We all know transgender people are their intragender, transrace people are really their intrarace, and transage folks are really their intra-age. But where does that leave transautistics and transabled folks? (I have a friend that believes transautistics are just regular autistics and should embrace being autistic.) It seems like there’s a disconnect here and I haven’t seen anyone mention it. I also heard someone on pedi describe transopinion as: “you like the idea in theory and you wish you could believe it or feel like you should but you just. cant.” This seems squarely in the “want” camp.
What do you think?
I believe there is a spectrum. It has “I literally am” on one end and “I am not, but I feel a connection to” on the other. The former is more typical for transgender or diaracial people, the latter - for transharmful or transopinion ones. But a variation may exist within the same identity too. And trying to apply only one model to the entirety of being transid will inevitably leave someone out.
This opens up the interesting possibility of being trans-trans-something. There’s no obvious reason you couldn’t feel that sort of connection to being transgender or transage without actually being those things.
Yes absolutely, this concept has been mentioned before in the official TransID.org Discord Server!
I agree. I figure there’s a comparison to be had with kinship. On one hand there’s “I am literally this” and on the other “I feel a connection to this”, with of course a multitude of varied experiences in between.
we aren’t transgender but are nonbinary transidgender, xenorace, & transage, and for transidgender & xenorace it is want to be for us, not internally that. same with lots of other transid we r like transspecies, transorientation & transabled. want to be is how we primarily view r transids
Just as a heads up, the lemmy isn’t very active yet so it might take a bit for people to start answering
It’s a complicated topic for sure. It kind of calls to mind what’s a social construct and what’s not, cuz I’d say things like gender and race are definitely social constructs, but things specific disabilities and species?
It’s hard to find where to draw the line. I think getting into the semantics of it all just leads to discourse “oh transgender is only valid because it’s a social construct! X isn’t so you can’t be transX”
Though obviously you’re not trying to start discourse about what’s valid and what’s not. It’d be easy to say that all of the identities are "to be"s or all of them are "to want"s, but I don’t know if it’s correct to say either. I think there’s definitely some divide, but it’s not one I want to pay attention to cuz it’ll just lead to validity politics and people trying to cause separation.
a trans person IS whoever and whatever they say they are.
