Read on Twitter
It's not very trendy to use the word "transsexual" presently, but I think it's important for the transgender liberation project to acknowledge that there are trans people who transsex and who don't, just as a distinction in behaviour and survival needs if nothing else.
The population of trans people is often given as 1% (which is the number of people who identify as other than their assigned sex in random surveys). The number of people presently who actually undergo transition related treatments is more like 70k (maybe 100k as an upper limit).
Not everyone who socially transitions undergoes any sort of physical modification to support that of course, and not everyone who transitions medically has a "binary" gender identity. The latter is often a point missed by people who counterpose "Transsexual" with "non binary".
When we're talking about policy issues like GRA reform, I think it's important to look at who and is affected and how because of the numerous ways that transphobes end up gaming the numbers to make us simultaneously a huge threat, and at the same time,..
..the number of us seeking to make use of protections necessary is so *so* few that it's hard to see how the problem has been blown so greatly out of proportion.
Take for instance the suggestions that we could meaningfully ask for "third spaces" just for transsexual people's safety, whether in domestic violence shelters or in prison where we are fewer than 1/400 inmates.
Sorry for clarity the 70k was in the UK, which equates to around 0.1%, or 1/1000 https://twitter.com/Chican3ry/status/1286183133319135232?s=19
It's in the context of numbers like this we see people yelling about "4000% increase in trans masc presenting patients at gender identity services" only to find that in absolute numbers it's only a few hundred people a year.
Those figures are generally also given without any reference to the number who through counseling or time spent on a waiting list come to discover that transition isn't for them.
Last point on this:
The reason it's not trendy to use the word transsexual is because it's a medical term - it carries medical stigma.
I'm not saying we should embrace that wholeheartedly. I'm saying it has use as a descriptor relating to some needs.
The reason it's not trendy to use the word transsexual is because it's a medical term - it carries medical stigma.
I'm not saying we should embrace that wholeheartedly. I'm saying it has use as a descriptor relating to some needs.
