what does this even mean? zero investigation terf-vibes-based analysis has ruined discourse forever 
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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Really the only people I am comfortable using “transsexual” is elderly trans folk who grew up using that terminology. They’ve been fighting the good fight longer than we have, so I have no right to police the words they use to describe themselves. Younger trans folk should move away from such terms (as we are) because it’s just harmful language.
I don't agree that it's your place to determine who should or should not use certain words to describe themselves, and I think maybe it is important for you to consider the idea of you determining who you are "comfortable" with self-describing as transsexual. Imagine if someone said they were uncomfortable with the language you use to self-describe and that it's just harmful (for instance, this is a very common thing that people say about neopronouns, and is offensive for obvious reasons).
I have a lot to say about this, but I will keep this short: however someone self-describes is no one else's business, and it is rather unkind for trans spaces to have people talking about certain designations as uncomfortable or "just harmful," and also misses that transsexual is more prevalent in particularly non-Anglo contexts (especially in the Global South), and thus there is also a chauvinistic element to imposing language that is comfortable in your cultural context on people living in a different cultural context. Especially when so much of queer terminology is already based on the feelings of comfort of predominantly white queer people in Anglo-America, and often erases, diminishes, or outright rejects the linguistic identifiers of others.
This comment is bullshit because any term can be "linked to the autogynephilia bs." That's the fault of the oppressor, not transsexuals. Queer people are bs now because queer is linked to British fascist movements that did gay bashing? Transgender people are bs because it's linked to the transgenderism woke mind virus bs? This is a pathetic argument.
I understand that different languages and cultures have different ways of expressing gender, but I still think that you are allowed to critique how they approach their terminology, especially when those terms are in your native language.
Transsexual refers to trans people in an explicitly sexual way and puts a heavy emphasis on genitals and sexual characteristics. In my opinion it is a term that overly sexualizes us and erases our identity as a person and it’s continued usage further empowers transmedicalist ideology.
"overly sexualizes us" and yet you don't identify as transsexual. This is a personal problem, where you personally don't feel represented by a word, and yet you feel confident telling other people that the language they do feel comfortable with and use to self-describe is harmful and damaging to you. This is the height of arrogance.
Sure, say that you don't want to be called transsexual. That's fair. But that doesn't make it your place to tell transsexual people, who you are not one of, that they can't use it or it's harmful of them to do so. And it's absolutely gross to say that someone's self-identification not matching your own choice is empowering oppressive ideologies, thereby oppressing transsexual people by refusing them the safety and right to self-identify in favour of the current hegemonic term transgender.
Edit: I also want to say that in your very comment you conflate transgender, transsexual, and trans as all being interchangeable and synonymous, but that is only true to you. To many people (and by the words' very histories) these are not the same thing. To say transsexuals are harming all trans people and that they have to just use the hegemonic transgender or trans is to erase that transsexual is its own identity with its own history and its own communities of relationality.
i think most people use it without the emphasis on genitals (notice how there is not mention of genitals in the word transsexual). and even if they do, who cares? how does this erase identities or empower transmedicalism? just because you are uncomfortable with a word doesnt mean it cannot be used by anyone
The term transsexual originates solely from a medical context in regards to sex reassignment surgery. And sure, people can use it. But why would I want to encourage people to use a term which continues to be used to undermine their worth as a human? By replacing "sexual" with "gender" you expand the definition of the term past a strictly medical context to encompass cultural values. Why should I not try to explain this to them and encourage the usage of one term over another?
"Sex" is a biological classification. "Gender" goes beyond that and encompasses what somebody wants their place in society to be.
The term transsexual has become so heavily weaponized against us that its continued usage is damaging and hurtful to the overall community in my opinion. I feel the same way about someone referring to themselves as "a transsexual" as I do with someone calling themselves a t****y. While I don't consider transsexual to be a slur, I consider it to be something that should be frowned upon all the same. I don't want people normalizing a term that boils us down to sexual characteristics.
It's not just about someone calling themselves transsexual. It's about removing the term from the cultural zeitgeist so it doesn't give the impression to cis people that they can go around calling us transsexuals, because many of us are disgusted by the term. I cannot guarantee a long life expectancy of anyone who calls me one, and I'd rather avoid an extensive criminal history.
Being trans is more than just a medical condition brought about through surgery. We're not just some biological "thing."
I feel like you are really hung up on sex as to mean "biological" but I want you to consider that this (perceived) distinction between sex and gender is precisely the part that’s harmful to trans people. By separating sex into its own "biological" "scientific" reality you are missing that sex is as arbitrary as gender. Who is to decide what are sexual characteristics and what is not?
I’m done with this conversation. If you still don’t understand why many of us are uncomfortable with using outdated terminology that originates from medical fields that have been weaponized against us time and time again then there’s no point in continuing this discussion.
I understand where you are coming from. I am offering an alternative point of view to explain why many of us identify as transsexual. I don’t think it’s super useful to police language that people use to self-id.
I think it is harmful only if you concede, as in the lib trans narrative, that gender is a vibe that arises from the "physical reality" of sex and that you cannot change that physical reality but can change your vibes. If you see gender instead as a class system arising from human relations to the means of reproduction in which sex is just a gendering brand for a class of people, then the distinction between transsexual and transgender is harmless, albeit also meaningless.
Can you expand more on what you mean about the relationship between access to reproduction and gender as a classifying mechanism? Also I don't think that something being harmless qualifies it as also being meaningless, but that's just a personal opinion.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/vikky-storm-the-gender-accelerationist-manifesto
I didn't mean that it's meaningless because it's harmless, I meant that it is meaningless and harmless.
As for your question, I will have to define some terms so that we're on the same page before answering, so sorry for the incoming wall of text.
First, means of reproduction refers to the resources and tools required for human reproduction. Importantly, when saying "human reproduction", we talk about everything required to make a new human, including everything during and after birth: medical supervision of birth, childcare, schooling, safe home environment, etc. Of course, everything that happens before birth is relevant too – so, e.g., a uterus is part of the means of reproduction concept – but usually people forget about the part after so I address it specifically.
Next, humans interact with the means of reproduction and contribute reproductive labour in order to make new humans. Again, this includes everything after birth too. A guardian helping a child with schoolwork or dealing with an emotionally challenging situation is reproductive labour as much as giving birth is. A teacher providing and controlling the schoolwork is, likewise, reproductive labour.
Looking at human reproduction from this perspective, we can see a complex social organisation with many humans contributing their share of reproductive labour. The way any single human participates in this social organisation is what we call this human's relation to the means of reproduction. Relations to the means of reproduction define various aspects of the social organisation of reproduction, including but not limited to how reproductive labour is divided and who gets to decide when and how reproductive labour is performed.
Thanks for taking the time. Can I DM you if I have more questions?
Yeah sure!
Now to actually answer the question! Where does gender come in?
At some point during the development of human social organisations – Engels argues that it happened at the point when the concepts of private property and inheritance were established but we don't have to agree with him – humans understand that, even though any person's individual relation to the means of reproduction is not uniform, there are broadly certain "kinds" (or classes) of people that relate to the means of reproduction similarly. In other words, a certain class of person is typically tasked with a certain share of reproductive labour and has a certain say in when and how reproductive labour is performed. The number of these classes and what being part of a class entails exactly varies between regions, cultures, and time periods but in the Western tradition we have the two classes that are familiar: one that makes most of the decisions and one that does most of the labour.
The emergence of the different classes of people in the social organisation of reproduction based on their relations to the means of reproduction gives birth to a self-perpetuating class system in which class division is maintained with social pressure and violence. This class system is what gender is. Over the course of human history, the basis of this class system, that is, the relations to the means of reproduction, serves as fertile ground for building a cultural, vibes-based understanding of the classes. Is it a coincidence that those who make most of the decisions are expected to be assertive and blunt while those who must obey the decisions are expected to be submissive and meek?
One of the ways class division is maintained in this system is by making sure that the boundaries are never crossed. There are various approaches to this, e.g. barring a whole class of people from education, but the topic of this conversation is sex so I'll talk about sex. While sex as a concept has been useful in scientific research, within the context of the gender class system it is consistently used to "brand" a class of people with immutable characteristics. In this context, sex is the gendering label assigned to a person to ensure class division. In this context, sex is not based on "physical reality" but on whatever is more convenient for the goal of ensuring class division – see the awful example of the way Imane Khelif has been treated.
When we refuse to be confined by the gender class system in whichever way – crossing the boundary, rejecting the boundary, or rejecting the entire system altogether – we also reject the enforcement of gendering labels. Since sex is this enforcement manifested, there is no distinction between transgender and transsexual.
in less fraught circumstances maybe people would get a benefit out of implying one thing or another about their bodies with terminology but that's not the world we live in and maybe a world where it would be safe to do it like that wouldn't care enough to bother.