutiny and pettiness, but their position of power is chosen and they could always relinquish it, step back. To seek status within a radical community is to profit from the unnamed, unappreciated work of marginalized people before you. Community leaders then have a responsibility to be more careful, and to treat others with more care.

This work falls disproportionately on survivors of violence, on women and non-binary people, and on people of color. It is care work; it is emotional labor; it is very tiring.

TRANSGENDER — An adjective to describe someone who does not unambiguously identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Transgender is an umbrella term which includes binary trans men and trans women, and non-binary people including gender fluid and genderqueer people, agender people, and anyone else who does not identify as (and only as) the gender they were assigned at birth. Transgender is often shortened to “trans.”

Transgender is often associated with gender dysphoria and body dysphoria, but these are not “required” symptoms to be trans; neither is transition.

Not everyone who falls into this definition calls themselves trans, and it should not be coercively applied to anyone. “Transgender” as a label includes non-binary people (which is itself an umbrella term that includes any gender which isn’t strictly and consistently either “man” or “woman”). However, lots of non-binary people feel that they aren’t trans even though they aren’t cis either. Because “transgender” is associated with transition (social or medical) and dysphoria, there are some people are who aren’t cisgender but don’t feel comfortable claiming a transgender identity. Claiming transness is very political and subversive and some non-binary people are weary of “appropriating” that struggle when they have relative comfort (e.g., if they don’t need to fight for access to trans healthcare, or they are comfortable enough being gendered as the gender they were assigned at birth even if it’s not always quite right). However, I would posit that part of the political project of transgender is dismantling cisness, and that calling yourself “trans” does not materially redirect vital resources away from people who are “more trans.”

Some people who have transitioned see themselves as no longer transgender, but having a transgender history.

Trans people may change their names, their pronouns, and/or their gender expressions to better reflect their genders. Their trans status is not indicative of anything regarding their bodies: many trans people are not interested in medical intervention.

The assertion that trans people “reinforce gender norms” or “reinforce the gender binary” is misguided and harmful. Trans people are often forced to perform exaggerated gender norms in order to be recognized as their gender. Being seen “as” your gender is not only a matter of comfort and preference but a matter of safety when navigating public space or intimate relationships. The suggestion that trans people should “expand” the roles of their gender assigned at birth places the burden with us instead of with cis people, and completely misunderstands the feeling of dysphoria.

Transness is often reduced to either an illusion of choice, or the “born this way,” “trapped in the wrong body” narrative. Both are overly simplistic and neither is right.

Trans women are not very gay effeminate men; trans men are not very gay butch women. There is an undeniable overlap in history, and sometimes gender expression, between these groups but they are not the same.

Trans women are women; trans men are men. It’s up to individuals to define their narratives, but a common one is: “I’m assigned female at birth and I want to be a man.” Current politics say, condescendingly, “No, you already are a man.” However, that’s dysphoria: they may not feel like a man until they have hormone replacement therapy, or until they pass and society treats them like a man. We don’t transition for abstract, academic reasons, but because we want, we desire, we feel, and we cannot stop wanting.

There is no requirement to totally abandon your “old” self in order to be trans. You can carry contradiction in you. You are allowed to grieve your old self whilst becoming your new self, the same way we are allowed to grieve childhood as we grow into adults.

Transness is constructed not only in opposition to cisness, but through community, which is built on shared experiences of gender, dysphoria, trying to access healthcare and resources (changing gender markers, names, coming out, gendered clothing, having sex in ways which feel good, bathrooms). Some people who don’t feel like a part of that community feel they aren’t trans, even though they might fit the “definition” of transgender. We can recognize that there is a scale of dysphoria or gendered aggression people receive, while not gatekeeping or policing the boundaries of “trans” to exclude people who aren’t cis. Claiming a trans identity is still very much an act of subversion. It is a challenge to cisheteronormative patriarchy and its related oppressive structures.

While people in non-Western cultures, or different time periods, could legitimately describe themselves as transgender by today’s definitions, it’s important to respect their autonomy and not coercively describe anyone as transgender.

Colonialism was (and remains) extremely damaging and contributed to erasure and stigma about non-cis genders, and culturally specific terms for people’s genders should be respected, such as hijra, Two-Spirit (and the particular terms within different tribes), and il femminiello.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, veterans of the Stonewall riots and founders of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), described themselves as transvestites rather than transgender, and we would be remiss to erase the complicated histories of these words and, more importantly, the autonomy of the subjects we’re describing, by insisting that we call them “transgender.”

Transgender as an umbrella term has great utility; but by flattening out all gender non-conformity under a single word, especially without taking into account other marginalizations or privileged positions that an individual holds, the struggles and experiences of women like Johnson and Rivera are co-opted by the most privileged within the transgender community (if such a community can be said to exist). Johnson and Rivera were both not only gender variant, but impoverished women of color who refused to assimilate into what we’d today call settler-colonialist homonormativity.

There is no wrong way to be trans. Some trans people have body dysphoria, some don’t; some see transness as mental illness or disability, many don’t. Medicalization is a path to legitimacy but we shouldn’t need that. While some of the language to describe ourselves is new, transgender people have always existed.

see also: NON-BINARY; TERF; TRANS HEALTHCARE; GENDER

TRANSGENDERISM — Allegedly the ideology of transgender people, who supposedly seek to propagate that ideology at the expense of cis women. It is not really a word.

TERFs and other transphobes suggest that the existence of trans people is a matter of modern ideology, rather than a historical and cross-cultural fact. Trans activism is framed as ideology which threatens (cis) women’s rights, rather than a struggle for civil rights such as access to healthcare and public space, protection from discrimination under the law, and self-determination and bodily autonomy.

see also: TERF; GENDER CRITICAL; TRANSPHOBIA

TRANS HEALTHCARE — Trans-specific medical intervention for medical aspects of transition. Treatment which mitigates gender dysphoria. All healthcare which trans people need (e.g., non-trans specific things).

Trans-specific healthcare includes:

• Hormone replacement therapy

• Chest reconstruction or augmentation

• Tracheal shave

• Facial feminization surgery

• Laser hair removal

• Vocal surgery

• Genital reconstruction surgery (a broad range of surgeries)

• Hysterectomy (removal of the uterus)

• Vaginectomy (removal of the vagina)

• Oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries)

Other treatment (which should broadly be considered part of trans healthcare, because it mitigates gender dysphoria) includes:

• Change of legal name

• Change of gender marker on identification documents

• Counseling and other mental healthcare

• Voice therapy

• Reproductive healthcare: fertility, gamete storage, family planning, abortion, gynecological exams, prostate exams, trans-inclusive safer sex resources

• Use of prosthetics, wigs, bras, and binders

According to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the leading international body on best practice regarding trans people:

Neither genital appearance nor reconstruction is required for social gender recognition, and so no surgery should be a prerequisite for identity document or record changes; changes to documentation so that identity documents reflect the individual’s current lived expression and experience are crucial aids to social functioning, and can be a necessary component of the social transition and/or pre-surgical process. Delay of document changes may have a deleterious impact on a patient’s social integration and personal safety.

WPATH also recognize that not every patient will require the same treatment.

Transness is pathologized as a mental illness in the DSM-5 under gender dysphoria. This classification is embraced by some trans activists because it gives us social and political legitimacy regarding medical transition; it’s also embraced by some individual trans people who feel that their transness is disabling in a cisnormative society, or that the medicalized narrative of gender dysphoria matches their experience. In the US, healthcare is often only covered by insurance if it is deemed a “medical necessity”: in accordance with standard medical practice, clinically appropriate, and not primarily for the patients’ convenience. In order for trans healthcare to be considered a medical necessity, gender dysphoria must then be pathologized and classified as an illness or disease.

WPATH notes: “These medical procedures and treatment protocols are not experimental: decades of both clinical experience and medical research show they are essential to achieving well-being for the transsexual patient.” Hormone replacement therapy and gender affirming surgeries are the only treatments which have been empirically proven to effectively treat gender dysphoria in large-scale clinical studies.

The pathologization is criticized because it positions transness as something undesirable to be cured, rather than noting transness as a natural reflection of human diversity and seeking to change the bigotry of society. While many trans activists want gender dysphoria depathologized (because it will reduce stigma, and allow people to self-declare their genders without an “expert” medical or psychiatric opinion), we also recognize that it’s currently politically necessary for access to healthcare that it be considered a disease.

There is unfair expectation that trans patients must be 100% sure of their pursuit of hormone replacement therapy or surgery—this burden of certainty is not placed on cis people regarding their genders. This assumes that being 100% sure is possible: that anyone can ever truly know themselves in an objective way. The self is a constant work in progress. Instead, medical professionals should focus on what the goal of healthcare is: to alleviate dysphoria, to be more comfortable in our bodies, to change how we look, to change the ways we are perceived, to explore our bodies and gender(s). It’s also imperative to remember that transitioning isn’t an on/off switch; there are many aspects of transition, many of them reversible, and we should be free to pick and choose which ones suit us.

TRANSITION — A process (social and/or medical) by which a trans person changes their life or body to better reflect their gender.

There are multiple trans trajectories, none of which are more valid than the others.

Medical transition includes (but does not necessitate): hormone replacement therapy, chest surgery, genital reassignment surgery, tracheal shave, facial feminization surgery, laser hair removal, and vocal surgery.

Other aspects of medical transition which do not involve surgery or procedures include: binding, using packers, using padded bras, and tucking. Access to these resources must be considered as important as access to hormones and gender-related surgeries.

Medical transition for trans people with dysphoria, who want it, is deemed medically necessary by trans activists and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the leading international organization on trans health. It is not cosmetic or optional.

Social transition might include changing name (legally and in daily life), changing pronouns, changing gender marker on documents, changing wardrobe and physical appearance, altering body language, using different gender-segregated spaces, and coming out.

None of the above is required to be “really” trans. Trans people may or may not pursue social or medical transition, and the procedures or changes they make will vary depending on their dysphoria, access to healthcare, and personal preferences.

Transition is a becoming. We are constantly producing and reproducing ourselves as subjects. There is no linear transition, or a finite end. There is always uncertainty about the future. The becoming is a process, a constant unknowing but doing it anyway. It’s okay not to know.

Transition is not necessarily about hating the body. Sometimes we bond with the body even though it feels alien, and we grieve the loss we feel through changing it, whilst also deciding that we want that change (sometimes desperately needing it).

TRANSITION REGRET — The false notion that most trans people regret medically transitioning.

The phrase “transition regret” flattens out medical transition to a single moment, when it’s actually a plurality of medical procedures and interventions. In the case of hormone replacement therapy, transition can be ongoing throughout the trans person’s entire life.

Nearly every study done on the subject puts transition regret (for top or bottom surgery) at less than 5%, and most studies place it between 2% and 4%.

Some people who have mild or no physical gender dysphoria, but who want to be seen as a different gender from the one they were assigned at birth, decide that the effort of getting people around them to use different pronouns or names is too exasperating and they “revert” back to the gender they were assigned at birth.

This is a failure of society, not of them as trans people.

Transition regret is a questionable use of the word “regret.” “Detransitioners” are assumed to have transition regret, but often don’t. Some detransitioners regret their transition, but many desist just to delay it until a better time in their life; some never re-transition but see their transition as an exploration of themselves which they don’t regret.

In the UK, 5% of trans people who have medically transitioned in some way report having lowered mental health since before they transitioned: but the reasons they give are loss of family and friends, lack of appropriate support, difficulties finding employment, and other reasons which are “not directly related” to having transitioned. Yet, they are likely to be considered “transition regretters.”

The hysteria around transitioning allows no room for trans people to express legitimate fear, anxiety, and concern over their transitions, or anything other than positive feelings about having transitioned, for fear of fueling anti-trans narratives.

Rather than regret, the overwhelming majority of trans people report gender euphoria as the result of transitioning, medically or otherwise.

All surgeries pose risk of regret, but trans-specific surgeries have much lower regret rates than other surgeries: for example, 65% of cis people who get cosmetic surgery regret it. The best practice is to make sure that trans patients can give informed consent, and are supported whether or not they want to medically transition.

TRANS MAN — A man who is transgender. A man who was assigned female at birth.

Trans men are men and are male. Some trans men are also non-binary.

Trans men can have any sexuality or none. Trans men may use any pronouns, and their pronouns do not necessarily indicate anything about their gender.

Note that “trans” here is a modifier word; we do not say “transman.”

TRANSMAN — An incorrect spelling of trans man; “trans” is a modifying adjective.

see also: HOMONATIONALISM; PINKWASHING

TRANSMISANDRY — The specific transphobia and gendered types of violence faced by gender non-conforming masculine or butch trans people who were “Assigned Female At Birth (AFAB).”

This transphobia is created from the assumption that trans men are “really” women, either because they’re read as women or because their trans status is known and disrespected.

Transmisandry is a particularly contentious term because it implies that AFAB trans people face oppression on the basis of their maleness or masculinity. I’m asserting that—because all trans genders are inherently gender non-conforming—they do face a gendered oppression. There is no “butch privilege” for masculine, gender non-conforming people; instead they face what I’m calling transmisandrist violence. However, I’m not suggesting that misandry is an axis of oppression faced by cis people.

Trans men face a different kind of transphobia than trans women and transfeminine people, and the current lexicon fails to accurately name this. Trans men and transmasculine people don’t experience misogyny, because they are not women—but when they are read as women, they experience gendered discrimination and sometimes violence. I don’t think it’s appropriate to call it misogyny, even if on the surface it looks the same, because trans men and transmasculine people will not internalize it in the same way as women. But it also feels inaccurate to simply call that “transphobia” because it’s specific to assigned female at birth trans people, and I don’t want to suggest that the masculine experience is the default for all trans people as “transphobia” implies.

“Misdirected misogyny,” “misdirected transmisogyny,” and “homophobia” are other ways of framing the gendered violence that AFAB trans people face. There are no perfect terms to describe the gendered types of violence faced by AFAB people who are not women, because the experiences of AFAB trans people vary widely depending on whether or not they are men, how well they pass, how aggressively they assimilate into hegemonic masculinity, and their other visible (or erased/invisible) identities.

Transmisandry is a problematic term because it is weaponized against trans women by TERFs and some trans men. The suggestion is that trans women are trying to silence trans men. This is part of a wider tactic to divide trans people within modern discourse, but it’s not trans women who perpetuate transmisandry, it’s cis people.

The implication that trans men and trans women face inverse oppressions is dangerously reductive. Trans women don’t structurally benefit from “male socialization,” and trans men who spend their lives being misgendered as women don’t have “male privilege” in a comparable way to cis men. All trans people face gendered violence on the basis of their transness, to different degrees depending on their genders, their gender expressions, their assigned gender at birth, and other aspects of their identities. Visibility in the media is one example: trans men are invisible, and trans women are hyper-visible. The objectifying hyper-visibility of trans women puts all trans women at risk of physical violence; the erasure and invisibility faced by trans men is also oppressive, but relatively less violent.

Transmisogyny and transmisandry are asymmetrical types of violence. Any claim of transmisandry which is used to vilify trans women and other assigned male at birth trans people should be heavily interrogated if not simply dismissed outright.

TRANSMISOGYNOIR — The intersecting oppression faced by Black transgender women of color and transfeminine people.

Black trans women and trans feminine people are subject to extreme structural violence and discrimination on the basis of their race and their genders. They are more likely to be: street harassed; fetishized, hyper-sexualized, or de-sexualized; denied access to employment and housing and healthcare; denied access to other aspects of public life; stopped and harassed by police; physically assaulted; sexually assaulted; and murdered. Black TMA people are more likely to be victims of violent crime, but the way they are racialized as Black trans women (or incorrectly as Black men) means they’re perceived as being violent, aggressive, and predatory.

Black transmisogyny affected (TMA) people are not afforded complex media representation; but when they are represented (e.g., Janet Mock, Laverne Cox), they are held to exceptionally high standards and subject to relentless harassment. Their cultural and academic contributions are also likely to be diminished, whitewashed, or overlooked entirely.

Alternatively, as is the case with the Stonewall riots, their dissent is reduced to a single moment of “inspiration” porn for people who would have shunned them for their lack of respectability, but now make a profit from their legacies.

TMA people of color, and especially Black trans women and other Black assigned male at birth trans people, are among the most vulnerable in the queer community; yet their oppression also plays out among queers. We must hold ourselves to higher standards of eradicating transmisogynoir both within and outwith the queer community.

The term transmisogynoir is a combination of “misogynoir” (coined by queer Black feminist Moya Bailey) and “transmisogyny” (coined by transfeminist Julia Serano).

TRANSMISOGYNY — The intersecting oppression of transphobia and misogyny, faced by transgender women and transfeminine people. The majority of transphobia is directed at trans women and transfeminine people.

Transmisogyny is a term coined by transfeminist scholar Julia Serano in 2007 to describe the particular discrimination faced by trans women based on “the assumption that femaleness and femininity are inferior to, and exist primarily for the benefit of, maleness and masculinity.”

There are many manifestations of transmisogyny, both structural and personal. Transfeminine people not only face transphobia, but added scrutiny and violence because of their deviance from the maleness they were assigned at birth.

Cisheteropartriarchy punishes transness, it punishes womanhood and femininity, and it especially punishes gender non-conformity in people who are expected to be men.

Transmisogyny affected (TMA) people face increased levels of personal violence and discrimination, are hyper-visible and gazed upon, are patronized as women and non-men, and in a horrible twist of cruelty are told that they have “male privilege” or that their transness is indicative of “male arrogance and violence.”

All women experience misogyny and sexual violence, at the very least on a structural level. Many women are groped and harassed; trans women are more likely to be physically attacked or killed by a man who gropes or harasses them if he realizes or suspects that they are trans. Trans women are more likely to be victims of violent crime than cis women, and are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime—yet trans women are told they are rapists by virtue of their transness, either because their transness is seen as an intention to gain access to women’s spaces for predatory reasons, or because their femininity is a perverse “raping” of womanhood. Conflating trans women with cis men is not only disrespectful and a violent denial of trans women’s genders, but it bars them access to resources that they need even more than their cis women counterparts.

Some transmisogynists argue that trans women are not women but male parodies of women arrogantly performing a shallow femininity. This reduces all trans women to a monolith of femininity, which isn’t accurate; it vilifies all feminine women as agents of patriarchy reinforcing stereotypes, trans or otherwise. It ignores the fact that trans women are coerced into performing a high femme aesthetic and “lady-like,” demure demeanor in order to be read as women and believed to be women (especially when trying to access healthcare), and to ensure their survival in spaces where they feel unsafe if they don’t pass. Trans women are forced by wider society to “prove” their dedication to womanhood through a feminine gender expression, and then they are demonized for it.

Trans women don’t transition in order to be feminine—boys can be feminine—they transition because they have dysphoria which is alleviated by transitioning, socially and/or medically. There is no implication from trans women that “being a woman” means “wearing a dress,” just like there isn’t that implication when a cis woman is feminine; it’s just a personal expression of gender and taste.

Trans women are represented in the media as tragic figures, sex workers (often dead sex workers), mentally ill, drag queens (“pretend women”), or a punch line to a cheap joke; they are usually played by cis men in films and on television. Trans women are more likely to be sex workers and mentally ill than cis women, because our rotten society is so hostile to them and they are denied other kinds of employment—but the representations of trans women as sex workers or mentally ill are not based on the experiences of trans women in these situations, but on cis assumptions and stereotypes. This is an example of hyper-visibility, where trans women are not in control of their own representation and are not afforded nuance or even humanity, but are under a constant gaze and extreme scrutiny.

Biological essentialism hurts all trans people, but is especially targeted at TMA people. It equates womanhood with vaginas, establishing a hierarchy of womanhood where cis women are at the top, trans women and assigned male at birth (AMAB) trans people who have access to genital reassignment surgery (GRS) are in the middle, and trans women and AMAB trans people who can’t have or don’t want GRS are at the bottom. Reducing womanhood to genitals is misogynistic and, when done by self-proclaimed feminists, logically inconsistent. We need to recognize that people born with vaginas are oppressed and their bodies are policed, and that trans women are oppressed and their bodies are policed, usually more rigorously than assigned-female bodies.

Transmisogyny can also be more subtle and patronizing; for example, saying “Welcome to womanhood” when a trans woman or assigned male at birth trans person tells you they’ve experienced sexism or sexual harassment, on the assumption that they have never been attacked for their gender expression before realizing that they are trans. Other small but persistent examples include: misgendering trans women as “he” or “they” when they’ve clearly expressed using “she”; excessively fawning over them, their clothes, or their makeup, perhaps like you would a small child; excessively praising their femininity as “fierce” or “goddess” or “werk girllll,” as though they are constantly offering you a performance of gender rather than simply trying to live; expecting them to do asymmetrical emotional labor; fetishizing them as sexual objects; and generally ignoring or speaking over trans women and other TMA people.

There is a transmisogynist assumption that trans women are “taking up too much space,” in discourse or in funding or media; that cis women or trans men are being “pushed out” because we’re spending too much time on trans women. Trans women face the majority of the gendered violence under patriarchy, so we should absolutely be prioritizing them and their needs—not only because that’s the kind of feminism that I’d hope we want (one which protects the most vulnerable), but because helping trans women will help cis women too. The blame for being bad systems should never fall on the people who are most victimized by them. Instead of attacking trans women for their coping strategies under cisheteropatriarchy, let us dismantle the systems which oppress us all, and attack those who benefit from and uphold them.

Transmisogyny intersects with other forms of structural violence: racism, anti-Blackness (transmisogynoir), classism, ableism, agism, and fatphobia.

TRANSMISOGYNY AFFECTED (TMA), TRANSMISOGYNY EXEMPT (TME) — The terms are used to describe people who are affected by transmisogyny, in contrast to people who are exempt from transmisogyny.

Trans women, other trans people who were assigned male at birth, and some other groups like third genders in non-Western cultures are transmisogyny affected (TMA).

Trans men, other trans people who were assigned female at birth, and all cis people are transmisogyny exempt (TME); they do not experience transmisogyny. They might experience violence if they are wrongly assumed to be trans women, but this shouldn’t be called transmisogyny because they are still exempt from the structural and internal violences of transmisogyny. Some people use the term “displaced transmisogyny” or “misdirected transmisogyny” to describe this; but depending on the context of the violence and the victim, it could also be described as “transphobia,” “homophobia,” or “misogyny.” Our vocabulary here is clunky and insufficient, but it’s key to remember that even if a TME individual is subject to violence on the false assumption that they are a trans woman, they are not subject to the same pressures, violences, and discriminations as TMA people, and our focus in these conversations needs to be on the most vulnerable.

TRANS PANIC — A legal defense used to justify violence against trans people.

Trans panic defense is most commonly invoked when a man reacts violently to a trans woman or transfeminine person when he learns or assumes her trans status; either because he is intimidated by the existence of trans people or because he was attracted to her and incorrectly thinks that his attraction makes him gay, unless he kills her to prove that he isn’t (the violent fragility of masculinity and heterosexuality). It is suggested that the violence is justified by the alleged “deception” of trans people who do not disclose their trans status to their assailants and killers.

This “defense” suggests that it is acceptable to hurt or kill trans people during temporary insanity, and places the blame for the violence with the victim. It is usually invoked in cases where the guilt of the suspect is not in question, in order to play on the transphobia of judges and juries to get a lenient sentence.

Trans panic is considered a valid legal defense in all US states except California, Illinois, and Rhode Island.

The trans panic defense mirrors the gay panic defense.

TRANSPHOBIA — Fear of, or contempt for, trans people. Behavior based on those feelings. A system of oppression in which trans people are marginalized and subject to violence.

Trans people face external systemic transphobia and external transphobia on a personal level, which both contribute to a sense of internalized transphobia and self-loathing. Transphobia affects all people who are trans, including non-binary people and anyone who does not unambiguously identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, some of whom may not call themselves transgender. Like all systems of oppression, transphobia intersects with other marginalizations: classism, racism, ableism, misogyny, agism, queerphobia, and fatphobia. Trans women and other assigned male at birth trans people face persistent and considerable transphobia which is particular to their lives as women, called “transmisogyny”; and Black trans women face racialized transmisogyny, called transmisogynoir. Trans men and other assigned female at birth trans people face particular flavors of transphobia as well, which I discuss under the entry “transmisandry” (though this term is extremely contentious).

Statistics are relatively sparse, and sampling the trans population is a difficult task, but the following stats come from the Trans Equality Survey (US, 2015, with 27,715 respondents), a survey launched by the UK government (2011, with 1,275 respondents), and a Scottish Trans Mental Health Study (UK, 2012, with 889 respondents). There is probably overlap between the participants in the UK government study and the Scottish mental health study, though the Scottish study provided considerably more data than the UK government survey. These statistics do not give a complete picture of trans life in the US and UK but do offer insights into the scope of transphobia.

Trans people face rejection from their families for coming out or being gender non-conforming. Many trans people are forced to move away from their friends and family because they are trans and rejected (US 8%, UK 25%). In the UK, 49% of trans people experienced some form of abuse in childhood. In the US, 10% of trans people have faced violence from their family members; 19% have been rejected by their religious community. In the UK, trans parents report seeing their children less after they come out (19%), losing contact with their children as the result of being trans (18%), and having custody issues (8%).

Trans people suffer high levels of harassment, at work, at school, and in public space. Trans people face silent harassment (UK 81%), verbal harassment (US 46%; UK 50% and 73%, from different sources), sexual harassment (UK 38%) and objectification (UK 50%), physical intimidation and threats (UK 38%), and physical violence (US 9%, UK 19%) for being trans.

Trans people are constantly under the public gaze, and we are expected to come out and disclose our trans status to anyone curious enough to ask or unfortunate enough to find us attractive. In the UK, 72% of trans people feel that their trans status is not private and secure from disclosure, and 54% have experienced at least some difficulty from their local community based on their trans identity. Also in the UK, 92% of trans people have been told that being trans is not normal, and 43% say their trans status has actively prevented them from participating in civic and public life.

Trans people are justifiably anxious about being harassed or being the victim in a violent crime (47% UK), and avoid public space (US 20%, UK 25%) and social situations (UK 51%) as a result. In particular, trans people avoid gendered spaces such as bathrooms and gyms (UK 50%, with 77% of trans men avoiding bathrooms).

Trans people also face extremely high levels of sexual violence. In the US, 47% of trans people have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, and 10% were sexually assaulted within the last year. In the UK, trans people report being sexually assaulted (17%) and raped (6%) specifically because they are trans. In the UK, 58% of trans people worry about their safety in relation to having sex. Trans people in the US who have done sex work (77%), experienced homelessness (65%), and have disabilities (61%) were more likely to have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

Trans people also suffer very high levels of intimate partner violence (US 54%), many experiencing severe physical violence from an intimate partner (UK 17%; US 24%, compared to 18% of the general population).

Gender dysphoria is a serious and distressing condition, and the only affective treatment is transition into the desired gender role (which may or may not include medical intervention). However, trans healthcare is gatekept and extremely difficult to access due to excessive cost, confusing bureaucracy, and misinformed and bigoted medical professionals. In the UK, 80% of trans people deliberately withheld information from their clinicians and 40% deliberately lied at Gender Identity Clinics (GICs) for fear of being denied care. In the US, 55% of trans people have been denied trans-specific surgeries, and 25% were denied hormone replacement therapy. In the UK, 75% have had delays in accessing treatment for gender dysphoria, and 24% had treatment refused to them. Also in the UK, 29% of trans patients said their GPs refused to address a trans-related health concern, and 54% of trans people were denied trans-related care because their GP did not know enough about the care to provide it—this is both a failure of the healthcare system and a violation of best practice; the onus is on the doctors to educate themselves about the care their patients need.

Further, trans people will often forgo seeing a doctor for issues unrelated to their transness for fear of being mistreated: in the US, 23% reported not going to the doctor when they needed to for fear of being mistreated on the basis of their transness, and 33% said they couldn’t afford to go to the doctor when they needed to. In the UK, trans patients report GPs using insulting language about trans people (24%), belittling trans patients for being trans (18%), showing unprofessional curiosity about the trans patients’ body (16%), using the wrong name or pronoun on purpose (26%), asking inappropriate questions about their genitals (7%), and asking questions which make the trans patient feel like they’re educating the GP (61%).

Trans people are more likely to have disabilities, chronic health conditions, and mental health conditions than the general population. In the UK, 58% of trans people have a disability or chronic health condition, with 36% having a mental health condition and nearly 20% having a learning impairment or some other neurodiversity.

Despite the clear need for trans people to access them, medical and clinical environments are extremely unwelcoming to trans people—often from the very first interaction on a form: “Are you M or F?”—if not outright hostile. To combat this, trans healthcare must be understood holistically rather than only being about procedures which alleviate dysphoria.

Trans people also suffer violence at school and university. In the US, 77% of trans people experienced mistreatment at a K–12 school (ages 5–18), such as being verbally harassed (54%), prohibited from dressing according to their gender (52%), being disciplined for fighting back against bullies (36%), being disciplined more harshly than their cis peers (20%), or being physically attacked (24%) or sexually assaulted (13%); 17% left their K–12 school because they were so severely mistreated. At US colleges and universities, 24% who were out or perceived as being trans were verbally, physically, or sexually harassed.

Trans people have high levels of homelessness over their lifetime (US 30%, UK 19%). In the US, 23% of trans people had experienced housing discrimination in the past year; 26% of those who have been homeless avoided staying at a shelter because they feared mistreatment, and 70% who did stay in a shelter reported mistreatment such as harassment, assault, and being kicked out due to being trans. Trans people in the US are nearly four times less likely to own a home (16%) than the general population (63%).

Trans people suffer economic violences as well. In the US 15% of trans people are unemployed (compared to 5% of the general population), with trans people of color facing higher unemployment rates (up to 35% for Middle Eastern trans people). In the US, 29% of trans people live in poverty (compared to 12% of the general population).

Trans people also face excessive discrimination at work. Trans people are more likely to be fired, denied a promotion, or experience another form of mistreatment at work due to their trans status (US 30%, UK 52%). In the UK, 50% of trans people have faced harassment at work, and 32% said the main source of harassment came from colleagues or employers; 63% said they raised complaints within the organization, and 30% who complained said their complaint was handled poorly. In the US, 77% of trans people took steps to avoid workplace mistreatment such as hiding their gender, delaying their transition, or quitting their job—this would undoubtedly cause high levels of stress. In the UK, 86% of trans people cite employers’ anxieties over the possible backlash they’d get from customers if they employed a trans person as an employment barrier; this means that trans people are not only suffering from employment discrimination, but that the work of reassuring our potential employers that we’re worth the possible harassment we might face has fallen upon us. In the UK, 7% of trans people have left a job due to transphobic harassment even though they had no other job to go to.

Because trans people are less able to access “legitimate” employment, we often participate in underground economies. In the US, 20% of trans people have done exactly that: 19% have done sex work (with higher rates among trans women of color), 11% have earned money through drug sales, and 2% have made income from another form of criminalized labor.

Sex work is a means of survival for many trans people who cannot access other work; but being a sex worker makes trans people more vulnerable to violence from the state, from partners, and from clients. In the US, 77% of trans people who have done sex work have experienced intimate partner violence, and 72% have been sexually assaulted, a much higher rate than among trans people who have not done sex work. In the US, 86% of trans sex workers, and trans people suspected of doing sex work, who had interactions with the police reported harassment, assault, sexual violence, or other mistreatment from the police.

The state is extremely harsh toward trans people, and the criminal justice system utterly fails us. Trans people report high levels of harassment (14% UK) and mistreatment (58% US) when we interact with the police, on the basis of our trans status. In the US, 22% of trans people arrested in the last year believe they were arrested simply because they are trans. Of the trans people in the US who reported being arrested whilst suspected of doing sex work, 44% said carrying condoms was the basis of the evidence for their arrest.

Trans people in a US prison are over five times more likely to be sexually assaulted by staff than the general prison population, and over nine times more likely to be sexually assaulted by other inmates.

Trans women in the US are much more likely (3.4%) to be HIV-positive than trans men (0.3%), non-binary people (0.4%), and the general population (0.3%). Living with HIV while trans presents its unique barriers to HIV-specific healthcare (such as being denied access to clinics on the basis of transness or gender), trans healthcare (such as being denied surgery, or surgery costs being doubled), and public life generally (people are pressured to “come out” both as trans and as HIV-positive).

Because we suffer so much systemic violence and discrimination, being trans is extremely stressful. In the US, 39% of trans people experienced serious psychological distress in the past month (compared to 5% of the general population). In the UK, trans people have extremely high levels of depression (88%), stress (80%), anxiety (75%), and alcohol dependency issues (62%) at some point in their lives. It is worth noting that most trans people find their mental health greatly improves upon realizing they’re trans or receiving a diagnosis for gender dysphoria, and getting their desired clinical treatment (if any).

Trans people have extremely high rates of attempted suicide (US 40%, compared to 4.6% of the general population; UK 45%), with that number slightly higher for trans people under 26 (UK 48%). In the US, 7% have attempted suicide in the past year (compared to 0.6% of the general population). In the US, those whose main income came from criminalized work such as sex work or drug sales were much more likely (27%) to have had a suicide attempt in the past year; and those with supportive families were much less likely (6%) to have attempted suicide in the last year than those with unsupportive families (13%). In the UK, a staggering 84% of trans people report having suicidal thoughts at some point in their lives, with 27% having considered suicide within the last week; yet 25% report not being able to access mental health services. In the UK, suicidal ideation dramatically decreases after transition to 3%.

Trans adults have comparable levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to war veterans—trans people are hyper-vigilant to the possibility of misgendering, social rejection, confrontation, and violence. This not only impacts us when we encounter discrimination and violence; the constant threat is extremely tiring and emotionally taxing.

The legitimacy of trans people is constantly being debated, which allows the political right to use a divide-and-conquer strategy toward feminism and LGBT+ issues. Our lives and our access to public goods (like healthcare and bathrooms) should not be up for debate.

Trans people are falsely accused of reinforcing gender stereotypes and the gender binary. Being trans doesn’t enforce the binary; transitioning—claiming an identity which is different from the one you were assigned at birth—is extremely subversive and shows that the gender binary is not a rigid biological reality but a malleable social construct. Many trans people don’t conform to gender norms, and often when we do, it’s for survival (passing, getting access to healthcare). Trans people do not “codify” norms of binary gender, and this false assumption completely ignores that trans people, non-binary and otherwise, are the pioneers in disrupting the gender binary. Julia Serano satirically suggests that cis people, by their refusal to change sex, reinforce the gender binary and patriarchal system of gender-based oppression.

Trans children face particular mistreatment: they are more likely to be subjected to conversion therapy and be denied medical care based on misinformation about hormone blockers; and they are unlikely to have any viable options for housing outside of their families. This makes trans youth especially vulnerable to homelessness and abusive relationships where they are dependent on someone for money or housing.

On a personal level, trans people suffer individual transphobia from people in our lives. This often happens in a projection of cis insecurity about their own genders, or their ossified ideas about gender. Comments like “But you have male energy,” or “You’ll always be a woman” reflect a rudimentary understanding of gender as a concept and a bigoted unwillingness to show trans people basic respect; and these comments aren’t made until the offending cis person learns that the trans person is trans.

Many cis people assume they understand trans experiences. When they’re in positions of power, there is an assumption that they know more about the subject’s gender than them. Similarly, cis people will declare that trans people (especially trans women) claim to “know” what it’s like to be a cis woman: trans women don’t make that claim, but cis women claim to understand the motivations for transitioning.

Cis people might use the idea of “genital preference” to mask their transphobia. Having a preference is fine, but the assumption that all trans people of a certain gender have the same body is transphobic, and a tiring notion that trans people constantly contend with. Many trans people have genital reassignment surgery; many don’t. Saying you wouldn’t date, for example, a trans man purely because you’re “not into vaginas” is transphobic because you’re assuming that all trans men have vaginas. It’s also telling that trans people’s genitals are preemptively scrutinized to a much larger extent than cis people’s.

The media representation of trans people is dreadful. We’re barely ever represented at all, and when we are it’s as flat stereotypes, a tragic plot device, or a cheap joke. Trans women are much more likely to be depicted in the media than trans men and non-binary people, but it’s not representation: it’s caricature, overwhelmingly written and portrayed by cis people. Poor representation (where we get any) further entrenches stigma and misinformation about trans people which contributes to our increased marginalization.

Given all the structural violences trans people face, you would hope that the cis allies in our lives would be supportive; but trans people are regularly put in a position to comfort cis people who learn about transphobia, centering cisness rather than supporting the trans people actually affected by it. Individual trans people are assumed to be ambassadors of the entire trans population; we are assumed to have an academic interest in gender theory, to be absolutely certain of an imaginary “trans party line,” and to be open to answering any and all invasive questions from curious cis people. We are held to extremely high standards, and should we fail to meet them, we’re used as an example to tarnish trans people as a group.

Even in LGBT+ groups, trans people are the lowest priority despite being the most vulnerable. Some LGB people suggest we “drop the T from LGBT+,” as though trans women of color didn’t start (and continue to lead) the whole movement. Erasing trans people from the queer civil rights movement has material consequences, such as the Gill Foundation defunding the fight against anti-trans bathroom bills.

Other examples of cis LGB people failing trans people include the suggestion that trans people don’t belong in a group with LGB people because gender and sexuality are different (rather than intrinsically linked); and the suggestion that queer sexuality is different from transness because transness is medicalized and gayness and bisexuality “just are” (as if queer sexuality hasn’t been medicalized and pathologized, as if all trans people medically transition, as if gay and lesbian and bisexual trans people don’t exist). Some LGB people try to distance themselves from trans people because transness is “too much”: too controversial, too confusing, too subversive, too threatening.

Trans people are blamed for the rise of identity politics, and by extension the alienation of “politically incorrect” people on the right and the rise of Donald Trump and neo-Nazis. It’s wildly unfair to blame a marginalized group for the rise of their oppressors, but it’s also plainly incorrect. Trans people have always existed, and our uncompromising demands for civil rights are not to blame for the recent popularity of fascism: the combination of neoliberal politics and toxic masculinity is. In such an environment, it’s even more important that we are unyielding, and that we see the struggles of trans people as inherently linked with other oppressed groups.

TRANSRACIAL — Someone who is raised in an environment culturally different from their ethnicity.

Transracial people are generally adopted children who are raised by parents of a different race. This has significant emotional consequences: feeling torn between two cultures, being disconnected from your ethnicity and denied intimate knowledge of your birth culture, and carrying the weight of intergenerational trauma within a family context that does not share it. Transracial is a very politically charged term and should only be applied to people who choose it for themselves.

Transracial does not mean “someone born in the wrong race” or someone who feels “dysphoric” about their racial identity. In this context, gender and race are not politically comparable or interchangeable.

TRANSSEXUAL — A generally out of favor term for someone who is not the gender they were assigned at birth. There is an implication of medical transition (previously, and reductively, referred to as a “sex change”).

Transgender is now the preferred term, but transsexual is still in use by older trans people who have always used it, and anyone who appreciates the confrontation of the word.

Transsexual became a legitimate and named identity in the Anglophonic world when Christine Jorgensen, an American trans woman, had genital reassignment surgery in Denmark in 1952.

Because there is stigma attached to trans people and it is suffixed with “sexual,” transsexual implies a sexual deviance. It’s become a somewhat anti-assimilationist term, unapologetic about the link between sexual desire and gender. It plays into the genuine fear of many transphobes of the “scary transsexual” with levity.