An Introduction to Transness

When you hear the word “transgender”, what do you think of? What comes to mind? How do you define it?

I’m going to give you a moment to ponder this before I dive into what it really means.

Simply defined, transgender refers to anyone whose gender identity does not correspond to their assigned sex at birth. For example, I was assigned female at birth but I am not a woman. By definition, that makes me transgender, or “trans” for short. Sounds simple, right? Well, it depends on how you think about gender.

If you, like most people, were raised under the assumption that gender is a binary and that there are two genders (men and women), then your understanding of transness will exist within that binary. Someone assigned female at birth would transition and is a man, and someone assigned male at birth would transition and is a woman. There are plenty of trans people who do exist within this binary.

Let’s take this another step forward. Imagine that gender identity is a spectrum between men and women. There are both cisgender and transgender people (cisgender = someone whose gender identity does correspond with their sex) who are on each end of the spectrum. And, there are people at all points in between. Now, let’s say this spectrum is placed inside a bubble, and we’ll call this bubble gender. There are people whose are inside the bubble on the spectrum, inside the bubble but off the spectrum, and outside the bubble. By definition, anyone who is not at one of the binary ends of that spectrum we talked about earlier is transgender. Not every person will choose to use this label for themself, however.

A dark blue to dark pink spectrum with the words “Men” and “Women” on either side. It is labeled “BINARY SPECTRUM”. The spectrum is surrounded by a purple circle which is labeled “GENDER”.

There are many different labels which people use to describe their gender identity, and people may use different combinations of labels to describe where in this spectrum-bubble gender construct they exist. Transgender is a large umbrella term which has other umbrella terms and more specific terms within it. An example of this is nonbinary, which is an umbrella term referring to anyone who does not fit within the men-women gender binary. Although every nonbinary person is technically transgender, not all nonbinary people use the term transgender to describe themselves. Many will also use more specific terms to describe their gender identities, such as genderfluid, agender, demiboy, demigirl, or demiflux, just to name a few. There are also some transgender women and men who will use other labels such as nonbinary to describe their gender identities.

A bubble with a pale blue to pale pink gradient and a white line in the middle with the word “TRANSGENDER” across the top. There are two smaller circles inside. One is a dark pink to dark blue gradient with the text “BINARY GENDERS (WOMEN AND MEN)”, which overlaps with the other circle, which is yellow, white, purple, and black and says “NONBINARY GENDERS (MANY LABELS)”. The two circles overlap because the categories are not mutually exclusive.

Still with me? Stick around for more useful de-constructing and re-constructing of gender. I promise you, it will be worth it.