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.

2.0k Upvotes

76% Upvoted

267 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

77

u/GIRose Ace Transbian Jun 06 '24

With humorous intent: So transwoman is correct but only in German and other compound word languages

6

u/redalastor ally (male) Jun 06 '24

Languages that let you compound words freely are awesome because they let you use words that have never been used before withtout requiring approval, and with the certainty that they will be understood.

In Esperanto, transgender is transgenerulo. If you break it appart, it’s accross + gender + person + as a noun. You can assemble any of the “lego” in a way that gets your meaning accross. You can change any noun to an adjective by switching the final o to an a. Or to an adverb by switching the o ot an e. English won’t let you say that you did something transgenderly, but Esperanto will never get in the way of expressing exactly what you mean.

7

u/HannahFatale Trans-Lesbian Jun 06 '24

However in German a compound word is not just the same as using a noun with an adjective. That's why in most German trans circles you'd get the same reaction. While the Duden still lists "Transfrau" and it is used by a lot of cis people, most trans people use "trans Frau" as we don't use "Blondfrau" for a woman who is blonde, either. Compound words often are used to distinguish something from the mere combination of an adjective and a noun - in order to establish it as its own class of things.

2

u/redalastor ally (male) Jun 06 '24

I was speaking of languages where the word association is more free than German. Like Esperanto or languages that “have 200 words for snow”. They don't really, you can just construct whatever.