Anonymous
asked:

don't use "ftm" it's outdated and offensive. it implies that the trans person was their agab, which we never were. i was always a boy, never a girl who became a boy.

anotherfagontheinternet
answered:
  1. i’m 35 years old. i’ve been IDing as trans or something similar to trans for nearly 20 years. i was probably calling myself FTM while you were playing tag during recess, anon.
  2. i WAS a girl. i IDed as a girl early in my life. i recognized myself as a girl, called myself a girl, lived as a girl, and was a girl. who then IDed as a man. hence, F t M.
  3. spend more time worrying about yourself instead of strangers on the internet, anon.

sorry not sorry if this comes off as needlessly hostile, but i’ve been getting a lot of shit from a lot of teenage trans kids about the language i use to describe my own goddamn experience, and i’m growing real fuckin weary of it.

i have elder trans friends who call themselves transsexuals and transvestites and trannies. are you going to seriously go to a 60-year-old trans person who survived the reagan years and tell her she’s not allowed to use certain language to describe herself because it might offend the delicate sensibilities of some teenager on the internet?

do yourself a favor and log off, find some real-life trans people who are over the age of 20 or 25, and spend time talking to them instead of getting all holier-than-thou at random strangers on tumblr.

anotherfagontheinternet

Transgendered people are demanding the right to choose our own self-definitions. The language used in this pamphlet may quickly become outdated as the gender community coalesces and organizes—a wonderful problem.” - Leslie Feinberg

So yeah, anon, "FtM" may be a slightly older term from the 2010's and earlier, and you may not identify with it, but as Leslie Feinberg said, we are choosing our own self-definitions. That includes the outdated or unpopular self-definitions.

And besides, why wouldn't you want a plethora of terms to be able to choose from to describe yourself? So many of us grew up without even recognizing we were trans because we didn't have the language to describe what we were feeling, and now that we do, you'd take those words away simply because YOU don't identify with them? You'd further limit how your community describes itself and identifies, as if we haven't already dealt with enough suppression of identity?

Nah.