Out of the Man Box: The word "tranny"

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The word "tranny"

by Gunner Scott

I have noticed that the word "tranny" has been being used by progressive organizations and people to describe transgender people. I am not saying that these organizations are using the word as say Fox News or the Boston Herald, that is in a derogatory manner, but that said, tranny is an insider term. It is still consider an offensive term by many in the transgender community, much like the word queer for some in the GLB community. In addition, it started to pick up steam a couple of year back when Christian Serano from project runway used the phrase "hot tranny mess" to describe what he thought were ugly outfits. Being transgender is not a bad thing, its not an ugly thing, and it is not a mess... Serano later apologized for using this phrase and defended himself by saying he had transgender friends, but he himself does not identify as transgender. I found this apology a bit too late... it was after t-shirts where marketed with the phrase on it.

Reclaiming words has always been controversial in the LGBT communities and other marginalized communities. To often marginalized communities have had experts define who and what they are. So why I am pushing buttons around the the word tranny? To get people to think about their use of the word, their own privilege, and to notice how it is being used and by whom.

I, like many transgender people, have to fight, sometimes daily, to be able to define our own gender and language that we use for ourselves and be recognized as we say we are. One of the privileges of those who are not transgender is that you are not questioned about the language you use to describe your gender.

P.S. -

So who draws the line at insider and outsider language, I don't have the answer to that. What happens when a person inhabits multiple communities, as I would say for myself, being trans and queer? I also don't have the answer. I guess what makes me cringe is when the mainstream majority starts using the word "tranny" with little to no analysis to the origins of the word, but use cause it is "hip."

I, definitely do think the transgender community should not divorce itself from the LGB community (although I have heard some LGB's wish we would just go away... but that is an entirely different rant). I do think it is time for us, the transgender community, to speak for ourselves and for the LGB community to make space for us to do so.

about the editor, this blog & associated publications

I have been following the engagement of men in changing gender relations for a couple of decades now.

I have experienced both the difficulties and the great benefits of change. I have contributed a bit to the literature. I am on the advisory board of Voice Male Magazine and BKNation. I am a founding associate of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinity.

I have worked [now semi-retired] as a national security analyst. I am a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.

In that work I write critical studies of U.S. defense policy. I also spend time making information about national security issues available on the Web so that millions of people in the United States and around the world are better informed and therefore better prepared to engage in the politics of security.

In 2004 I watched while George Bush and Karl Rove successfully called John Kerry’s masculinity into question around a war in which Kerry had served with distinction while Bush had used family connections to avoid going. Given conventional gender performance expectations of men this seemed like an unlikely formula for political success!

But Bush and Rove used male insecurity and female attachment to the most fundamental of bargains in patriarchy (men protecting the women folk) to build an election victory.

I realized that in order to make it harder for men like George Bush to lead us into unnecessary 'wars of choice' we need to free as many males as possible from the tyranny of wondering if they are ‘real men’ -- so that they can confidently say ‘no’ to war (as well as other destructive behaviors!) And that will take men organizing their own liberation from the confines of conventional masculinity.

A friend called my attention to the literature of people who have trans-gendered. Reading their stories brought home to me how much of what we experience as our gender is socially constructed and can be reconstructed by our own agency.

If we allow ourselves to think outside the confines of the binary Male/Female, the possibilities for liberating males is huge and obvious.

In this blog I have sought to build out ideas and practice for the liberation of positive new masculinities. I call attention to instances of the expression of new masculinities and to collective action in support of liberation and an end to gender violence.

I started this blog in 2006. In 2015 I associated it with a curated publication called Out of the Man Box (on the Flipboard platform.)

This publication collects the best writing (also videos) I find on liberating masculinities from the so-called man box of conventionality.

Out of the Man Box is published in association with Voice Male magazine.

Charles Knight

Out of the Man Box

Man in Box

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The word "tranny"

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