First we have a pack of "transitionings" hanging around the restaurants of San Diego. Then we have a "cross dressing transsexual" as a character in Taking Woodstock. And now we have people "transgendering" in Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol.Come on, non-trans people. The language isn't that tough. The trans community has a few simple terms that no one can seem to agree on, but they're ours, nonetheless. It's not that you can't use them--but quit making stuff up!
You can't just take any old word and turn it into whatever you want. Sure, language is constantly evolving, but let us evolve our own. Merriam-Webster online estimates that there are at least 1 million words in the English language. We have about a dozen of them. Go mess with the other 999,988. Especially if you're Dan Brown.
According to book reviewer Sarah Liss at CBC News Canada, in The Lost Symbol, Brown says, “The act of tattooing one’s skin was a transformative declaration of power, an announcement to the world: I am in control of my own flesh. The intoxicating feeling of control derived from physical transformation had addicted millions to flesh-altering practices … cosmetic surgery, body piercing, bodybuilding, and steroids … even bulimia and transgendering.”
Huh?
First of all, I'll admit I'm addicted--but not to "flesh-altering practices," unless you consider the destruction of my lungs from tar and nicotine "flesh-altering." Okay, it probably is--don't remind me with those scary pictures.
Second, I'm not even "in control of my own flesh"--it's starting to bag and sag and wrinkle, and it doesn't pay one bit of attention when I tell it to stop.
And why did I never have that "intoxicating feeling of control" that comes with "transgendering"? How come I always miss out? Oh, wait a minute--it's because I didn't "transgender." I transitioned. Good grief.
The "transitionings" in San Diego I can tolerate. That was pretty funny, actually, and I know the author was trying and meant well. The "cross dressing transsexual"? Well, who am I to tell anyone how to dress?
But "transgendering" kind of gets my righteous indignation going, because millions of people are going to read this book and think that this is correct word usage--and then they're not going to understand why trans people are offended or upset by it.
Brown is doing a disservice to both trans people and his non-trans readers. And all it would have taken was a minimal amount of research to get the term right. Then, once he had that, he could have consulted a transsexual person to find out whether or not the term even fit what he was trying to say.
It's not like we're hard to find. We're mostly crossdressing for our dinner dates with the transitionings of San Diego.
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5 comments:
"And all it would have taken was a minimal amount of research to get the term right"
Yes but that is how it starts. If he took the time to research a word then people would start expecting him to research some of the history that he builds his rediculous plots around and then the enoromous holes in the back stories that he builds his novels around would be revealed and the whole thing would fall apart... and then he wouldn't have a novel which means that he wouldn't get rich and morons the world over would be denied asinine 'documentaries' on the truth behind the Davinci Codes and so on. My God it doesn't bear thinking about! :)
That is hilarious--and so true.
This is defintely a time for educating, such as writing the book reviewer and Dan Brown. Their grace will show if they choose to respond or acknowledge their mistake. Either way the correction is out there, no?
I've been exploring the linguistic challenge of gender identity & came across Mary Talbot's Language and Gender. She espouses the difficulty in introducing new language that challenges gender identification - 'google' as a verb quickly came into our language usage but words associated with transgender is vastly misunderstood and misutilized. Hence the rigid ideas of gender binary rather than the realism of a continuum.
People in the media and public sphere have a social responsibility to their audience and as gender identities take our right place, we should make our voices heard.
What I failed to make clear is that the book reviewer actually called him out on it, which is good for us.
That's interesting--what you say about the language. Because it's true--google got picked up in no time as a verb and just got integrated into the language. But gender stuff seems to stymie people. Either they can't grasp it or they don't want to, because it interferes with or challenges the binary system that we hold so dear.
And what you said about writing Dan Brown makes sense. One thing that organizations like GLAAD encourage is writing to newspapers when they misuse terms or misrepresent trans people in their stories. And since the book reviewer did call him out on it, maybe a thank you to her would be in order as well. I will write to her.
Brown couldn't even be bothered to research the Metro in DC and in Alexandria, VA (nor could his editors), so it hardly comes as a surprise that there would be no thought about proper trans terminology...
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