there were two major events in my transition that stand out as turning points for me - one was going full time, and the other was my surgery. but i don’t believe that transition, for me, will ever end. i’ll say that i’m pretty much done with modifying my body, but transition is more than just physical. i’d go as far as to say most of it is mental.

i also feel that what makes me trans is a distinct and tangible thing, and i don’t ever see that changing.

I wonder if there isn’t some difference in pre-SRS vs. post-SRS experiences? I hesitate to make any such statement in a “blanket” fashion, but i do know that once i went full-time my experience and self-definition shifted significantly, in ways i’m not even sure i can articulate. And it makes sense to me to imagine that a similar shift would follow after transition was a thing of the past.

I feel that what makes me “trans” is a distinct and tangible thing, but i can kinda see how if it ever became a non-issue in my day to day life, the hold of trans-ness over my identity could largely evaporate.

i also point out the trouble with people who do not identify as trans, but whose gender is still denied and are not intersex.. so yes, there is at leasy one bug in the definition. but for me, one bug that may place someone who isn’t trans into the trans group, is better than the current definition, which excludes me completely.

This is a provocative notion, certainly one to think about.

Overall i like where you’re going with this. It’s good to put some emphasis on the fact that many people silence us and deny our own accounts of our experience.

But i think this is a description of our experience and not a definition. I don’t feel like that what makes me a transgender woman is that someone somewhere denies that i’m a woman. It’s a consequence of me saying, “I’m a woman,” yes, but it is not what makes me transgender.

And what constitutes denial? Suppose you have a woman, who considers herself to be a woman, with a particularly ‘mannish’ appearance. If someone somewhere doubts she’s a woman, that doesn’t make her transgender.

And this could apply to many people who are intersex as well.

Another thing that troubles me about this definition is that it shifts away from what transgender people have to say about ourselves and onto what others say about us. Which is in a way something we’ve fought very hard against.

I know i owe you a reply to your reply to my previous post, i’ll have that for ya soon.

Now for you and myself, with our life histories, that’s not much of an issue. But when you get down to intersexed people who perhaps have lived their entire lives in one gender role, it could be problematic to rely on this definition without *assuming* the level of transphobia in the world.

I think as transgender becomes more and more mainstream in the coming years, this definition will be based on a moving target of public perceptions and attitudes. Like a house built on clay, it’s not really going to stand the test of time.

ANd I like that definition