this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Agreed with the other commenter, there's no real reason to think the author's transphobic due to a random phrase. We as a society really need to stop organising witch hunts.
There's nothing wrong with the example in and of itself, but the word "transsexual" in place of "transgender" is not generally random. It is explicitly chosen by Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) as well as by right-wing transphobes as a dog whistle to conflate gender dysphoria with drag queens and cross-dess fetishists so as to delegitimise transpeople and suggest some sort of sexual deviance. Coupled with the equivocation of "perceived" gender, motive doesn't even have to come into it. The words themselves and the concepts they reinforce are transphobic and harmful.
A witch hunt would have been for me to say that the author is a transphobic asshole whose writings need to be wiped from the internet - which is very far from what I actually posted, which was regret for the way the language they chose distracted from the flow of their argument by reinforcing the social stigmatization of trans people. (Edit: That was a deliberate choice on my part. Not knowing enough about the author to be sure of motives and having no desire to deep dive into their history, I decided that it was only appropriate to point out the hurtful nature of the language and not imply motive.)
It can also be used by people with no agenda, including most of the non-western world. Language policing is ridiculous. You want to cancel the transphobes? Stop giving them power and reclaim their terms from them.
Speaking as someone with a MTF close friend and NB spouse, but the term used in the article is the term everyone around me used when I was growing up. That term may be obsolete now, and if so, the author simply needs to be informed. There's no need to assume they meant harm by it.
If they knowingly used a term that may offend, then that's of course a separate issue.
Some people just need to be offended
Yeah, we're way too hard on bigots