LGBTAI+ Question and Discussion Thread IV: [Citation Needed]

[Heliomance]

I tend to go with transgenderism, I have no idea if there's a widely accepted term.

[noparlpf]

I think people are tending to use transgenderism recently, but I'm not positive. Transsexuality seems to have been falling out of use in the last several years.

[lio45]

Transgenderism seems to be the alternative, but that feels... wrong. Like it's an ideology or a type of discrimination. Or is that my own hangup, no one else's?

It's not only your own hangup, I see it as well. Orthographically speaking, "transgenderity" would be a better choice in my opinion (I just invented the term after seeing you had a good point, no idea if it exists already).

[lio45]

I tend to go with transgenderism, I have no idea if there's a widely accepted term.

As Serpentine says though, it's the word that would also serve for "the state of being bigoted against transgender people", using generally accepted orthography conventions.

[noparlpf]

I wouldn't worry about that. I don't see the usage somehow reversing entirely so "transgenderism" replaces "transphobia."

[Delicious Taffy]

Is it pretty common to refer to myself in masculine terms, and then almost instantly feel the need to apologise? Any time I say something like "I'm a guy" or "I'm a man", it feels...I dunno, dirty. Like I'm telling a lie or being "edgy", somehow. There's just an odd, sort of loaded connotation to terms like that, in my head. It's not quite a guilty feeling (Why would I feel guilty for being male?), but there's always a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, like what I'm saying is wrong in some way.

I don't really think I'm having any sort of gender identity crisis, or anything like that. There's just an odd sensation I can't really describe well, every time I refer to or think of myself as male.

[Sobol]

but there's always a nagging feeling in the back of my mind, like what I'm saying is wrong in some way.

Maybe you just feel that your gender is very, very far from being the most important and essential part of your personality? Which is perfectly fine.


In my native language, you have to state your gender almost constantly. Even when saying a simple thing like "I ate a banana" - а woman will say "я съела банан" ("ya s'yela banan"), while a man - "я съел банан" ("ya s'yel banan").

[Serpentine]

I suppose the more succinct and direct way of asking my question is this: If I use the word "transsexuality" when referring to concepts or states as opposed to people, am I wrong and/or offensive? If so, what should I say instead?

The word "Transsexual" has fallen out of favor in favor of "Transgender", although many elder trans people still
identify with and prefer "Transsexual". The newer generation considers the term TS to be overly obsessed with genitalia and physical acts. "Transgender" or simply "Trans" is normally used for everything by most people who discuss the subject.

As I explain here, where I meant to post, I'm talking about referring to concepts, not people.

Sample sentence*: "There has been a lot of study into the origins of homosexuality and transsexuality".


*not the one that prompted this question, because that's rubbish.

[Astrella]

I don't think you're offensive, but then again I personally have very little issue with being called transsexual either. Might be worth asking on reddit on r/asktransgender cause you'll reach a way bigger audience there. You could always just say something like "transgender issues" or "transgender identity" etc... that seems the way organizations around here refer to it at least.

[Chen]

Sample sentence*: "There has been a lot of study into the origins of homosexuality and transsexuality".

That sentence in particular makes it not fit well. Ending something with -sexuality tends to imply a sexual orientation as focus. I think "transgenderism" fits better in general, and certainly in that sentence. Whether its offensive of or not, I have no idea, but it feel inaccurate at the least.

[lio45]

I wouldn't worry about that. I don't see the usage somehow reversing entirely so "transgenderism" replaces "transphobia."

To me they seem to be different concepts, like racism and xenophobia.

Spoiler

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"transphobia" to me would be something like "OMG I risk encountering one of them in my gendered bathroom, the horror!" while "transgenderism" would be more like "I'd hire that person, but there's a risk that some of the other employees would find him to be a bit of a freak and it's going to be complicated, I don't need the extra trouble so I'll go with someone else"

"Transgenderness" does not sound elegant enough, I guess...?

[Irish Musician]

Huh.....in my mind "transgender" and "transsexual" were not the same thing. As in, being transgender had to do with being a different gender than you were born with. While Transsexual was....I dunno, different? I guess I never had a concrete meaning in my mind what it was to be one or the other. Just that they were different.

I was clearly wrong lol Thanks for that question Serp!

[Coidzor]

As Serpentine says though, it's the word that would also serve for "the state of being bigoted against transgender people", using generally accepted orthography conventions.

Thankfully, English is a wonderfully inconsistent language and it's easy to correct ignorance of the current state of affairs.

[KarlMarx]

Does anyone know if any of the Roman poets had significant discussion or focus on non-heterosexual themes? I know that Greeks, most notably Sappho, did, but I can only read Latin.

[Sobol]

Does anyone know if any of the Roman poets had significant discussion or focus on non-heterosexual themes? I know that Greeks, most notably Sappho, did, but I can only read Latin.

Catullus (who was a huge Sappho fan) - see poems 48, 81, 99, 24; 15, 21; 56, 40, 103, 106 concerning Juventius. Poem 63 about Attis may also be of interest to gender studies.

(48)

Mellitos oculos tuos, Iuventi,
si quis me sinat usque basiare,
usque ad milia basiem trecenta,
nec numquam videar satur futurus,
non si densior aridis aristis
sit nostrae seges osculationis.

Virgil in Bucolics (2, 3) - imitating Theocritus' Idylls, where homosexuality is a more prominent theme.

There are two notable transgender characters in Ovid's Metamorphoses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphis_(Cretan)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caeneus

There's also a short and very obscene anonymous book of poems, Carmina Priapea.

Satyricon by Petronius deals much with homosexuality - but that's not poetry.

[golentan]

I have a question, though I think the answer might violate forum rules so... Don't get yourself in trouble if so?

I've seen a lot on my facebook LGBT feed about "truscum." And the way it's used seems to vary a LOT. What the heck does it mean?

[Astrella]

At baseline, people who believe you need to have dysphoria to be trans. (I personally don't ascribe to that idea, don't think you need debilitating dysphoria to be trans; gender euphoria is a thing too.) But in practice it can dissolve into gatekeeping / defending of medical gatekeeping practices.

[The Extinguisher]

I have a question, though I think the answer might violate forum rules so... Don't get yourself in trouble if so?

I've seen a lot on my facebook LGBT feed about "truscum." And the way it's used seems to vary a LOT. What the heck does it mean?

Basically, it refers to trans people who believe that dysphoria is the sole marker for being trans, and other things that make trans people, in their eyes, not "true" trans people. Its primarily used regarding dysphoria, but it's applicable in other cases (like it's not strictly anti-nb but theyre usually paired)

I'm also pretty sure it's a self identifier? Like it's similar to TERF in that a lot of them call themselves that.

[Delusion]

It's also short for True Transsexual Scum.

[The Eye]

As a straight male I always had many characters in media to be inspired by, it seems the same can't be said by the LGBT people, so I wonder.

1- What was the first queer character you saw?
2- Which one you adopted as your role model?

I think the first character in media that I released was completely queer was fifth element Ruby Rhod.

[Heliomance]

Willow Rosenburg. It was before I had the faintest inkling I was queer though. I had such a crush on Willow!

[Recherché]

I honestly don't remember the first queer character I saw but that's partially because I was probably in elementary school at the time. My family was pretty darn open and didn't make a big deal about sexual orientation. As far as role models go I don't really have one. -shrug- I'm not really one for role models in the first place and there's no fictional character that I'd specifically model myself off of.

[2D8HP]

Your first was from Fifth Element?

Yet another reminder of how much younger most people are.

Anyway....

1- What was the first queer character you saw?

Spoiler: Probably in this unflattering comic that I first read in the early to mid 1970's

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2- Which one you adopted as your role model?

As a teenager at Berkeley High School in the 1980's not trying to adopt the dress and manners of innumerable "queer" New Wave/pop/punk/rock stars was unusual.

Let's just say that I can still speak and sing almost every word from The Rocky Horror Picture Show more than 35 years after I learned them.

I'm a product of a certain time and place.
I'm not proud but I'm not ashamed either.

What puzzles me is how many in this Forum seem to regard "queerness" as something new.

What isolated place are they from?

[Lycunadari]

As a straight male I always had many characters in media to be inspired by, it seems the same can't be said by the LGBT people, so I wonder.

1- What was the first queer character you saw?
2- Which one you adopted as your role model?

I think the first character in media that I released was completely queer was fifth element Ruby Rhod.

I can't believe I never saw a queer character before, but the first I can remember is actually Vaarsuuvius, and that was only six years ago. No wonder it took me so long to figure out that I'm queer (I mean, 17 isn't super late, but I could have figured it out so much sooner if I had known that there are other options besides gay and straight, and that being trans/genderqueer is a thing). I didn't know any real queer people either before I joined this forum.
Granted, I didn't watch TV as a child, and until a few years ago I could count the times I had been to the cinema on one hand, so if there were any queer characters on TV or in movies, I wouldn't know. But I read a lot of books, and they were all really straight. Maybe some queer subtext if you were looking for it (which I wasn't back then), but definitely no obviously queer characters. (And I went to a Catholic school, so if there were other queer kids (there probably were), they were all closeted just like me).

And I didn't really have any queer role models either.

What puzzles me is how many in this Forum seem to regard "queerness" as something new.

What isolated place are they from?

Does rural Germany count as isolated?

I never really saw being queer as something new, but it was just really invisible, and still is if you are not lesbian/gay or maybe binary trans. Like, I've talked about it with my mom (who's in her 60s) and she says that when she was young, being queer simply didn't occur to her, even though she now says that she could probably have fallen in love with a woman if that had ever been an option.
And while most queer identities and such have of course existed for a long time, actual knowledge about them has only recently started to spread (with what counts as "recently" very much dependent on where you are.) Like, trans people have always existed, but we just don't know about them, and the few we do know about are often just called crossdressing men/women (like Albert Cashier). So a lot of concepts seem new because we're finding new ways to describe them, and coin new words for them, even though they aren't actually new. So "I just feel more comfortable wearing men's clothing" becomes "I am a trans man" and "I'm just not really interested in dating" becomes "I'm asexual and aromantic." And thanks to the Internet all these "new" concepts are now much more accessible to many people, and for the gay kid only just meeting other queer people online for the first time things might seem really new, because they just didn't have access to the relevant information – queer history doesn't get taught in schools, and I was lucky that sex ed for me at least included "some people are gay". So when you first find out that something exists, and you are wondering why you never heard of it before, "because it's new!" seems like a reasonable answer.
(I only found out about trans and nonbinary stuff because because I was writing about genderless elves and looked up hermaphroditism in snails and such and fell into a wikipedia hole. I thought having nonbinary people in my story was ~so original~ and then I found out that there are actually people like that! (Same with polyamory, btw.) )

I hope that makes sense?

[AuthorGirl]

In the media?

Dumbledore, I suppose, although I only recently found out that he's gay/bi. And I've been hearing the occasional Tegan & Sara song for as long as I can remember, though I had no idea that they were lesbians (or even that homosexual women existed).

Queer role models . . . my real-life friend who happens to be trans. She's perceptive, considerate, genuinely caring . . . generally treats her friends as well as I wish I treated mine.



Are there successful, openly queer people in the mainstream media?

[2D8HP]

....so if there were other queer kids (there probably were), they were all closeted just like me)...
.....I never really saw being queer as something new, but it was just really invisible...
....I hope that makes sense?

It makes sense, it's just that it seems strange to me as if we didn't know about "the varieties of human sexuality" it was taught in our "Social Living" classes (mine was in 1980 when I was 12 years old), and by the time I was almost legally an adult I had "out" friends and acquaintances, no not the majority of people, maybe a dozen out of the hundreds I knew (I went to a large urban school), not just "gay" but "trans" "bi", etc., and it was a reasonable assumption that other people I knew just didn't share that about themselves.

There was also an STD epidemic by the mid 1980's and at the time public health workers stopped being subtle "If you do this, use this" (and yes I knew friends and teachers who died before I was even in my 20's), so it would be hard to be ignorant.

It's clear to me now that it was my area that was an outlier in recognizing that all people don't fit into a certain few molds, but it still feels strange to me that what was known to me and my fellow school kids decades ago still seems to suprise other adults and near adults today.

[Honest Tiefling]

Are there successful, openly queer people in the mainstream media?

Several actors, such as Stephen Fry, Neil Patrick Harris and George Takei are all gay. Not sure if that helps?

[Comrade]

Laverne Cox also comes to mind.

[Nemirthel]

I think the first queer character I encountered was Albus Dumbledore. I'm pretty sure I saw at least a couple awful portrayals of gay characters before I knew he was gay, but he's the first I can think of.

As for role models, the first character I can remember being able to actually relate to at all is Claire from Questionable Content/. But by the time I found out she was trans, I already had a decent idea of who I was and would have already started transitioning if not for financial constraints. I never had a character I could look at as a role model simply because there are very few trans characters in popular media and by the time I was reading media where they existed I didn't feel any need to have a role model.

[EternalMelon]

My first Queer character I was introduced to was probably Dumbledore, but of course I didn't know that at the time. After that... I dunno, I don't think I was cognisent enough about sexualitys to pick up on any queer characters until it didn't really phase me enough to remember. I do recall obsessing over Queer hints or jokes in media and fantasizing about the works exploring them more. I seemed to have a soft spot for queer romance when het romance usually bored or annoyed me. But that was probably because queer romance wasn't explored as often as samey boring het-love stories were.

As for role models... I dunno, I do have role models, and some of them are queer, but I don't model myself after their queeratude. I do have two or three female role models that I look up to (GLaDOS, Chell, Kelly Turnbull, Veronica Santangelo, a friend of mine) in terms of female role models, which I guess count. And for my sexuality I at least have an confirmed human Ace character now (Todd Chavez) in media I consume to join my real life role model (same friend as before kinda). And maybe Vaarsuvius? But I *knew* I was Ace since I was a child.

Cool questions, gave me a lot to think about and reflect on, thanks for asking and everyone for responding.