Romana’s Transgender Glossary

#	Term or Person	Definition
1.	Affectional Orientation	The gender(s) to which a person is attracted.  It may be none.
2.	Asperger’s Syndrome	This is a high-functioning form of autism.  Essentially, a person’s brain has exchanged advanced technical and scientific abilities for social function.  Male Aspies, especially, have a social disability and difficulty functioning as a man emotionally.  Some are gender-blind and a higher percentage than in the general population are transgendered and may benefit from switching gender.
3.	Aspie	See Asperger’s Syndrome
4.	Biological Reasons	No one really understands the basis of various orientations in the first place.  Intersexed persons can claim to have a biological basis, but their assertions are generally not considered legal.  Many intersexed persons are never correctly indentified, since chromosomal tests are expensive, and specific diagnoses may not do the individuals any good.   Brain sex due to hormonal influences is an area of study.  Again, oppositional groups will vigorously oppose any study that validates the existence of the gender variant.
5.	Clothing	All clothing has a connotation of gender attached.  It is a standard rule that men are not supposed to purchase or wear any article of women’s clothing.  Women, on the other hand, can usurp almost any article of men’s clothing.  Again, this is superiority versus inferiority.  Women wearing men’s clothing can gain status, while men wearing women’s clothing automatically lose status.
6.	Crossdresser	Someone who likes to wear the clothing of the opposite gender.  This can be just for fun or exploration.  It does not have to be about identity.  It can also be a stepping stone to more serious forms of alternate gender expression.
7.	Drag Queens	Most drag queens are homosexual men.  It is not about passing; rather, it is about being outrageous or clearly improperly dressed for a given situation.
8.	Elite Transsexual	This especially applies to transwomen, who have had all the surgeries, who espouse the opinion that they are more real than all other crossdressers and transgendered persons.  They feel that they have the right to diss anyone else in a condescending manner.  The sad truth is that after they die, their skeletons will be identified as male.
9.	Euphoria	Euphoria is associated with a certain thrill of crossdressing or looking exactly like a genetic woman.  It can’t be maintained.  Eventually it all becomes routine and boring.  For transsexuals who become beautiful women, the thrill begins to dissipate after a couple of years.
10.	Female Impersonation	Female Impersonators can be of any orientation.  It is considered to be an art form, but a lot of cosmetic surgery has crept in over the years.  Some dress as women only on the job; others dress a women on and off the job.
11.	Feminism	This is just the simple notion that women are people too.  Many women do not like being stuck in a gender role just because it is the prevailing societal norm. It behooves transwomen to take an interest in women’s rights, since the more status genetic women have, the more palatable gender transition becomes for males.
12.	Full-time	This is the condition people attain when they start living in their preferred gender 24/7.
13.	Gender	One’s active identity: which can be man or woman.  What is between one’s ears.  Other cultures can have more than one gender.
14.	Gender role	This about behavioral norms attached to a person’s gender by a prevailing societal structure.  Jobs, parenting roles, and so forth all have a gender-image attached to them.  People who are perceived to violate this structure are often discriminated against.   The subtle difference between gender and gender role can be difficult to describe at times.
15.	Gender-reassignment Surgery Sexual-reassignment Surgery	This is the surgery that changes the appearance of sex organs from one gender to another. It used to be about sex, but it is now acknowledged that it is a gender transformation.
16.	Genetic Woman Genetic Girl GG	These are terms used by the transgendered community to refer to women who were born female, in contrast to those who are transwomen.
17.	Homophobia	A societal allowed bias against all bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgendered persons as being perverted and queer.  It is based on perceived gender as the criteria for who should sleep with whom and dress as whom.  It is misapplied to most transgendered persons, since alternate gender identify can skew the whole concept.
18.	Intersexed	This describes persons with extra chromosomes, malfunctioning chromosomes, ambiguous genitals, or even both sets of genitals.  There is a move to prevent doctors from performing corrective surgery on babies, before they are old enough to tell us who they are.
19.	J. Michael Bailey	A controversial sexologist and friend of Ray Blanchard.  He fails to separate behavior from identity, thereby dividing transsexuals into good and perverse groups.   Once again, this is pseudo-science.
20.	Marriage	A recent poll indicates that the majority of women are very leery of dating any man who is a crossdresser; yet, there is always that wish to find that man who is more like a woman.  Non-transgendered men would be very careful about not appearing to be too feminine to avoid ridicule.  A seasoned transwoman, on the other hand, would not be embarrassed about being like a woman.  Transwomen who want to partner with straight genetic women have to choose their physical changes very carefully, since such genetic women may not want to be in bed with someone who looks too female.
21.	Maury Povich Jerry Springer Exploitation TV	This type of television attracts gender variant people on the very fringes of society.  This is exploitive entertainment, not any of real education about crossdressers and transgendered persons.
22.	Molestation	As soon as the connotation of male + skirts is made, some immediately make the association of child molester.  This kind of lie has been perpetuated for years.  Most child molesters are males who want to look very ordinary.  No crossdresser or transwoman would ever likely want to molest a child in the first place.
23.	Narcissistic Transsexual	This is a transwoman who is obsessed with her transition.  She will forge ahead, not follow any guidelines, take money from anyone, and leave friends and family in the dust.
24.	Passing Authentication	This is about looking authentic in one’s chosen gender mode, so one is not read as another gender.  Sometimes, it is all about feminization surgeries for transwomen, which can help.  However, composure and social graces are probably more important.  People who know can usually read a transwoman regardless of the detail of her cosmetic surgeries,
25.	Pornography	Browsing the web for the word transgender can generate hits on endless pornographic sites.  Crossdressing and transgenderism are not really pornographic by nature.  The association on X-rated sites is a form of exploitation and bad behavior by just a few persons.
26.	Post transition orientation for transwomen	For transwomen who undergo gender-reassignment surgery, it has been found that the subjects roughly fall into three groups: 1) Some become asexual 2) Some are still attracted to genetic women. 3) Some were already to men or chose to be attracted to men so as to visually appear to be straight.
27.	Ray Blanchard	A controversial sexologist who tries to categorize transsexuals into a neat table based on whether he classifies them as homosexual or heterosexual.  This is whether they are attracted men or just want to ogle themselves in a woman’s body, which he calls Autogynephilia, a form of self-love.  A lot of this is simply pseudo-science.
28.	Reading Being read	This is the social bane for all crossdressers and transgendered persons.  It can be discouraging to walk in public while kids, especially, are all pointing fingers.
29.	Real-life test	This is a feature where a person attempts to live in the gender of their choice 24/7.   For transsexuals, it is general set at one year.  Some can manage the one-year interval; for most, it will take longer.
30.	Sensationalism	The headline Man gets Sex-change has been a media attention-getter for a long time.  It is just the tip of the iceberg.  Most transwoman go about transitioning very quietly with little or no attention.
31.	Sex	One’s chromosomes; which can be male or female. What is between one’s legs.  There are more than two variations.
32.	Sex change	This is a misnomer, since hardly anyone can change sex.  It is actually about gender change…just visible anatomy.  In order for anyone to truly change sex, they would have to be intersexed, with working target male or female sex organs.
33.	Sex versus Gender	This controversy is still being waged.  Yes, there are significant differences between men and women.  Yes, gender can be closely related to chromosomal sex.  However, they fail to account for anyone who feels stressed by their gender classification, especially intersexed and transgendered persons; even going so far as to say that such people are simply defiantly refusing to conform.
34.	Sexism and Status Superiority versus Inferiority	It is no secret that our society is very male-dominated.  Men’s needs have higher priority than women’s needs.  In most of the visual arts, standard depiction of the division of the sexes is the rule.  Transwomen are vilified for opting for an inferior (woman) role instead of a superior (man) role.  This alone devalues all women, no matter what their underlying sex might be.
35.	Sexual Orientation	See sex
36.	She-males	She-males tend to be a part of the pornographic transgender scene.  All sorts of private body parts are on display.  Many of the so-called she-males are actually genetic women with prostheses.  No sensible crossdressers or transwomen want to be associated with this kind of image.
37.	Transgender	This used to be a term for someone who lived as the opposite gender without surgery.  Now, it has come to describe anyone who has issues identity issues with their assigned gender.
38.	Transition	This is the process that one goes through to switch from one gender to another.  This is a scary set of identity readjustments, especially since there are really no societal rules that even encourage this to happen.  For males, there is a strong taboo that discourages them from wearing or even buying women’s clothing.
39.	Transphobia	A somewhat crazy bias toward transgendered persons, especially when such people are classified as being a subset of homosexuality.  People’s reactions are not predictable.  Liberals and conservatives alike can be supportive or non-supportive based on indefinable whims.
40.	Transsexual	This is the part of transgenderism that gets all the press, especially for those who get the works: gender-reassignment surgery, breast implants or breast reduction, facial surgery, body contouring, and voice surgery.  Not everyone wants the gender-reassignment surgery.  Such people are called non-op transsexuals, regardless what other surgeries they may have had.
41.	Transvestite	This is an old term to describe someone who gets a sexual high by crossdressing.  There are a few such persons.  It has unflattering connotations of perversion.  People of many orientations play all sorts of clothing games for sexual arousal.  It’s normal, and no one has to be singled out for any accusations.
42.	Transwoman (male) Transman (female)	These are kinder terms for seriously transgendered or transsexual persons that do not contain the S-E-X connotation.  Usually, any and all surgeries might be kept private, since strangers and the press do not have a need-to-know.