terminology update
2016-03-20
Was just reminded by a discussion I saw on my dash. Once upon a time I was a proponent of ‘trans feminine’ as general term for trans women and other ppl oppressed by transmisogyny. But after some insightful criticism, I abandoned the term maybe half a year afterwards.
Unfortunately, it remained a problem. As in, there is really no quick and inclusive way to refer to the entire set of people who are oppressed by transmisogyny.
Something which I need for my second edition of decolonizing trans/gender 101 (not even sure it’ll keep that name).
In the book, I decided on an acronym that expresses the exact set of people I wish to talk about: POT. Which is for ‘people oppressed by transimisogyny’. There are pluses and minuses to such an opproach.
The biggest plus is that it says nothing about either the gender or gender expression of this class of people. But then that’s also its weakness since it groups us together by a notion of shared oppression which might be more accurate given that this is usually what I’m talking about. It also flattens the concept in a way that implies that there is a coherent, unified ‘transmisogyny’ that impacts everyone in the same way.
One of the ways that I’ve somewhat addressed this is by modifying it for the group I usually write for: people oppressed by racialized transmisogyny or PORT. Lol.
It isn’t kind of clunky and not very elegant, but its the best solution I can currently think of to address the problem. I certainly could just use the entire phrase… And I might.
Either way, I wanted ppl to know since I’ll probably start using it more often.