All Against the Transgender Umbrella

A reply to a Twitter follower

A graphic explaining the transgender umbrella from The Gender Book

One of our transsexual Twitter followers asked us to write an essay to explain the difference between “transsexuals” and “transgenderists,” why so many transsexuals call themselves “transgender” despite the harm the new language does to transsexual rights, and - mentioning “self-ID laws” such as those in Belgium, Finland, and Germany - how “small and seemingly harmless twists of language” have changed “society’s perception of reality.”

Most people, including many transsexuals, believe that “transsexual” and “transgender” are synonyms, and that “transsexual” is offensive because the “-sexual” suffix has dirty connotations. Yet, Medical News Today actually claims, “However, many people, including those who do not want or need to undergo these medical procedures, find the term transsexual offensive.” On the other hand, one apparently does not need to transition or even experience sex dysphoria, the mismatch between sense of self and physical sex, to be “transgender.” Therefore, an individual such as Demi Lovato or Janelle Monae, who merely request different pronouns, would be “transgender,” as would a deeply dysphoric person who seeks out transition.

Although people with the condition of transsexualism have existed for all of humanity, transitioning sex characteristics only became possible in the twentieth century. A pioneer of sex transition was Weimar Germany’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, headed by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. In his 1910 work Die Transvestiten, Hirschfeld distinguished “transvestites,” or crossdressers, from homosexuals, but did not clearly distinguish between crossdressers and transsexuals. Although some claim that Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexual” in the German form of “seelischer transsexualismus” (psychological transsexualism), this claim is up for debate, as Hirschfeld used the word just once, in a very different way than its modern meaning. The word “transsexual” was popularized in the 1966 book The Transsexual Phenomenon by Harry Benjamin, who had worked with Hirschfeld before moving to the United States. Benjamin conceptualized a six-point scale from “transvestite” to “transsexual.” Early literature conflated transsexuals with crossdressers, and people invented words to describe transsexuals as the medical technology for transition developed. The fight for transsexual rights could be summarized as the fight not to be confused with crossdressers and other counterculture, but recognized post-treatment as ordinary men and women.

The term “gender” was primarily a grammatical term to describe “masculine” and “feminine” words until sexologist John Money appropriated it for his influential but wrong “tabula rasa” theory of identity. Money coined the term “gender role” in his 1955 paper “Hermaphroditism, gender and precocity in hyperadrenocorticism: Psychologic findings.” In 1967, John Money sought to demonstrate that “gender roles” were learned in the infamous David Reimer experiment. Money transitioned baby Reimer to a girl and reported success by 1972. Over the decade, usage of “gender” shot up within feminist studies to connote the social rather than biological aspects of male-female differences. Meanwhile, as Reimer grew up, he was traumatized by Money’s sexual abuse, retained a male sex identity, detransitioned when learned what had been done to him, and later killed himself.

Psychiatrist John F. Oliven was likely influenced by Money’s new term when he introduced the term “transgender” in 1965 to refer to those with “an urge for gender ‘sex’ change,” practically the same meaning as “transsexual.” Yet, the person most often credited for the term “transgender” is Virginia Prince, a full-time crossdresser who first used it in 1969 to distinguish herself from transsexuals. Prince fiercely defended the label of “transgender” from misuse, writing, “To begin with, I coined the term ‘transgenderist’ as a name for the specific behavior of living full time but without SRS [bottom surgery],” “you are both intelligent enough to know that sex and gender are two different things,” and “The reason I make such an issue of the sex/gender confusion is that if more members of our community REALLY understood the difference and used the right words in the right way there would be fewer TSs [transsexuals] and probably fewer suicides, divorces and heartaches in our community.”

However, in 1991, Holly Boswell published “The Transgender Alternative,” which first proposed “transgender” as an umbrella term encompassing crossdressers, transsexuals, and anyone else she deemed “androgynous.” This umbrella usage was introduced to a larger audience by New Left countercultural activist Leslie Feinberg in her 1992 pamphlet Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come, which actively conflated transsexuals, crossdressers of various cultural roles, and historical figures such as Joan of Arc to assert the existence of a long-suppressed “transgender” tradition. The transgender umbrella collapsed the distinction between the medical issue of sex dysphoria and the social issue of gender norms, exacerbating the very misunderstandings that transsexuals had for decades fought so hard to dispel.

Although the definition of “transgender” is hotly contested, Boswell’s and Feinberg’s umbrella is dominant in academia. The American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the DSM, defines “transgender” as “a non-medical term that has been used increasingly since the 1990s as an umbrella term describing individuals whose gender identity… or gender expression… differs from the sex or gender to which they were assigned at birth.” Likewise, the American Psychological Association, an authority on style in the social sciences, defines “transgender” as “an umbrella term encompassing those whose gender identities or gender roles differ from those typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.” Meanwhile, “transsexual” is apparently a term to avoid. As a result, we have been deprived of the language to describe our medical condition and distinguish ourselves from those who take on social or political identities. The shift from “transsexual,” whom seeks out a sex transition, to “transgender,” vaguely defined around “identity,” is a deliberate push towards self-identification, in which a man such as Alok Vaid-Menon, who does not undergo any medical transition, can claim to be “transfeminine.” We have always opposed this and believe that the sex binary is what provides us the stability to define our condition.

Also deserving of scrutiny is “assigned at birth” language, which the American Psychological Association recommends instead of “natal sex” without reservation. The phrase “assigned at birth” serves a specific purpose: to describe corrective surgery of infants with ambiguous genitalia, an act of medical malpractice. A sex was “assigned” to such people under John Money’s mistaken theory that “gender roles” were socialized. However, the phrase “sex assigned at birth” is now incorrectly applied to all newborns, downstream from the belief that sex is socially constructed and wholly independent from anatomy. Related is the practice of raising “theybes”, babies whose gender is not “assumed.” (One wonders if they will experience the same distress as Reimer, or if they will develop normally so long as their anatomy is not changed.) These ideas, originating from Money, are what medical rights activists fought against.

We suspect that “gender identity” language has been harmful for explaining transsexual experiences because the word “identity” is too strong and connotes individuality. One “identifies” as a progressive, conservative, soccer fan, and so forth. However, “gender identity” is passive and unconscious in non-transsexuals while manifesting as dysphoria in transsexuals. Yet, “identity” language implicitly encourages non-transsexuals (the vast majority of the population) to navel-gaze and question their gender, leading to Demi Lovatos. The term “gender expression” is worse. Transsexuals do not seek to “express” some “gender,” but pass as a man or woman. Transsexuals do not seek to “identify” as some “gender,” but transition to male or female, well-defined sexes with associated anatomies. Such is the profile of the dysphoric transsexual, and those who claim otherwise are not transsexuals, but outsiders colonizing a minority. Those who support self-identification speak of “self-determination,” but when a medical minority is annexed into an umbrella and can’t define its own boundaries, that sounds more like pan-trans imperialism.

Transsexuals have a medical condition and merely seek to blend in. Therefore, we are very different from crossdressers, performers such as drag queens, and people who adopt political “trans” identities. The transgender umbrella is misleading and offensive because it suggests that transsexuals have something in common with drag queens - that we are a counterculture. The transgender umbrella also matters to everyone because it uses transsexuals, a sympathetic medical minority, to legitimize absurd self-identification and shoddy science. This is why we all must fight against it.