Semantics

I was reading about the transgender community. Some of my friends are or were, meaning self-identify as, transgender. And you can read the many Websites with all the terminology and definitions and get overloaded who's all under the transgender umbrella or in the transgender community, often shorten to transcommunity.

Anyway, I got into an e-mail exchange with the owner of a forum for transpeople. And she described all the flavors or classes of transpeople, but the ones that interested me were as follows:

"Pre-ops: Transsexuals who desire to to make their body as congruent as possible with their preferred sex, but have not yet had the surgical procedures for whatever reason.

Post-Ops: Transsexuals who have had surgical procedures to make their body as congruent as possible with their preferred sex. For MTF transsexuals this is generally considered to be after Genital surgery (GRS, orchiectomy, and/or penectomy), for FTM transsexuals it is generally considered to be after top surgery."

Except Non-op is missing and Post-Op is incomplete.

A Non-op is someone who elects not to go through genital surgery and lives with the birth genitalia but as a member of the opposite gender, usually a male-to-female since female-to-males are not required to have the surgery for their legal documents (it's medically not recommended and very expensive). Many lesbians who identify as f2m's do everything else.

But some m2f transwomen never get GRS but live as women the rest of their life. This doesn't allow them to get their legal documents, only a Driver's LIcense in some states - not all are consistent with standards, changed to reflect their female (living) gender. Some illegally get their documents changed, but this has risk of discovery later in life and possible civil and/or criminal actions.

After all who wants to know a woman has male genitallia? Yeah, the thing most men freak over, some get angry with, and some love them (that "she-male" thing). Personally I don't understand any of these views. But I do expect that a woman was either born with or has surgery to create a vagina. It's part of a woman's experience in and with life. I haven't met any woman who trade their vagina for a penis and testicles, and everything else it entails.

That's the view of our binary society. And like it or not, it's the reality here.

So why a transwoman pronounces here womanhood without a vagina is beyond me. And even is she illegally obtained her documents saying she's female - remember issuing legal documents under less than legal or fraudulant circumstance doesn't make the documents legal, they're invalid on their face, it's just a matter of time when she'll be required to present the documents supporting her status, take a physical or provide the name of her OB/GYN to certify her status. In short, she'll eventually find justice.

Anyway, there is a last group, Post-transistion.

These are Post-ops (above) who have had their documents legally updated and are fully recognized as female. This starts the the first necessary one, the birth certificate, allowable in every state save two (OH and TN), and then proceeds with the other local, state and federal records and any employment and credit records, and so on down the line. Rarely do all records get changed because they're either too long ago or a changed is not allowed, eg. DOD records.

This is important because you may be physically female with GRS (often called Sex Reassignment Surgery or SRS), but you're not legally female. SRS is the final medical step but not the final step you a (trans)woman's life, just the beginning of the end of her transistion. The rest is the mechanics of the paperwork.

This is also important because it then gives the woman the right to say she's not transgender anymore, but legally female. This is a small semantic difference but a significant one between the transcommunity and the individual. She is now free and independent of the term and community, so the community often likes to avoid that step by stopping at Post-op.

It's also why at least 80%, some estimates 90-95%, of post-transistion women leave the transcommunity, never to be recognized with it again. It's not their present or future life, only their history and past. And the community doesn't like or appreciate these women doing this.

The remaining ones were either publically outed for some circumstance or situation, outed themselves or didn't really have a choice to due their life, work or career. They may dislike the term and label, but it's the one the media sticks on them. It's the media's way of describing them for the story, to isolate and identify them as "not one of us but a transgender person."

It's unfair and not right. The media doesn't use adjectives with other people in the same way, only to highlight their difference between "normal" people and "transgender" people." But it's what the transcommunity loves, post-transistion women claimed and under the umbrella, which they can then call all transgender.

That's neither fair or right either. Post-transistion people are simply male or female, men or women, take your pick, but they're not transgender in any respect anymore. That's the right they earned and deserve when they finished their transistion. We owe them that, nothing less and nothing else.