Contributing blogger Monica Helms has been an activist for the transgender community since 1998 and has lived in Atlanta since 2000. She is a co-founder and president of the Transgender American Veterans Association and blogs at Trans Universe.
This is one tranny who doesn’t find the word “tranny” offensive.
I know that discussing this will make a lot of my trans friends angry. But it seems that the recurring label issue is brewing yet again. I have been reading in various places where people act incensed at the mere mention of the word “tranny.”
Human beings have a propensity for figuring out ways to verbally put down other people. Americans are absolute experts in this, especially during a war with another country. In Wikipedia, you can find hundreds of words used for just ethnic slurs alone. It’s more fun for American to burn bridges rather than build them.
If ethnic slurs are so prevalent, then it stands to reason that slurs directed at the LGBT community would be also in abundance. But then you have to consider whether these words are worth getting upset about and how can we go about neutralizing them.
I tried to look up the “tranny,” or my favorite spelling, “trannie” and found out that it isn’t in Dictionary.com. But they did showed the various usages for the word, which are also listed in the Wikipedia entry for “tranny.” It ranges from transformer to transistor radio, Ford Transit and skateboarding, where it’s slang for transition.
Seems it is used for much more things than to describe us. Maybe we should be a bit more careful in getting upset with someone when we hear it being used, especially if it comes from a skateboarder, an auto mechanic or an electrician. I also found the words “trannie” and “tranny” in the Urban Dictionary, and even in there, automobile transmissions were mentioned.
Many in the trans community show outrage when trannie or tranny is used. Sometimes I see this outrage as baseless at best. I hear people evoke the “N-word” as an analogy and how it outrages African Americans, even if some of them use the word in conversation. I find it not only ridiculous to say our outrage is similar to this, but downright disrespectful to African-American struggles for even suggesting it’s anywhere on the same level.
A ‘tranny’ Google search
Another source of outrage for the word “tranny” is the fact that it’s used on porn sites. Should we be surprised? If the site is used to make money, then it makes good marketing sense to use this word, because the word “transsexual” is too cumbersome. A quick Google search uncovers 2.6 million links for “tranny, porn,” versus 19 million for “gay, porn” and 13.5 million for “lesbian, porn.” A search for “porn” brings 262 million hits.
But “tranny” isn’t the only word you can find porn associates with us. You can also pull up porn links using “transsexual, transgender, trans, transvestite” and “shemale.” The words “shemale, porn” brought up 3.58 million links.
Regardless of how you want to label us, we are a category for online porn, though a rather small one. If you want to use online porn as an excuse for not wanting to embrace the word “tranny,” it’s pretty poor reasoning. You would have to include all those other words in your outrage as well.
Part of this discussion also gravitates to the usage of the words “queer” and “dyke,” two words that have been successfully neutralized, and “faggot,” a word that may never be neutralized. At one time, both “queer” and “dyke” were considered highly derogatory and offensive. Even today, the people who hate try to use them, thinking it will somehow make a queer person or dykes upset. The LGB and T communities have done a good job embracing and reclaiming these words, making them part of our culture.
“Faggot” hasn’t made the transition to acceptable use by the LGBT community. It’s a term directed against all of us, even heterosexual trans people. It dates back to the late 16th century, meaning “old or unpleasant woman,” and the modern use may well derive from this. The word is a shortening version of the term “faggot-gatherer,” applied in the 19th century to people, especially older widows, who made a meager living by gathering and selling firewood. The word “faggot” means a “bundle of sticks for burning.”
The modern usage of “fag” and “faggot” are primarily used in English speaking countries. Of course, the “F-word” is a British term for cigarettes, because they are also a “bundle of sticks for burning.” If a Brit asks you for a faggot, they’re not looking to cruise.
“Faggot” didn’t get attached to effeminate men until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some people in the LGBT community are trying to neutralize this word, but with no success.
Hate words are nothing more than one person using language to take control over another’s emotions. When someone uses them to be offensive, they succeed in taking control when the other person actually takes offense. Hate language can provoke some people to violence. We have proof that the word “tranny” has been used in violent acts toward trans people, along with “shemale, it, abomination” and “faggot.” Reclaiming the word will not stop the violence, but the word doesn’t cause the violence. Violent people cause the violence. We cannot blame violence toward trans people on one word.
People used to take offense with “queer” and “dyke,” which predate the words “trannie” and “tranny.” The word “dyke” is the shorten version of the word “bulldyke,” first seen in 1920 novels. “Queer” is much older, coming from the English language in the 16th century, meaning “strange, unusual,” or “out of alignment.” These words were used to denote LGBT people for a long time, yet they have been successfully reclaimed to neutralize their emotional affect even if they are still used during hate crimes.
Reclaim and neutralize
Many trans people are reclaiming the words “trannie” and “tranny” and they appear to be mostly the younger people in our community. They seem to understand the need to neutralize the affect that others have in wanting to offend us. Younger LGBT people also accept “queer” and “dyke” more than older LGBT people and may actually become the ones who will successfully neutralize the “F-word.”
For me, I refuse to allow anyone to take control of my emotions by using “trannie.” There are words that push my button, but my faith has helped to smooth some of that out as well. We have no reason to let a relatively young and weak word take control of our emotions, when so many stronger ones out there can easily upset us. Let’s eliminate this one first.
Reclaiming “tranny” would be easy as it has far less historical baggae, but it’s something trans people have to do themselves. If we’re not going to do it, a younger generation will. It’s the natural order of things.
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