captaindjwalnut:

yan6:

The fact that the person who created transgender pride flag (Monica Helms) said the white line in the middle represents nonbinary and intersex folk is amazing and I’m grateful for her consideration of not just binary transgender people, but those whose genders are undefined and nonbinary

it’s often forgotten that the transgender movement was originally an umbrella of binary transsexuals (although few of us call ourselves that anymore) intersex people, nonbinary people and GNC Cis people of all types. these days it’s mostly used to mean binary transsexuals but with a less stigmatizing tone. as a binary trans woman,  I still think that nonbinary and intersex people are welcome to call themselves trans, although I’m not sure about GNC cis people. any thoughts on that? 

Any identity term is an umbrella term. Whether it has a wide or a narrow definition, it always groups together people with very different lives and experiences, around a somewhat similar experience of oppression which they would like to no longer experience. So it’s not a matter of who is ‘really trans’. Transgender is an umbrella term we invented.

The limits of that umbrella term, in identity politics, are often loaded with emotions around who is ‘really opressed’ or ‘opressed enough’ to be included. But in reality the limits of an umbrella term serve a political goal, and the umbrella ‘transgender’ has always included or excluded groups based on their political goal. What do we want to reach? Who matters in that fight?

If our only political goals is to have access to transition related medical, then ‘transgender’ will only include those who medically transition. If our political goal is to have out identities, names and pronounnns recognized as valid, then ‘transgender’ will include those whose gender identity is different from the gender assigned at birth. If our political goal is to uproot the whole system of assigned gender roles, then it makes sense to include everyone who doesn’t fit within that system.

This is why LGBT communities focussed on assimilation and acceptance of their individual identities have always been very picky about who is included, while queer communities focussed on breaking down the whole system of oppression based on gender, sexuality and body spaces, has always had a pretty wide open door policy to ‘queer’. Similarily, more ‘radical’ (radical as in ‘seeking to destroy oppression at the roots’) transgender groups have always had a wider umbrella.