Talk:transwoman

"trans woman" versus "transwoman"
It should be noted that some people prefer to use "trans woman" instead of "transwoman". For instance, in Whipping Girl, Julia Serano writes:

"I prefer these terms [trans woman, trans man] over others because they acknowledge the lived and self-identified gender of the trans person (i.e., woman or man), while adding the adjective 'trans' as a way to describe one particular aspect of that person's life experience. In other words, 'trans woman' and 'trans man' function in a way similar to the phrases 'Catholic woman' or 'Asian man.'

...

Sometimes people have a tendency to dismiss or delegitimize trans women's and trans men's gender identities and lived experiences by relegating us to our own unique categories that are separate from 'woman' or 'man'. This strategy is often adopted by non-trans folks who wish to discuss trans people without ever bringing into question their own assumptions and beliefs about maleness and femaleness. An obvious example of this phenomenon is the prevalence of the terms 'she-males,' 'he-shes,' and 'chicks with dicks' in reference to trans women. Sometimes attempts to third-sex or third-gender trans people are more subtle or subconscious than that, such as when people merge the phrase 'trans woman' to make one word, 'transwoman,' ..."

Personally, I agree that "trans woman" is preferable, but that it's an open compound or at the very least a collocation, and that words sometimes freely move between being open/hyphenated/closed compounds.

Calling something a "schoolbus" does not reduce its busness. A dishcloth is no less a cloth.

Words, guns, and screwdrivers are just tools. Tools can be used to benefit people or hurt people. A tool's shape doesn't matter (screwdrivers and guns can both inflict damage), what matters is the intent of the person wielding the tool. --Interiot 19:14, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
 * As for "what matters is the intent of the person wielding the tool": verification failed: if a clumsy person wields a powertool with good intent, this can result in harm. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:36, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

RFV discussion: July–August 2020
I am sending the label "(sometimes proscribed)" for verification, making use of the rfv-sense template for lack of better alternatives.

What is the evidence that this form is sometimes proscribed? If no evidence is supplied, I propose to remove the label. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:41, 17 July 2020 (UTC)


 * See also the Usage notes at . --Lambiam 16:55, 17 July 2020 (UTC)


 * In a neat bit of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (or something), I started a couple days ago looking at references with an eye to rewriting the (long-RFC-tagged) usage notes. I think "sometimes offensive" (as noted and explained here, but I've been poking around books I'll sort into a usage note later) is a better label, since apparently the proscribing authorities have withdrawn their guidance on the matter. (There are still style guides that advise against it, e.g. a, b, but it's not clear to me that they rise to the level of what would be considered authorities the way a larger media organization's would.) - -sche (discuss) 09:45, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The usage note at trans woman refers to a single source: https://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender; I find neither "transwoman" nor "trans woman" in that source, while I find "transgender" written together; I do not find "trans gender" there. That same source has entry "Trans" which includes this: "Avoid unless used in a direct quote or in cases where you can clearly explain the term's meaning in the context of your story"; and thus, "trans" is better avoided per that source, which would lead to "trans woman" being avoided; "transgender woman" could be okay since the source uses term "transgender person". Now, shall we take the source as sufficient to label trans and trans woman as sometimes proscribed? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * As for the mentioned Why you should always use "transgender" instead of "transgendered" by German Lopez, 2015, vox.com, that does not seem to be a properly researched linguistic article but rather an opinion piece, indicating that 'A recent story in the New Republic referred to trans people as "transgendered," "transman," and "transwomen" — all of which are offensive to many trans people', but the article does not trace its claim to any source or evidence and the author page does not indicate any education or academic publication history. I see nothing to make me think that vox.com and the author are reliable linguistic sources for Wiktionary's purpose. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:32, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * On yet another note, transwoman is a much more natural formation than trans woman since trans- is a highly productive prefix. And we have superman and superwoman, superhero and superheroine; surely a superman does not consider themselves to be less of a man because of the term being written solid, space-free. The plausibility of the rationale for the allegged offense is rather unclear. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:24, 19 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Re your final point: it's all arbitrary, and we live in a time where people like to dictate others' language usage on a whim. Compare : "while someone who prefers person-first language might ask to be called a 'person with autism', someone who prefers identity-first language would ask to be called an 'autistic person'". We should be healthily cautious about putting "offensive" labels on words not intended to offend by the speaker/writer. Equinox ◑ 11:32, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. And I see no intent to offend in the three quotations I placed at transwoman, by what seem to be academic writers. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:39, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Your last statement seems to be at odds with : "I don't think it's about intent. If it was about intent, we wouldn't need a dictionary to tell us what might be offensive, because offence would be determined by whether we wanted to offend." PUC – 12:44, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I've been amused by whose (or, to be blunt, which marginalized groups') offense certain users are super sceptical of (I am thinking of Equinox's superficially-valid previously-expressed worry that people might claim to find something offensive without that being an accurate claim), and whose (or, which powerful groups') clearly manufactured attempts to prevent other people from speaking critically about their chosen ideologies gets accepted at face value. When the aforedescribed situation [people claiming to find something offensive without that being an accurate claim] has actually arisen, the attitude has been noticeably different, that we should respect that e.g. feminists who admittedly exclude trans people claim to nonetheless find "trans-exclusionary" or its initialism a horrible slur (I mentioned something about this on Talk:gender-critical, heh). (See also all the shades of authoritarian racists who get mad if they're called "Nazis" and police your language / insist you get their self-ID right and respect that they are in fact "white nationalists" or "alt-right" like Richard Spencer, etc, thankyouverymuch.) Anyway, to the point at hand, the spaced spelling trans women tends to be used when they're viewed as women, like also e.g. petite women (to use one book's example), whereas the unspaced transwomen tends to be used by people who think they're a separate category/gender from women, with the obvious result that it's favored by (many) transphobes (when they don't just call the women "men", "males", etc) and regarded as offensive and/or a red flag by (most) trans people. Re the GLAAD guide: it discussed the use of "transwoman" vs "trans woman" at the time it was added, but has obviously changed; I'll rewrite the usage notes in a bit. - -sche (discuss) 18:19, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * As for "[...] trans women tends to be used when they're viewed as women, like also e.g. petite women (to use one book's example), whereas the unspaced transwomen tends to be used by people who think they're a separate category/gender from women[...]": That remains to be demonstrated; I see no references to reliable academic literature and no empirical evidence. This RFV is request for reliable references and for evidence. I placed three quotations of use in the mainspace; I see nothing in these quotations and their surrounding text to make me think that the authors of the quotations are unsympathetic to the transgener cause. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:15, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * On a stylistic note, I find the heavily bracketed German-style sentences above really hard to read. I guess I will have to copy them to a text editor and mark the parenthetical parts in grey so that the whole thing becomes legible. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:45, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

There is evidently a difference between words that are basically always offensive and intended as such (spic, wop, nigger) and those that are just "un-PC" or a bit dated and out of touch (like perhaps using blacks as a collective noun, or this transwoman example here; maybe the latter can sometimes eventually move to the former category, but not inevitably). However, both weaker sex and transwoman are the latter case; neither of those was ever a blatant slur. I do hold the unpopular belief that people cannot change biological sex (though I'm perfectly happy to regard people as the sex they would like to be, and have done so in real life). I know -sche wants to put me in the "TERF/Nazi" garbage bin so that any possible right or wrong opinion from me in the future can be ignored, but I don't think that is reasonable. Firstly it's not fair to dig up three-year-old stuff and say "you must believe exactly what you believed three years ago", because people's beliefs evolve; secondly I don't think I particularly contradicted myself in the bigger picture, if you read those two discussions in context. Right-on wokies are also contradictory about this stuff since "intent isn't magic" (this is the line they trot out if you apologise: apology isn't good enough; you didn't mean to offend; too late; you're Hitler) and yet the whole gender-identity thing is based on what people want or intend, as opposed to what is perceived or seen. It's good for us but bad for you, and you better shut your mouth or you aren't a good "ally", and if you aren't an ally well you must be a Nazi. It's ironic to me that these people who oppose the "gender binary" are so massively black-and-white binary in their philosophy that the tiniest disagreement makes them want to cancel you and block you and never speak again. Time will tell perhaps. Equinox ◑ 01:34, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Good find (or good memory; or good stalking)!

In any case, my suggestion would be: drop the existing label and in lieu of adding another label just [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=transwoman&type=revision&diff=59850002&oldid=59803746 point people to the usage note] in the lemma entry and let that note (with its references, some of which do functionally proscribe the unspaced spelling) explain things in more words than a terse label would. (And quarrel in that one centralized location over what those notes should say, lol.) - -sche (discuss) 10:30, 26 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I removed the label. (In turn, the usage notes [merely point to the lemma's usage notes, which] are referenced.) Resolved? Untag if so. - -sche (discuss) 00:03, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 22:45, 14 August 2020 (UTC)