I've noticed over the years on GAF, since that is the only social sphere where I intersected with the Social Studies Warrior types, the word transgender kind of replaced transexual. Is that an accurate assessment? I remember back in the 90's, early 00's no one said transgender and the word trans was short hand for transexual. I may be incorrect since I lack expertise in this, but that was my impression. Nowadays no one on places like GAF uses the word transexual. I guess because biology is a hard science and sex/biology is evil, and gender/social studies is virtue.
Very astute observation! That is exactly what happened, and it's not just gaf. You see, "transsexual" was deemed
problematic . When I first got into the community in 2010, we used transsexual. I don't know when, but suddenly it was replaced by transgender because it was seen as "
othering" people who were non-op and weren't transsexual. Or it was interpreted that transsexual makes people who don't understand what trans is make them think it's a sexual thing when it ain't. Whatever, they killed it. They wanted to make it more inclusive. People went along with it and we have what we got now which is basically, anyone speaks for the trans community now, even if they're not in the same group as you (i.e. I'm transsexual, and I have different needs/concerns than a non-binary in California). Now your struggle has been co-opted by people who say shit like,"gender is a social construct" when to you it absolutely, 100% isn't. So now if you describe yourself as a transsexual you're being transphobic.