It’s apparently supposed to make a distinction between trans people before/after bottom surgery. I doubt that’s a common use for that word, but I still have a few points against that specifically:
- I don’t think it’s ok to make a distinction those in this way
- It straight up ignores that not everyone wants bottom surgery
- It’s not even the way ‘-sexual’ is used normally.
Most people just use it interchangeably with transgender to my knowledge.
If I hadn’t heard of it in context it’s commonly used in, I would think that it’s the attraction to trans people.
Idk if I’m making any sense here, I suck at saying/writing things that do
I always assumed that the word was meant to express a differentiation between trans people and heterosexual and homosexual people, because trans people don’t quite fit into either category completely perfectly, right?
Still I can see where you’re coming from because it would be weird to call my heterosexual friends heterosexuals instead of just like their name or something.
I would never tell people “my heterosexual friend Bob is really into cars”, or “my homosexual cousin Jay is a really terrible dancer”, so why would I ever say “my trans… friend Alice has really good taste in clothing”?
I guess I’m saying that in my vision of a perfect world the context of your sexuality would only come up when it is actually pertinent to the conversation, same as your gender.
I also just realized that you said you hated the word and I immediately started verbally bludgeoning you with it. I’ll edit my post, sorry.
I think you might be a bit confused, transexual wasn’t meant to be used as a label for sexuality, it was meant to describe a person’s sex/gender/body.
The last part of your post is sensible and I agree, but while you may not do it, many people do use immutable characteristics as descriptors when speaking about another individual out of genuine ignorance. It’s especially often when the individual being spoken about is some flavor of minority. (“My gay cousin…”, “My black friend…”)