Language and the transgender

I still maintain that the transgender community has a hostile relationship with the English language. If it were a war, I'd say the latest big battle was over the conventions and rules of how words get constructed. There's a skirmish going on about grammar, and that might develop into a full blown battle, but for now it's simply oscillating between a semi-organized skirmish and an insignificant melee.

There are some, generally those who decided that cisgender was acceptable, who want to control how people think about transgender and gender. I would never say it was a "conspiracy", but more of a growing sentiment that certain words and phrases have negative connotations, simply because it is possible to be derogative with that word or phrase. "Tranny" is a perfect example: it is a colloquialism; the sort of thing the British come up with all the time. You know: telly, fridge, hoover, and so on; Americans use television, refridgerator and vacuum cleaner instead.

So some people decided that tranny was offensive; and its usage is now frowned upon. This, effectively, puts an entire array of barbs and witticisms out of reach. It also makes any speech about transgender individuals somewhat stilted, formal and controlled. You can't say "A rabbi, a tranny and a duck walk into a bar"; it becomes the constricted "a rabbi, a transgender individual and a duck walk into a bar". :-) (Sorry...)

(For some reason, I'm trying to get the term "cissy" out of my mind... That would be the natural colloquialism for the cisgendered. (There! A reason to use the suffix -ed! I knew I could come up with something! :-) )

Likewise, the idea that "I am a woman, and you can't say otherwise" is not just a statement about identity - it's a way of dictating how people can think of you. Not a terribly effective way of dictating such, I must admit. (You knew that was going to creep in, didn't you?) :-)

I don't know why some of in the transgender community have a need to control perceptions. It's a fools errand, as anyone over the age of 16 should know. Wishing something were so doesn't make it so - and it's probably wiser to face up to that. Controlling how we are perceived is not just futile, it's arguably counterproductive. This isn't a case of working within "your" limitations, it's a case of recognizing that there are some limitations that aren't going to be surmounted. Persuading the mother of 17 kids that you're just as much a woman as she is, is probably one of them. Arguing that because you have gender problems, that the not-transgendered are "cisgender" is another.

Anyway, the language of gender is still evolving. It's evolving quite rapidly, and not always in accordance with the rules and conventions of the English language. I doubt, in this age of curtailed, 140-characters or less, speech that the rules of English will remain static. That doesn't mean they won't be important; it probably means they'll become increasingly important! Spelling is changing, so is syntax; the Internet is clearly ushering in a new era of what language is, and what it can do for us. Invented words for concepts that have little reason to exist will become ever more prevalent; erudition will, probably, become measured not by clever use of the language, but how efficiently you get a point across. Regardless of how exact it might be, and probably in spite of the imprecise individual definitions.

The right is particularly keen on exerting its own, highly plastic, definitions of various concepts. "Liberal" becomes a pejorative, while contradictions such as "traditional values" are put forth as not just sensible, but eminently sensible ideas. Just don't inquire too deeply what those values are, or try to reconcile them with The Constitution. The left is not innocent, but they aren't as organized, or as simplistic and so they get away with quite a bit more than they should.

(Amusing anecdote: just yesterday, someone said to me "you can't change the mind of a liberal"; the corollary presumably being that a neocon/conservative changes their mind on a whim...) :-)

We're already seeing words and concepts stretched to fit particular meaning. Political rhetoric is achieving new-found depths, and (particularly on the right) continually inventing new ways of abusing the language and our understanding of what various linguistic constructs mean. I say "particularly on the right", but I could equally argue that the transgender community is just as enthusiastic in its beating of the language. I could argue that while the right is busy assaulting the general corpus of the language, trannys are going for the gonads.

Carolyn Ann