A Glossary of Terms

[Bionca]

Originally Posted by jolo

Thank you for your time to post this. Would I be correct in assuming that the terminology is not static and keeps changing and being added on to ?

Yes, language is a living thing and words and meaning change over time and location.

Originally Posted by jolo

I did read somewhere on some blog or site, where there was a post by a TS, who felt offended by the term shemale. I understand and respect that, however when searching I noticed it is used a lot on commercial sites and blogs use Shemale.

That's part of the point - it is largely used connected to porn. As a large portion of the trans woman population has no direct relationship to the sex industry, using a term that is so directly associated with porn is insulting. It also has a very negative past, as it's first use to describe trans women, was in a book by Dr Janice Raymond who's position was to "Morally mandate transsexuality out of existence". Jan was used to get the US government to stop covering trans-related health care among other directly harmful things to trans women.

[jolo]

Dear beautiful Bionca,

Thanks so much for your reply.

I wanted to understand some of the terminology better.
When using a term that categorizes a group of people, I think it is important to understand there the terms came from and what they mean.

There are times, people might use some horrific terms to categorize others that create ignorance, misconceptions and prejudice. (Karl Rove has done this for a living since he was hired by Nixon, many years back

I want it to be understood that this mean "political correctness", which is about taking the meaning out of terms so that the terms become totally meaningless (changing the term "department" to "team" in offices).

Thanks,

Jon