A: No. Gay trans men are men, and they are attracted to other men, which makes them not straight. Lesbian trans women are women, and they are attracted to other women, which also makes them not straight.

Many queer trans people are not straight because they aren’t exclusively attracted to one gender. Results from the 2015 US Transgender Survey suggest that this group comprises the majority of queer trans people. 32% of all the trans people in the survey classified themselves as either “bisexual” or “pansexual,” and an additional 21% simply labeled themselves as “queer.” By comparison, 16% labeled themselves as “gay, lesbian, or same-gender loving” and only 15% labeled themselves “straight or heterosexual.”

Finally, let’s pause a moment to unpack the stereotype of a person with blue hair who wants to feel special. When you picture that person, you’re probably picturing a college student, or a recent graduate in their early 20s. But there are many older queer trans people. As the stories of figures like Leslie Feinberg, Lou Sullivan, and Sandy Stone illustrate, there have been trans people who explicitly understood themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual for decades.

Anyway, what would be wrong with queer trans people wanting to feel special? Like all human beings, queer trans people are special. If you’re cis, the existence of queer trans people doesn’t make your existence any less meaningful or valuable.

Further reading

• Sarah Karlan, Here’s what older trans and nonbinary people want you to know
• Jess T. Dugan and Vanessa Fabbre, To Survive on this Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults

A: No; most of us don’t want to have sex with you either. It’d be great if you could stop giving us unwanted comments about our bodies, though.

A: No. Plenty of us took biology in school; some of us have PhDs and work as biologists. But “biological sex,” when used to exclude trans people from social and legal protections, is a moving target.

Is it about chromosomes? Or gamete size? Or genitals? Or what’s listed on a person’s birth certificate? (Or their original birth certificate, to prevent a trans person from legally changing their biological sex?) Usually, it’s about whatever conveniently justifies the view that trans people are not who we say we are.

In fact, trans people are likely to be more knowledgeable than cis people to know about the aspects of biology that affect our lives. A lot of cis people don’t understand what spironolactone is, or the various delivery methods for testosterone and their different costs and benefits, or even that hormone therapy causes trans women to grow breasts.

We know our bodies as well as cis people know their own bodies (and better than cis people know our bodies). We know our biology facts as well as cis people know their biology facts (and for biology facts that are directly related to transition, we tend to know them better). And we are trans.

Further reading

• Zinnia Jones, Stop Calling Trans Women “Male”
• Julia Serano, Transgender People and “Biological Sex” Myths
• Twitter thread by ScienceVet
• Claire Ainsworth, Sex Redefined

A: No, for several reasons.

First, trans men are not girls. In phrasing this question, I chose the word “girls” on purpose: a lot of concern about trans men is infantilizing, and incorrectly assumes that trans men are incapable of making their own medical decisions. You should trust trans men when they say they’re not women, and you should trust adult trans men to understand themselves and their needs.

Second, many trans men are missing another property that’s essential for lesbianism: a primary sexual and romantic interest in women. In the 2015 US Trans Survey, only 23% of the trans men surveyed listed themselves as straight or heterosexual (the option you would expect a trans man to choose if he was primarily sexually or romantically interested in women). 12% identified as gay, lesbian, or same-gender-loving, and a majority (53%) listed themselves as bisexual, pansexual, or queer. The remainder either listed themselves as asexual (7%) or did not answer the question (5%).

It is true that the boundaries between butch lesbians and trans men are sometimes fluid, and that lesbian spaces often provide support and community for trans men. But that doesn’t make lesbians and trans men the same. Luckily, there is plenty of room for lesbians and trans men to exist alongside each other, without anyone being diminished.

Further reading

• queertransmen.org, an Ontario-based resource with information about, and support for, queer trans men
• Charlie Kiss, The idea that trans men are “lesbians in denial” is demeaning and wrong
• Dawn Ennis, Erased No More: Five trans men share their struggles

A: No. Trans men have existed for centuries, and have been able to medically transition for about 70 years. Meanwhile, the concept of a butch identity has existed since the beginning of the 20th century, and masculine women have existed for much longer than that.

We’re different, but nobody’s destroying anybody just by existing. There is room in the world for all of us to coexist: butch lesbians, trans men, female-assigned genderqueer and nonbinary people, and everybody else.

A: There’s no good evidence that this is a real social phenomenon. I’ll give details in three parts: first, some true information about transition in children and adolescents; second, a quick critique of some misinformation about so-called “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria” (with links to more thorough breakdowns), and third, some thoughts about broader perspective.

Best practices for managing transition in children and adolescents

Let’s start with some accurate information about how transition works in children, from the Standards of Care published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. While the Standards of Care are not legally binding, they are widely considered best practices, and, in the words of the document itself, “based on the best available science and expert professional consensus.”

• For a pre-pubescent child, the main intervention is social transition, meaning that the child is called by a different name and pronouns.
• Once someone hits puberty, they may be given a class of drugs that block the hormones that would otherwise cause puberty, in order to give them more time to make a decision about the irreversible changes that come with puberty.
• If they arrive at a firm decision that they want to transition, they are then given hormones to cause with the puberty of the gender they want.
• Genital surgery is not recommended until the person is an adult for the purposes of medical decision-making, and has been living in their preferred gender role for at least a year. For top surgery (to remove unwanted breasts), the Standards of Care recommendations are less one-size-fits all, but recommend that this happen only “after ample time of living in the desired gender role and after one year of testosterone treatment.”

To sum up: the main treatment for young children is to call them by a different name and pronouns, which is as medically non-invasive as you can get. Kids who are not sure about puberty can delay making a choice with hormone blockers. More permanent medical treatments happen only after the onset of puberty, and only after the adolescent has arrived at a firm decision about what they want.

The Myth of Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria

You may have read about “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD),” a made-up phenomenon in which teenage girls suddenly claim to be transgender due to a social contagion, and are pushed into transitions that they later regret. ROGD may sound scientific with its fancy name, but it was invented in 2016 by a handful of anti-trans websites, and then picked up and amplified by right-wing media. Julia Serano does a thorough job debunking ROGD here.

To date, there has been one paper published on ROGD. It appeared in the journal PLOS-ONE (which specializes in volume over quality control); the author interviewed twelve parents of transgender children (recruited through anti-trans websites) and zero transgender children. The article is debunked by Zinnia Jones here; and an earlier (similarly flawed) poster version is debunked by Brynn Tanhill here.

Bigger perspective

Finally, here’s some broader perspective on trans children and adolescents.

Withholding transition is not a neutral option. There are costs to forcing a trans child or adolescent to live in a social role they’re not comfortable with, and costs to forcing them to undergo an unwanted puberty (which has irreversible physical and psychological effects).

And sure, rushing kids into a transition you’re not sure they want would be bad, for the same reason that rushing kids into anything is bad. Fortunately, actual best practice is to listen to trans children, think about their needs, and try to provide age-appropriate, proportionate care.

Further reading

• Samantha Allan, It’s Absurd to Claim That Trans Kids Are Being ‘Rushed’ Into Transitioning
• Julia Serano, Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates (and follow-up); see also Transgender Agendas, Social Contagion, Peer Pressure, and Prevalence
• German Lopez, The debate about transgender children and “detransitioning” is really about transphobia
• Florence Ashley, Why “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria” is Bad Science

A: No. Nonbinary people are claiming to be neither male nor female. This is compatible with the claim that many other people are either male or female, and also with the claim that sexism remains a serious problem.

Many nonbinary people (including the nonbinary authors of this blog) do not think that we live in a post-patriarchy society. Nonbinary people experience hostility and discrimination on the basis of our genders, and while this discrimination is not identical to the sexism experienced by women, it is connected to that sexism.

Further reading

• Ozy Frantz, Gender Is A Spectrum And Your Argument Is Stupid
• Robin Dembroff, Why Be Nonbinary? and Beyond Binary: Genderqueer as Critical Gender Kind
• X. Rio, I’m a Non-Binary Feminist: How I Negotiate My Gender & Politics in the Workplace and Beyond

A: Being trans doesn’t commit you to anything, aside from the claim that you belong to a gender category different from the one that everyone assumed you belonged to when you were born. Different trans people have different reasons for transitioning, and different understandings of what transition means in their lives.

But we often have to explain ourselves in settings where the cis people around us, with simplistic views, assume that gender essentialism is true. Sometimes these cis people have power over our access to goods like healthcare. Just as the movement for marriage equality rely on the simplistic claim that sexual orientation is innate, trans people fighting for our rights sometimes rely on the simplistic claim that we were “born in the wrong body,” because it’s the easiest way to communicate a complex reality to the people around us.

Further reading

• Ozy Frantz, Lies to Cis People
• Natalie Reed, Trapped In A (Wo)Man’s Body and Born This Way (Reprise): The New Essentialism

A: What is a slur? I’ll list some plausible criteria, all of which a term has to meet in order to count as a slur:

1. Slurs apply to people based on their identity (or perceived identity) as part or a particular social group (e.g. a gender, orientation, race, or ethnicity).
2. Slurs apply specifically to groups that are systematically marginalized.
3. Slurs are derogatory: Their use carries negative connotations about the subject.
4. Slurs have neutral counterparts which convey the same information without being derogatory.
5. It’s wrong to use slurs.

Now that we have a working definition of a slur, let’s consider whether “cis” (or “cisgender”) meets those criteria.  

First off, cis people aren’t systematically marginalized in our society; they have social and political privilege. “Cis” is already a neutral term, and there is no concise neutral alternative that would convey the same meaning. It’s also descriptive and not derogatory. Use of the term developed as a linguistic way of normalizing trans identities. It’s derived from the Latin prefix “cis-” meaning “on the same side.” It is the grammatical opposite of “transgender,” which is derived from the Latin prefix “trans-” meaning “across.” In short, a trans person is someone whose gender does not match the gender they were designated at birth, whereas a cis person’s gender does match the gender they were designated at birth.

It’s not wrong to use the word “cis” because the word has a clear, neutral, and academic purpose; it fills a conceptual gap in our language. Given (4), slurs have no purpose other than to (at best) demean and marginalize the subject.

But what about people who say things like “die cis scum”? Isn’t that derogatory? Sure, but think about it: “Cis” is the only part of that sentence that’s not derogatory. Substitute any neutral descriptive word for a social identity– trans, white, liberal, capitalist, Marxist, Canadian, etc.– and you’ll see that putting the word in a sentence whose overall meaning is derogatory does not automatically make the word itself derogatory.

Further reading

• Jessica Compton, The “Cis is a Slur” Phenomenon
• James St. James, 6 Reasons Why Being Called a Cis Person Is Not ‘Oppressive’
• Rebecca Kukla, Slurs, Interpellation, and Ideology

A: What is a slur? I’ll list some plausible criteria, all of which a term has to meet in order to count as a slur:

1. Slurs apply to people based on their identity (or perceived identity) as part or a particular social group (e.g. a gender, orientation, race, or ethnicity).
2. Slurs apply specifically to groups that are systematically marginalized.
3. Slurs are derogatory: Their use carries negative connotations about the subject.
4. Slurs have neutral counterparts which convey the same information without being derogatory.
5. It’s wrong to use slurs.

Now that we have a working definition of a slur, let’s consider whether “TERF” meets those criteria.  

First off, “TERF” is not a subjective identity term like “trans,” “gay,” or “woman.” Trans people and allies generally use the word “TERF” to refer to people who identify as radical feminists (radfems) and openly consider trans identities to be invalid.

TERFs would probably argue that “TERF” is a slur against women– meaning, on their account, cis women. This is simply inaccurate: The term doesn’t apply only to cis women, since, for instance, some cis men are trans-antagonistic feminists; and it doesn’t apply to all cis women. It was introduced to draw a distinction among radfems, with cis women on both sides of the line. Furthermore, while we can all agree that (cis) women are systematically marginalized because (cis) men have social and political privilege over them, cis women nonetheless have similar privilege over trans women.

Is “TERF” a derogatory term? People who use “TERF” to describe others generally think it’s a bad thing to be, but it’s not wrong to derogate things that are in fact bad. Many TERFs are actively hostile toward trans people and perpetuate views that lead to misunderstanding, injustice, and violence toward trans people. In other words, if trans people are hateful or contemptuous of TERFs, it’s for the same reason TERFs are contemptuous of men: Who wouldn’t be contemptuous of people who constantly hurt them, suppress their voices, and deny them agency?

We can add that it isn’t wrong to use the word “TERF” for the same reason it isn’t wrong to use “transphobe,” “homophobe,” “racist,” etc.: Even if these are derogatory, they’re punching up, and their purpose is to name an injustice in order to draw attention to and ultimately eradicate it. They give systematically marginalized people a way to explain and communicate their experiences. Given (4), slurs have no purpose other than to (at best) demean and marginalize the subject.

Further reading

• Rebecca Kukla, Slurs, Interpellation, and Ideology
• Rachel McKinnon, The Epistemology of Propaganda
• Rachel McKinnon, ‘TERF’ is not a slur (video)
• Viv Smythe, I’m credited with having coined the word ‘Terf’. Here’s how it happened
• Cristan Williams, Are Misogynist, Homophobe, & TERF slurs?