I keep finding labels and categories applied rather broadly to individual people, and as the recent furore about “transgendered men” going topless proves, their misuse can lead to a lot of prejudice, anger and general confusion. With this in mind, I decided to engage in a little gentle satire. Here I am in a tidy, Creative Commons-style nutshell for easy digestion and identification – just so you know where I stand:
LGBT: Transgender Male-to-Female Lesbian
The problem with labels is that they are both irrelevant and quite necessary, depending on the circumstances.
Mine is a personal blog, but even I have had to consider them as I wrote my ‘about’ pages. Fail to identify myself as transgender and I risk appearing ignorant. The fact I bear a masculine gender dysphoria too suggests that I’m not going to write much of interest to trans men. My labelling is almost a matter of convenience.
Despite all this, I find widespread encouragement of my belief that my transient gender will not define me any more than it might a cisgendered person.
A common theory is that we humans categorise and label people in the same way we form first impressions, and that these are activities to help us survive. If I spot somebody in a tracksuit and baseball cap, I’m trained by modern society to believe they may be an aggressive person, best avoided. If I’m meeting somebody I’ve heard called a gossip for the first time, I’m likely to hold a more closeted conversation. Many people have similar, negative reactions to those they know are trans or gay. None of this is right though, and ultimately the world becomes a more hostile place in which a single word can spark fear, anger or digust.
The “transgender” label is a rather unique one – quite harmless-looking on its own, almost as much as “cisgender” – but its very use suggests that a person does not fit into society’s top-most, binary descriptors. This tends to unsettle people far more now than “gay”, “lesbian”, “bisexual” and other labels pertaining to sexuality might. Yet it does achieve one very noble goal, as I touched upon in my article on pride – it allows similarly-afflicted people to find each other.
“Transgender” is quite a scientific-sounding label, but it has brought those who identify with it together, in much the same way that goths, Trekkies or photographers might hone in on their own particular niches. It is a keyword as well as a label, and has the ability to bring lonely and disaffected individuals in to information, new friendships and even interesting issues to ponder. It’s also made all the more important for being something we hope others cannot see. Goths have their appearance, Trekkies their conventions and photographers their art with which to identify each other, but it’s tricky to find other trans people or those interested in gender issues without hunting for the specific word – and while we trans people aren’t just out to swap something as mundane as makeup tips, reaching a community is nigh on essential for restoring your own sense of normality.
Used in that way, I can see the transgender label as one to be proud in – much like how “gay” is often used. I’m reminded of the campaigns to ‘take back’ hurtful symbols or labels, like the Nazi pink triangle or the controversial “queer” terminology (personally I dislike “queer” given its original meaning, but taking pride in a label you have had forced upon you is quite a marvellous thing).
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