Trans women, also called transgender women, are women whose bodies were physically determined to be male at birth. Some are transsexuals – those who have made their bodies more female through modern medicine. This post is about trans women in America.
Some terms:
- assigned sex – determined physically at birth.
- gender identity – what you consider yourself to be: male or female (or possibly something else).
- gender dysphoria – the feeling that you are in the wrong body.
- transgender, trans – those whose sex and gender do not match. It is the T in LGBT.
- cisgender, cis – those whose sex and gender match.
- transphobia – the fear and hatred in others that trans people regularly face.
- transition – the process of making yourself more like your gender identity – not just changes to your body but also changes in dress, manner, speech, name, papers, etc. Trans women can be anywhere in this process. Not all of them go all the way.
- transvestite – a man who dresses as a woman but still thinks of himself as a man.
Some say that trans women who have completed the transition should no longer be called trans.
Trans model Isis King
The two main medical procedures are:
- HRT: hormone replacement therapy – causes you to grow breasts, your body to become more soft and curved, your waist-to-hip ratio to drop, making you look more like a woman. It does not get rid of your penis.
- SRS: sex reassignment surgery – also called a sex change operation. The doctors give you a vagina in place of your penis. You will be able to have sex but not give birth.
Some do’s and don’t’s for cisgender people:
- Treat trans women the same as any other woman.
- Use the right pronoun: she, not he or it.
- Use the name they call themselves.
- Do not out them as trans without their permission.
- Do not assume they are lesbian – only about a third are. Most are straight or bisexual.
- Do not ask what their name was “before”.
- Do not ask about their genitals or operations.
- Do not call them “trannies” or “shemales”: those are transphobic slurs that come from the sex industry.
America’s transphobia is worse than its homophobia or racism. While many trans women do not live lives of tragedy, the numbers are frightening:
- 12.5% – the chance that a trans woman of colour will be murdered.
- 30% of trans women have been in prison.
- 40% of all homeless youths are trans or gay. Of these most are black!
- 41% of trans people have attempted suicide.
- 50% have been raped or beaten by a romantic partner.
- 59% to 67% of young trans women in urban areas have been sex workers, 20% of them are HIV positive.
Transphobia among students, teachers, employers, police officers, prison guards, etc makes their lives harder, at times even dangerous. In homeless shelters and prisons they are put with men. Most states have no laws against transphobia in housing and hiring.
For trans women of colour, the transphobia is made even worse by racism. For example, they are two to three times more likely to be sexually assaulted in prison than white trans women.
– Abagond, 2013, 2016.
Update (2019): Note that the language in this post is already becoming dated, particularly the use of the words “transsexual” and “transvestite”. See: Tips on writing about transgender people.
See also:
Abagond 
As for “dos” and “don’ts”, can we ask politely that we be allowed to just pretend they were always the “gender” they insist they are now without having to hear their back-story or anything else about it and without having to give them time off for rallies, parades, therapy and surgeries? Can we ask them just to be normal without having to endure their Victim’s Narcissism?
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Hmmm. Interesting post. Now about the prison. Which one would they go to? If they have reassigned their gender-no one would know. So assuming they would go to the prison -in their new identity.
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I have been incredibly uncomfortable with the way that you have been representing trans people in the last three posts you’ve made. It took me a few days to be able to articulate it, and I’m still avoiding the comments thread on the other two posts you’ve made because of the frankly reprehensible things some people are saying about trans folks on there.
Anyway, here is what I am seeing. You are coming at an understanding of transgenderness from an incorrect definition and that’s adversely affecting your whole understanding of it.
First off, trans women are not “boys who have become women”. They are women who were assigned male at birth. I highly recommend reading Asher Bauer’s “Not Your Mom’s Trans 101” for a great commentary on sex, assigned sex, and where it all fits in with the binary conception of gender.
I was very uncomfortable with your summary of Janet Mock’s life, particularly your emphasis on the name she was given at birth and your posting of the picture of her as a child. I know that she revealed her birth name in her Marie Claire article, but that’s her prerogative. I don’t think we should go around repeating it. Too often too much emphasis is given on the identities we were supposed to hold in our youth, and too much emphasis is placed on our transition.
Further, your whole post about chasers seems to be sympathetic to them, when fetishizing a whole class of people is REALLY fucked up, which is what these people are doing.
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I work with a trans-gendered woman and believe me her journey was very difficult. She has had the full operation.
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transgender banned in our country because of religious, cultural and social. So I can not say anything even to speak from their perspective. I just do not antagonize them
jual boneka lucu
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@ Puck Malamud (@the_leaky_pen)
1. I removed the picture of the younger Mock but kept her birth name. It is the way she tells it.
2. I changed the opening sentence of this post to read:
3. To call all trans-attracted men chasers is wrong. It is a pejorative word and therefore loaded. I did point out that some are just in it for the kicks, that most see trans women through the lens of the sex industry, but that some are serious.
4. Rather than avoid the other two threads you should point out how what people are saying is reprehensible. Some will not listen, but some will. For every commenter there are a hundred lurkers.
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it’s just a matter of life choices …
jual cokelat
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Did she spare you the details and drama?
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why sentence or transgender transwoman always about sex? whereas it is about wanting to be right, as well as wanted to be a pilot, teacher, singer, and so on.
keripik pisang
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@ jual keripik / boneka lucu / dapur cokelat
Please stick to one name or I will kick you off.
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This is a very sensitive matter, I’m afraid it will hurt someone or invite controversy.
jual kado unik
kado untuk pacar
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The crossing of transphobia and racism requires an update of my comment in the “Trans-attracted men” thread.
It is interesting to notice that A LOT of trans women photos in mainstream media are of “black” women… Just an observation, I don’t know what it could mean or reflect.
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I wonder if we will get a post on CeCe soon…
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Cornilia Said
“The crossing of transphobia and racism requires an update of my comment in the “Trans-attracted men” thread.
It is interesting to notice that A LOT of trans women photos in mainstream media are of “black” women… Just an observation, I don’t know what it could mean or reflect.”
It’s the next stage of the effeminization of black males.
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Gat Turner, your comment requires more precision:
voluntary or involuntary ? Hormone (from food for instance), Society or white supremacy (which crosses with society in the American case) induced ?
I know this is a theory that has a lot of coverage these days. Is it not overblown by the media (the reason why I mentioned it). There are many (many) more non-trans women “black” men than there are “black” trans women…
Is this not another trick to divert people from the essential problems (racism, for instance) ? Media are controlled and decide on the next discussions and trends…
You yourself, Gat, I imagine if you’re commenting this way, you describe yourself as a “black man”. Are you on the way towards feminization ? Are your male friends and family members ? If any, what’s the proportion to the number of “black males” you know ? is it *really* a danger compared to, say, the imprisonment of “black males” ?
We should be careful not to waste our energy on things that concern only a tiny portion of our fellow citizens when more important things need taking care of… Racists have been in this habit of diverting us all towards what they “care” about (themselves) instead of the rest of what should be important to humanity. They are the ones fascinated with this mix of sexuality, mixing, race and “the perpetuation of races”.
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Cornilia,
I’m speaking of every angle possible from entertainers and athletes, the media. Think about it…according to women polled, black men were rated the “most masciline”, hence the deserire for us as sexual partners. How could they (white supemacy) possibly counteract that, by waging a non-stop campaign to effeminize the image of black men. Just like when there was a study done in the 1990’s that said that black teenage females had higher self esteem that white teenage females. For the next 20 years there was an assault on black womens image until its where it is today, with rappers just refering to b@tches and Ho’s and everyone automatically thinks of black women. As for the proportion that this affects, I couldn’t tell you but I do know it has gotten more prevalent with each passing generation.
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This is sad!
God bless… Stephen Allyn Hardin
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thank you, this article give me more information about trans women
well honestly i don’t know about trans women before
is there a relation between trans women and culture?
thank you
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i hope there is no america’s transphobia anymore…
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[…] No more. […]
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Have you ever considered that those who profess to be transgender may be mentally ill and that illness is the root cause of their severe problems? Perhaps, ObamaCare will provide you and others like you with the proper psychiatric therapy and medication? If that fails, perhaps you should consult your local priest, minister or rabbi? Most people want to help you but to make your illness into a “civil right” is simply ludicrous. Hermaphrodytes have always been with us and always will be. I do not see that you need any more rights than you already enjoy.
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John –
That approach has already been tried. Prior to 1966, it was the accepted course of action to try to get trans people to embrace their assigned sex. An endocrinologist named Harry Benjamin realized that therapy simply did not work. All the evidence pointed towards transgender identity being pretty much unchangeable.
-John E. Hoopes, plastic surgeon at the Johns Hopkins gender identity clinic, 1966, quoted in Transgender Subjectivities by Jack Drescher and Ubaldo Leli
One of the main factors in categorizing any cognitive pattern as a mental illness is whether or not it prevents the person who has it from functioning; whether or not they suffer. Gender dysphoria certainly meets those criteria. “Children, particularly adolescents, and their families often find the experience of a gender identity disorder painful and unbearable, and adolescents are at a high risk of suicide attempts.” (Domenico Di Ceglie, 2000, “Gender identity disorder in young people”, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 6:458-466) If SRS helps trans folk live their lives, why shouldn’t they pursue it?
Also, please don’t conflate “hermaphrodytes” (i.e., intersex people) with transgender people. Intersex people have bodies that aren’t easily classified into male or female; transgender people were mistakenly assigned the wrong gender at birth. It is possible to be both intersex and transgender, but there are plenty of people who are one but not the other.
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@John:
Are you transgendered? Perhaps you are a transvestite or a cross-dresser? In any case it’s all good! Shop til you drop John, help the economy out!
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[…] Trans women, also called transgender women, are women whose bodies were physically determined to be male at birth. Some are transsexuals – those who have made their bodies more female through moder… Some do’s and don’t's for cisgender people:Treat trans women the same as any other woman.Use the right pronoun: she, not he or it.Use the name they call themselves.Do not out them as trans without their permission.Do not assume they are lesbian – only about a third are. Most are straight or bisexual.Do not ask what their name was “before”.Do not ask about their genitals.Do not call them “trannies” or “shemales”: those are transphobic slurs that come from the sex industry […]
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ok, first off, anyone can live the life they want; but truth is truth. you are what your genitilia say you are. There are so many phony folks out there. If a man feels he is a woman, then why not go all the way with the surgery? I have read/heard that they change the top but not the bottom part. for males, that means penis. If one is a “woman”, why not change the penis? if you want it and dont change it, you are male right? nuff said.
I have even heard the parts dont work, it is just cosmetic. A “woman” that gets a penis is not a real penis. it does not function like a real one. A man that gets a vagina gets a non-functioning one. Will he have a womb? a period? fake parts equal fake people. Accept what you are at birth; either a biological male or female
being trans is a mental disorder. nuff said.
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Stupid ass perverts need to die of AIDS
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Abagond, thank you for this post. I was not aware of the issues transgender people have to face, you have deepened my understanding and empathy.
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Check out this young transgender girl activist Jazz Jennings. I just learned about her and she and her family are amazing:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_YlBM5JAE)
and
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt_wLU_EB2w)
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A video on why transgender people would choose not to have a sex change operation:
“Transgender Parents Who Conceived Two Sons Naturally”
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Also, how about a post on the Native American concept of “two-spirits”? If memory serves, before European colonization and Christian missionaries people who felt they were the other gender than their biological sex would live as the gender they felt to be, were accepted as being spiritually gifted, and could marry.
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They just opened a clinic for trans gender teen and young children at one of the children’s hospital in the city i live in. This is very serious. Children as young as 5 years of age say they are depressed and want to kill themselves because of they feel like they are born in the wrong body.
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@Mary Burrell
Jazz’s mom says in one of the videos in response to anyone who would criticize her for letting her “son” be a girl: Would you rather have a dead son or a living transgender daughter?
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“A Transgender Bangladeshi Changes Perceptions After Catching Murder Suspects”
http://nyti.ms/1GlffJs
“Transgender people occupy an unusual social stratum in South Asia, where conservative societies still consider same-sex intercourse to be a crime but also allow the existence of a third gender — a well-established category that dates back to the age of the “Kama Sutra.” Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India have all legally recognized the existence of a third gender, including on passports and other official documents.”
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“Bangladesh’s Third Gender”
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/bangladeshs-third-gender/
“While mothers were understanding, she discovered that hijras were often rejected by their fathers. The emotional toll is evident in some pictures: One image shows a subject whose arm had cigarette burns. According to Ms. Sharmin, however, they actually harmed themselves because of the family strife and the inability to marry their male partners.”
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I follow an Asian Canadian woman named Julie Vu. She has bravely documented her change on You Tube. If you guys are interested, you should check her out. She is quite upfront about everything.
(https://www.youtube.com/user/princessjoules)
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@leigh204
She is beautiful. Did you nominate her for Asian American History month? Or rather can she considering she is not Asian “American”?
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“Feds Say Georgia’s Treatment of Transgender Prisoners Is Unconstitutional”
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/04/doj-georgia-policy-trans-inmates-unconstitutional
“For three years, the Georgia Department of Corrections allegedly has denied transgender inmate Ashley Diamond medical treatment for gender dysphoria, causing her such distress that she has attempted on multiple occasions to castrate herself, cut off her penis, and kill herself. In February, Diamond filed a lawsuit against GDC officials, and on Friday the Department of Justice dealt the GDC a major blow, claiming that the state’s failure to adequately treat inmates with gender dysphoria “constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.””
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“Transgender Mormons Struggle To Feel At Home In Their Bodies And Their Religion”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/04/transgender-mormons_n_6988818.html?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067
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Ashley Diamond article and video:
“Transgender Woman Cites Attacks and Abuse in Men’s Prison”
http://nyti.ms/1GBCq22
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I know this is an old post, but please don’t use the term “transvestite.” It’s become a seriously loaded word, as has “transsexual.” “Crossdresser” is a less loaded word for the same concept.
Your sentence “Some are transsexuals – those who have made their bodies more female through modern medicine.” does not accurately reflect the way the word “transsexual” is used today. In general, only older trans people identify with the word at all, and it has become very loaded. One reason why is that trans people, especially younger ones, tend to view its usage as tying gender identity to sex–and what surgeries they have and haven’t gotten–in undesirable ways.
I would just omit that sentence, perhaps replacing it with something like, “Trans women may or may not choose to undergo medical procedures related to transition, for a variety of reasons.”
One other nitpick (I apologize that I have so many!) is that you seem to refer to transition as a process with defined steps and an endpoint. That isn’t usually how trans people tend to see or speak of it, and is actually a common pet peeve in the trans community.
I’d love to talk to you about this in greater depth, if you have any questions or are otherwise interested. I’m Elliot Steel on Quora, and the site’s recorded my email as part of the commenting process.
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@ Elliot S.
Thanks for your comment! My answer has turned into a post. It should be up later today.
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@ Elliot S.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/tips-on-writing-about-transgender-people/
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Update (2019): Note that the language in this post is already becoming dated, particularly the use of the words “transsexual” and “transvestite”. See:
Tips on writing about transgender people.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/tips-on-writing-about-transgender-people/
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@ Elliot S.
In general I do not want to anachronize posts, though I will fix outright errors and add updates at the end.
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