Delta

 there's nothing inherently more radical about older terms, reclaimed slurs or terms that might be considered "outdated" by parts of the community. there's nothing inherently more radical about "transsexual" than "transgender" or "genderqueer" over "nonbinary" or "queer" over specific labels.

i've seen people call themselves transsexuals, tr*nnies, d*kes, queers, f*gs, genderqueers and use those very identities to bully people they didn't like, to gatekeep, to exclude, to somehow lick nonqueer boots.

i use some terms that are considered "more acceptable" and "less radical", but my transgenderism is radical, so are my maveriquehood and nonbinarity and all my other labels. they are no more or less radical than the slurs i reclaim. i am not "assimilating" by feeling discomfort with certain words and by happening to identify with certain words the community deemed "acceptable". there is power in reclaiming a term that was forced on us, but there is also something powerful in rejecting that and creating our own words. neither is more radical or liberatory than the other.

i've seen radical transgender folk and exclusionary d*kes. i've seen liberatory enbies and assimilationist transsexuals. i've seen bellussexuals who fiercely ally with the rest of the community and f*gs who gatekeep. i've seen it all. the terms we use can only be as radical and liberatory as our politics.

a term is not inherently radical. someone's politics are.

 because let's be real, it's still often implied to be binary, medical or both.

so far, mine has been neither. medical transition steps are celebrated much more than anything else by the community, while i'm over here considering my legal name change, my voice training, my first short haircut to be just as big of a deal.

it's talked about in simplified terms of "pre-transition" and "post-transition". but when is it "post" when "passing" as nonbinary is literally impossible? how long do you have to be on HRT for it to be "post"? how can it ever be "post" if you constantly have to choose between coming out or recloseting yourself because no one just sees... you?

it doesn't feel like transition. it feels like being stuck in place, in a world that refuses to see me.