And that makes perfect sense. I am new here and have only dipped my toe in the water and while I can identify with the an innate need/desire/requirement or whatever to identify as a woman and, I can speak to common ground on issues surrounding living your life in public including work . . . I am not transitioning (to which I will tack a caveat . . . yet). A lot of the areas discussed on this part of the forum are particular to those who identify as TS and as such, I cannot provide comment because I have no basis of understanding (short of theoretical). Transitioning as the term is applied here is (from what I read) serious stuff . . . there is not going back once you cross the Rubicon (sort to speak) and one can only go forward. For people like myself (gender fluid, part-timers, short-timers or whatever term you wish to use) we can see the Rubicon, may dip our toe in its water and some may be up their waist in the river but we are far from the other shore and until we get there we are just treading water.Originally Posted by becky77
Awhile back I wrote a post on the CD portion of the forum "What transitioning means to me". It was written at a time when I was beginning to question and wanted an outlet to discuss those thoughts. Now many of the TS folks who water here responded (and none were rude BTW) but they were "disconcerted" about the use of the term. Originally, I thought "so now you own a word" (yup I can be as petty as the next person) and long story short . . . I had the mods shut the post down. However, we are all capable of learning and it was a few weeks later I had my learning experience. I was having a discussion at work and the circles that I travel in we have co-opted certain common everyday words to mean something different. A person (not of our ilk) was taking part in the conversation and used a term in response to himself as if he had lived experiences specific to my circle . . . I literally lost my s%$*. It was then that I realized that those who are TS are not trying to own a word (transition) they are applying it in a context of discussion (forum) to identify shared experiences common to themselves and when someone blunders in and shouts . . . "Hey if we change the meaning of the word, I can belong" it can be grating. While it is true that terms can become more inclusive, when you are dealing with a group of people who share common experiences, changes/altering of terms waters down the shared experience to a point where the word loses meaning for the shared collective and then it is just a word.
Cheers
Isha
