I've thought a lot about a good way to start this blog off, and I've come to the conclusion that the best way to kick it off is to start by defining a lot of things that will be commonly mentioned in this writing. Since a lot of people don't think much about gender at all, it's fairly common to be in the dark when it comes to certain terms and phrases. I'm here to help with that.
Let's start with the basics: Someone who is transgender is someone who doesn't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. In my case, when I was born, doctors determined based off the appearance of my genitalia that I was female. However, in my brain, I was male. (While it may seem unusual, it's estimated that about 700,000 people in the United States don't agree with their assigned gender, though that number is only an estimate because we obviously can't know how many people are still in the closet, and neither the Center for Disease Control or the U.S. Census Bureau ask about it in national surveys).
On the other side of the spectrum is cisgender, which means someone who agrees and identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth.
A lot of the confusion also stems around the variety of words assumed to be interchangeable. There are two common mistakes that come to me off the top of my head:
Sex vs. Gender
Biological sex is often mistaken for gender identity, so let's clear this one up right away. Biological sex is either of the two sexes (male and female) into which humans are divided based on their reproductive functions (there are, however, instances in which someone is born intersex, with both male and female reproductive parts. Look it up if you want to learn more on that, since I'm not particularly qualified to speak of anyone else's experiences than my own). Gender, on the other hand, is more cultural. It relates to things like boys' and girls' toys, clothing styles, anything viewed as "for women" or "for men". This is where the differences begin to enter the picture, as someone can identify as male, female, neither, both, or with no gender at all (or any mix of the aforementioned categories). Some people's gender even fluctuates between them, an identity called gender-fluid (which I happened to think I may have been, when I was still figuring out what felt right for myself), all while having a different biological sex. Hopefully that makes some degree of sense?
Transgender/Transsexual/Transvestite/Drag Queen
This is where things begin to get a little more complicated, as some of them are very similar while others are not.
Someone who is transgender, as I said before, is someone who doesn't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. Someone who is transsexual, on the other hand, has undergone surgeries or other means of physical change in order to present as the gender with which they identify. Simply put, they're a more specific name for someone under the trans umbrella.
Transvestites and drag queens are not under the trans umbrella, but are commonly tied into it anyway. A drag queen is someone, usually a man, who dresses and passes as the opposite sex for entertainment purposes, usually TV or internet shows of sorts. A transvestite is someone, again, usually a man, who dresses as the opposite sex for emotional and/or sexual gratification. Since it has nothing to do with identity, they aren't trans at all, despite being commonly placed under the umbrella.
Conclusion
This is by no means a complete list of words, phrases, etc. If there's anything else you've heard of that you'd like me to define or explain, I'd be happy to do so. With any luck, this has been helpful for someone who may know a trans person or be questioning their own identity, and please let me know if you think there's anything I've forgotten to touch on.
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