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Language of reality — trans vocab
Whoever invented black coffee has a lot to answer for; or, whoever handed Mark Zuckerberg the extra caffeine as he banged out BookFace is the unsung figure in how we got to the current trans language we use today. Hyperbole aside, how we talk about trans identities and experiences has been framed by social media and online discourse over the last 25 years, especially where trans vocab is concerned. Yes, prior to MySpace and Geocities there were journals, books, newspapers, TV and radio, but most of the language was developed by small cliques of mainly middle class white trans women who wanted political emancipation. Digital spaces such as chatrooms and message board enabled tech savy trans folk to engage in the conversation, yet it was only with the explosion of social media that the atomisation of trans identities exploded onto the world.
Much is made of the 66 or more genders, yet the reality is that Tumblr, 4Chan, Reddit, and other subversive spaces formulated and remixed identity on users own terms without anyone butting in to tell them they were wrong. Indeed, one of the critical things with trans identities in the 2020s is that the digital savy Gen Z users from the naughties and 2010s are now the journalists, writers, and social media gurus steering the conversation.
How we define gender identity and gender expression passes through this digital…
