Glasgow Trans Collective
This is a proof of concept for hosting our archive on! Here's a link to crows playing in the snow.
No-one else is coming to save us.
The threats against us are not abstract, but concrete.
Labour and resources are leaving the Trans community at a rate they do not return
There is no perfect moment to begin.
So let's get to it!
Things that will be on this page
- A zine archive
- Various resources, information, links
- Ways to contact us
- Donation links
[this webpage is WIP, so here's a few paragraphs from Serano :)]
MOST NON-TRANS PEOPLE are unfamiliar with the words that we in the transgender community use to describe ourselves, our experiences, and our most pressing issues. Books and websites that discuss transgenderism and transsexuality often include some kind of glossary, where these terms are laid out and defined in a nice, orderly, alphabetical fashion. However, a potential problem with the glossary approach is that it gives the impression that all of these transgenderrelated words and phrases are somehow written in stone, indelibly passed down from generation to generation. This is most certainly not the case. Many of the terms used these days to describe transgender people did not exist a decade ago. Conversely, many of the terms that were commonly used a decade ago are now considered to be out of fashion, outdated, or even offensive to many people in the transgender community. Even the terms that are used frequently today are regularly disputed, as individual transgender people may define words in a slightly different manner or have aesthetic or political preferences for certain words over others. So in lieu of a glossary, I will use this chapter to define many of the transgender-specific terms used throughout the book and to explain why I chose these particular words and phrases rather than others.
It is difficult to talk about people who are transsexual or transgender without first defining the words “sex†and “gender.†“Sex†commonly refers to whether a person is physically female and/or male. Because the physical traits that we most often take into account when describing “sex†are biological in origin (e.g., sex chromosomes, hormones, reproductive systems, genitals, and so forth), there is a tendency to see sex as being a “natural†aspect of gender. However, this is not quite the case. Cultural expectations and assumptions play a large role in shaping how we determine and consider sex. For example, in our culture, such assumptions are very genital-centric: A person’s sex is assigned at birth based on the presence or absence of a penis. Thus, our genitals play a far more important role in determining our legal sex than do our chromosomes (which in most cases are never actually examined) or our reproductive capacity. After all, a woman can have a hysterectomy, or a man can have a vasectomy, without changing or nullifying their legal sex. Indeed, the fact that we even have a “legal†sex demonstrates that society greatly shapes our understanding of sex. Thus, throughout this book, I will use the word “sex†primarily to refer to a person’s physical femaleness and/or maleness, but I will also sometimes use it to refer to the social and legal classes that are associated with one’s physical sex.
The word “gender†is regularly used in a number of ways. Most commonly, it’s used in a manner that’s indistinguishable from “sex†(i.e., to describe whether a person is physically, socially, and legally male and/or female). Other people use the word “gender†to describe a person’s gender identity (whether they identify as female, male, both, or neither), their gender expression and gender roles (whether they act feminine, masculine, both, or neither), or the privileges, assumptions, expectations, and restrictions they face due to the sex others perceive them to be. Because of the many meanings infused into it, I will use the word “gender†in a broad way to refer to various aspects of a person’s physical or social sex, their sex-related behaviors, the sex-based class system they are situated within, or (in most cases) some combination thereof
