Cis people, especially in the queer community, should know by now not to use the term ‘tranny’.

It may sound like an abbreviation of transgender, but it’s so much more loaded than that, having long been used as a slur against us.

Even when I hear trans people using the term themselves I tend to recoil a bit, though I admittedly still have a lot of queer history to learn. I only recently read that tranny was our word before it fell into use as a derogatory term.

Respecting self-identification is so important for our community. While it’s not okay for other people to call trans people trannies, those who choose to use it for themselves are of course well within their rights.

The word ‘transsexual’ is another one that didn’t start out as a derogatory term, but it’s become so associated with the pathologisation of trans people that a lot of younger people consider it negative and don’t use it.

I used to find it somewhat jarring to hear other trans folks, mostly older people, refer to themselves as transsexual. But I heard a very good argument that people shouldn’t have their own words taken away from them.

The analogy someone used was around the words ‘queer’ and ‘gay’. Imagine, this trans person said, if the younger people who are beginning to use queer as an umbrella term decided that we couldn’t refer to them as gay anymore. Read more via Star Observer