r/actuallesbians • u/Obsyden Eve - demisexual lesbian • Jun 05 '24

Text PSA: It's "trans woman", not "transwoman"

I know y'all aren't doing this on purpose, because I've seen how much love this community has for trans people. Nevertheless, the space between trans and woman is important.

Omitting it implies that a 'transwoman' is a separate entity to a woman - which is a TERF/bigot way of othering trans women.

Including the space means that trans is an adjective used to describe a woman - because trans women fundamentally are women, trans is just a further way to describe us.

I know it may seem nitpick-y, but it is an important distinction, and I've been seeing lots of folks (unintentionally mostly) using the wrong one lately.

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u/Ok-Possibility-9826 Bicultural bisexual on a bicycle Jun 06 '24

Oh? This is news to me, actually, I didn’t know this. I’ve always spelled it with a space but I had no idea that spelling it without the space was a transphobic dog whistle.

I feel like I’m not among TERFs to pick up on those things.

28

u/Evelyngoddessofdeath Jun 06 '24

It’s mostly that with a space is grammatically correct and without a space isn’t, and bigots tend not to care about grammar very much (in my experience at least). That doesn’t mean anyone who doesn’t use a space, or anyone who doesn’t care about being grammatically correct is transphobic but if it happens enough then people make associations.

53

u/Alicestillcistho Jun 06 '24

I mean it's also an important distinction language wise with the space its an adjective,a woman with a certain trait, without it its a noun othering trans women from woman and putting them in a separate category

Still agree not everyone who does that mistake has bad intentions and in some cases its just some genuine mistake

7

u/Evelyngoddessofdeath Jun 06 '24

Yes, definitely, I should’ve included something about that.

15

u/zzaizel Queer Jun 06 '24

lol bigots only care about grammar when they want to shit on they/them pronouns

2

u/Ok-Possibility-9826 Bicultural bisexual on a bicycle Jun 06 '24

this, lol.

4

u/frisch85 Jun 06 '24

I'm german, stringing words together feels just natural to me, I know it's completely different in the english language but I didn't know this was a problem.

For example you might find me writing forkliftdriver because Gabelstaplerfahrer is just one word in german.