Are you a journalist, or a writer, or a video creator, or just someone who sometimes talks
about trans people or trans rights?
Then hopefully this guide will be helpful for you.
A lot of times, I see even well-intentioned people say things about trans people that
are either wrong, inaccurate, or outright hurtful.
While I do appreciate that your intentions may be good, it’s really important to get
this stuff right -- and I don’t think it’s super difficult.
So, to make things a little bit easier for you, I’ve put together this guide of common
errors that people make when talking about trans people, and what you should say or write instead.
Obviously, you as an individual have every right to talk about trans people however you want.
I’m not forcing you to do anything.
This is just a guide for if you want to talk about trans people and trans issues in the
most respectful, compassionate, and accurate way possible.
So, let’s get started.
The number one most common mistake I see is people writing or saying “transgendered”.
That’s not a thing.
Transgender is not a verb.
You don’t “transgender” someone, and you don’t get “transgendered”.
Transgender is an adjective.
So instead of saying, “a transgendered person,” you can say, “a transgender person.”
Also, it’s totally okay to shorten transgender to trans.
In fact, I think a dead giveaway that someone doesn’t often write or speak about trans
issues is when they refer to it constantly as transgender.
Most people who talk about this stuff often just say trans.
Both are acceptable, but in my opinion, trans is shorter and easier.
That being said, neither “trans” nor “transgender” are nouns.
So you shouldn’t say “a trans” or “a transgender” or “the transes” or “the transgenders”.
Trans and transgender are both adjectives, so you need to put a noun after it.
You can say “trans people” or “the transgender community” or “trans rights” or “transgender
women” or something like that.
Just remember that we are not “transgenders” we are “transgender people”.
Also, avoid the word transsexual.
Some trans people still use this word for themselves, and that’s okay because they’ve
reclaimed it, but you shouldn’t go around throwing this word on people.
A lot of trans people consider it an outdated and derogatory word.
That’s because it basically creates a hierarchy of trans people.
A transsexual is generally used to mean a transgender person who has had genital surgery.
It’s often used by people to say, “Well this trans person is a ‘real trans person’
because they’re a transsexual, unlike all those other fakers”.
Calling transgender people “fakers” or “transtrenders” is an insult used to invalidate their gender.
Plus, the word “transsexual” places genital surgery as the end-all-be-all of being trans,
but there are plenty of ways to transition that don’t involve genital surgery.
The word “transsexual” gives you specific, private, and unnecessary information about
a person’s genitals.
Plenty of trans people live happily without genital surgery, many want it but can’t
afford it or access it -- and regardless, we shouldn’t be making such a big deal of
trans people’s genitals anyway.
My next piece of advice is don’t say “transgenderism”.
That makes it sound like a disease or something.
There’s no such thing as “transgenderism”.
If you’re trying to talk about the overall experience of being trans, I think the best
way to rephrase your sentence is simply to say “being trans” or “trans people”
or “the trans community” or something like that depending on the context.
So, instead of saying, “There’s been a rise in transgenderism,” say, “There has
been a rise in people coming out as trans”.
Or instead of saying, “Her experience with transgenderism has been a mixed bag,” say,
“Her experience being trans has been a mixed bag.”
Do you see what I mean?
I say “transness” sometimes, but I’m not sure how widely accepted that is.
In most cases, I think it’s best to just reframe your sentence to be more specific
to what you’re talking about.
And please just don’t say “transgenderism”.
Also, feel free to use the word cisgender, or its shortened version, cis.
This simply is the opposite of transgender.
It’s someone whose gender matches the gender they were assigned at birth.
So if you’re not transgender or genderqueer in anyway, you’re cisgender.
And I think a lot of media reporting would be significantly improved if journalists just
learned how to use the word cis.
For instance, a lot of studies are done on cis men and cis women, but the findings are
usually reported as being applicable to just “men and women”.
A lot of the time, findings that are specific to cis men and cis women do not apply to trans people.
So simply adding that little three-letter word in front of men or women actually changes
the story a lot -- it makes it more specific, and accurate, and it also raises awareness
of a word that a lot of people probably don’t know.
Next, don’t say that someone was “born a boy” or “born a girl”.
Not only is it insulting, but it’s just not accurate.
Nobody was born a boy or born a girl.
They were born with specific genitalia and then assigned a gender based on that.
Because the thing is, for example, trans women are not men who later became women.
They are women who were wrongly assigned a gender when they were young, but they didn’t
figure it out until later in life.
They were always women.
This is a really easy linguistic change to make, though.
Just say they were “assigned male at birth” or “assigned female at birth”.
There’s even a nice abbreviation for it: AMAB, or AFAB.
It’s a really small change to make in your writing, but it can make a world of difference
to trans people.
Also, if you’re writing about trans people, use their correct pronouns, even if you’re
talking about their life pre-transition.
The only exception to this is if that trans person gives you specific permission to do otherwise.
So if they’re a trans woman, you’ll probably refer to them using she/her/hers.
If they’re a trans man, probably he/him/his.
And if they’re non-binary, there are a lot of options for pronouns, but often they’ll
go by them/them/theirs.
Whatever pronouns a person asks you to use, just use them.
It’s polite and respectful, and yes, “they” can be used as a singular pronoun, I promise you.
The world isn’t going to end.
People are going to get it. It’s fine.
Oh, and they’re not preferred pronouns -- they’re just their pronouns.
Speaking of which, be sure to recognize that for many people, their trans experience isn’t binary.
Transgender is an umbrella term for anyone whose gender doesn’t match the gender they
were assigned at birth.
For non-binary people, this can mean, for example, that they were assigned male at birth
but now identify as non-binary.
So, instead of saying “the opposite gender” you can just say “a different gender”,
since there are more than two options.
If you need to talk about a trans person’s appearance, don’t say that they “look
like a man” or “look like a woman” because that can be insulting and very arbitrary.
For example, instead you can say that they “pass as a cis man” or “are often perceived as a woman”.
“Passing” means that most people are perceiving them a certain way.
If a trans man is “passing” as a cis man, it means that most strangers are perceiving him as a man.
Likewise, if you say someone is often perceived as a woman, that can speak to their experience
dealing with misogyny without claiming that they “look” a certain way.
“Passing” is generally used when someone is perceived as the gender they are and want
to be seen as, while “often perceived as” is more generally used when someone doesn’t
want to pass a certain gender but they have to because of fear of losing their job, or
fear for their safety, or because their facial structure is more masculine or more feminine,
or something else they can’t control.
Likewise, “presenting as” is generally used when someone is explicitly trying to
pass as the gender they are and want to be perceived as.
So a trans woman wearing a dress and makeup can often be described as “presenting feminine”
or something like that.
The next thing is: Don’t ask trans people about their genitals.
Unless ya’ll are having sex, it’s really none of your business.
What genitals they have, and what surgeries they do or don’t have -- that’s all private information.
You wouldn’t ask a cis person about their genitals, so don’t ask a trans person.
Related to that, asking about other surgeries or hormones or transition-related things is unnecessary.
A lot of that is really personal for trans people, and while many might feel comfortable
answering that question, it’s really one that you don’t need to ask.
If a trans person brings it up first, go ahead and talk to them about it -- but make sure
that they’re okay with it.
And obviously, if you’re good friends with someone and you know that they’re comfortable
talking about it, that’s fine.
But as a journalist or a stranger, try to avoid asking trans people invasive and private
questions about their transition.
Also, another small thing to avoid is saying that someone “transitioned to a woman”
or “transitioned to a man”.
Like I said before, trans women are and always have been women.
And trans men are and always have been men.
Obviously there are exceptions, like gender fluid people whose gender changes from time
to time, but for most trans people, they are the gender they have always been -- it just
took them a while to figure it out.
So, what is a transition then?
It’s often a social transition and/or a medical transition.
So social transitioning is having people use different pronouns or possibly a different name.
Medical transitioning can be starting hormones to make you feel better mentally and more
aligned with your gender, and it can be having surgeries to either feel better in your own
body or to pass better in public as the gender you are -- or both.
So a transition isn’t transitioning your gender or who you are.
It’s often transitioning how you are perceived, how you present, and the steps necessary to
more correctly align yourself with your gender.
Transitioning is different for every trans person.
Some people don’t take hormones or have surgery or change their name.
Some have multiple surgeries and take hormones and change their name.
It all depends.
Transitioning is a very personal thing that can take a million different forms.
So when discussing someone’s transition, remember to respect that.
You can say that they transitioned from presenting as a man to presenting as a woman.
Or you can say they transitioned a while a back to help their body better match their gender.
There’s a lot of ways to phrase it that aren’t “they transitioned from being a
man to a woman,” which is just an insensitive and inaccurate way of describing a transition.
Related to this, you may have heard the terms “male-to-female” or “female-to-male”
before -- or you may have seen them shortened as MTF or FTM.
Because they imply that someone was one sex and then became another sex, they’ve fallen
out of usage with a lot of trans people.
Don’t call someone MTF or FTM unless you specifically confirm with that person that
that is how they identify.
Anyway, that is everything I have for you today.
I will link to some resources below that you can look at for more details.
In general, I’d suggest looking to GLAAD and the National Center for Transgender Equality
for specific details on how to talk about trans people.
I also recently did a video on anti-trans slurs that you might not know are slurs, which
you might want to check out.
As usual, if you want to help me make more videos like this, you can click over here
to support me on Patreon, or you can click over here to subscribe to my channel.
Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.