In terms on gender, I identify first and foremost as “transsexual.” Transsexual girl and then woman, specifically, as the quality of my transsexualism rather than as a separate identity. They’re synthetical, not stacked.
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I resonate with a lot of what you're writing here (in particular that embracing my trans experiment makes me more genuine) but for me it's woman 1st, trans 2nd, lesbian 3rd. I feel like I denied my own womanhood for so long that I need to put it first now I've figured it out and done stuff about it.
aug 22, 2025, 9:03 pm • 2 0 • view
Politically, I should be understood primarily as a woman, because I am one. But the gendered social identity I see as most pervading and underlying my life-long experience is as a transsexual, as transfeminine.
aug 22, 2025, 8:28 pm • 48 1 • view
In other words even in times of my life when it might be considered most logical to see me as a type of boy, I was still a transsexual. During times when I was not sure of what identified as in my mind, I was still a transsexual.
aug 22, 2025, 8:29 pm • 44 0 • view
I’ve noticed some discomfort from other trans people about this, often with the criticism that I’m third-gendering myself or all trans women as a group. What I notice is that other parallel self-concepts—like non-binary man/woman, or lesbian-as-gender—don’t seem to garner the same suspicion.
aug 22, 2025, 8:31 pm • 41 0 • view
Because I don’t want to dismiss the underlying emotions that lead people to feel that suspicion, I’ve thought a lot about why this can be and why I feel differently about it.
aug 22, 2025, 8:32 pm • 30 0 • view
One explanation that stands out to me is that “transsexual-as-gender,” especially as something that’s positively embraced, seems to have much more of a history for heterosexual trans women. We are after all the historically “default trans woman” in all but recent cultural imagination.
aug 22, 2025, 8:35 pm • 33 0 • view
Idk if this is relevant to this at all but I was sorta down a Virginia Prince/Tri-Ess rabbithole and I think that she really set things back for trans lesbians (well, trans women in general but esp lesbians) and sorta contributed to transsexuality and lesbianism being seen as “incompatible”
aug 24, 2025, 1:50 am • 1 0 • view
Of course that makes me appreciate more why there can be sensitivity around this topic, but I also think it’s a positive thing for different kinds of trans people to mark out our own life and self stories, as parts of a population that are really very heterogenous.
aug 22, 2025, 8:37 pm • 28 0 • view
I also don’t like the argument that I’m “third-sexing myself,” as if it’s something coming from me that I imposed onto my life, rather than what it really is: being aware of something that’s already in my life, already part of who I am, and learning to embrace it.
aug 22, 2025, 8:41 pm • 32 1 • view
And what I find is that the more I embrace this, the less gender dysphoric I feel, the more I feel able to accept my life and my body, and the more I feel able to be compassionate with myself.
aug 22, 2025, 8:42 pm • 36 0 • view
the more i embrace and grow comfortable with it, often the more i end up relating with cis women about their own incongruently sexed bodies
aug 22, 2025, 8:48 pm • 10 0 • view
I feel a similar way. Transsexual and tranny are a strong identity for me.
aug 22, 2025, 9:16 pm • 1 0 • view
Over time I’ve become more comfortable listening to my intuition about this rather than worrying about how others will feel about this, and it’s been a necessary step in working with my mental illness and deciding who and what I’m happiest being.
aug 22, 2025, 8:45 pm • 29 0 • view
I also recognize that part of the charge here is that this “transsexual-as-gender” history is also a big component of the HSTS concept. But that’s also why I like exploring these things and finding less scary ways to talk about them. bsky.app/profile/godd...
aug 22, 2025, 8:52 pm • 18 0 • view
I get this, I think. Like it's not quite the same thing but I very much identify as a *trans* woman, specifically. Not in the sense that I see transness as an asterisk next to my womanhood but in the sense that my womanhood is trans, if that makes sense.
aug 22, 2025, 11:46 pm • 2 0 • view
Being trans is as foundational to my self-concept as being a woman is.
aug 22, 2025, 11:46 pm • 2 0 • view
Kinda find it weird for it not to be. Think the reticence some have around this is because of the way transness is used both to invalidate a gender and as an attack vector. But that is about fear of examining or vocalising such a concept, rather than anything 🤷♀️
aug 23, 2025, 5:27 am • 1 0 • view