Yes, tranny is definitely being used and reclaimed by radical trans folks, and I do mean re-claimed as in ‘being claimed again’. Kate Bornstein is probably the most well known activist to call herself a tranny. Here are some of her words:
Tranny is a word coined by the outcast trans people — drag queens, transsexuals, transvestites, whores and street fairies — in Sydney, Australia in the mid to late ‘60s and early ‘70s. They’d always been fighting with each other over whose identity was better than whose. But they recognized they were family with each other, and they coined tranny as one name to include them all. The bickering about who was better continued, but they always came to rest in the reality of family. Doris Fish moved to San Francisco in the late 70s, and brought the word with her.
Doris was my drag mom when I moved to SF in 1988, and she welcomed me into her family of trannies. All of us used the word back then: male-to-female transsexuals, female-to-male transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, whores and street fairies. Then porn moved to video and became more accessible. A genre of porn developed: tranny porn. And there were tranny hookers who prided themselves as chicks with dicks and she-males, and they advertised themselves as trannies. And the miracle of all of this is that we made each other smile — we were family.
My best guess is some guys who hating themselves for having availed themselves of tranny porn, or the services of tranny whores… well, they turned tranny into a hate word. But it’s always been our word. There’s no reclaiming about it. Tranny is still a valid trans identity today, across several generations, class and race — we are the gender outlaws and outcasts who haven’t reached a tipping point yet. No, you should never refer to a trans man or a trans woman as a tranny — that would be mean. But when I and other outlaws speak the word, we speak it with love about each other as family — and if you like us, and you’re really nice, you can call us that, too.
[..] It’s our first own language word for ourselves that has no medical-legacy.
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“Tranny” is to trans, what “fag” is to gay, what “dyke” is to lesbian.
It’s a more queer form of sexuality – more bent.
[The movement against tranny] is a class thing, it’s a sex-negative thing. Because if you search for tranny online you find tranny porn, you find transgender sex-workers. There’s a group of transwomen, mostly older, mostly middle class or more, who do not want to have anything to do with those people. And I don’t think that’s right.
Source: Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger (the Movie)
(Copy pasta of stuff I wrote in a private convo I just had about this post:)
Of course some people have trauma related to this word, this is sadly true for some of us and it is sadly true about every slur, and really of every word we have ever used and every word we will ever invent. We have been called queer and gay and tranny and fag and transgender and shemale and transsexual while fists rained down on us. For as long as violence against transgender people exists, people will be able to take our words and their fists and change their meaning for us.
We need to be aware of this, we need to take care of each other, but we also need to not allow these people to take our words from us. We can vow never to use the tainted word again, so we won’t accidently bring back trauma, but then it will remain the weapon of those who hate it. The more we forget the joy and power the a word once gave us, the stronger a weapon it becomes for them.
The more we cherish our own words and inscribe them with loving joyfull meanings, the more we find pride and love in our words as we celebrate who we are, the more we push back the meaning they have tried to stick to our words and the more we create the opportunity for us to not only heal but grow stronger.
QueerAnarchism 