Talk:Shemale

Reply on Why Keep Adding

'Trans women' (a vague multiple use slang term which should not be used in the 'shemale' article, as it is a loaded term that can describe transvestites, transsexuals or any persons in any stage of transitioning (with or without vaginoplasty) as well as those who have fully transitioned.

Partial transitioning can refer to :

1) breast augmentation 2) testiculation 3) vaginoplasty

Any combination of the above only counts as partial transitioning.

It is only when all 3 are applied that there can be no more transitions which logically means 'full transitioning'. How is "fully transitioned" inaccurate or loaded then?

Transitioning can only refer to full SRS with vaginoplasty or partial SRS (testiculation) and nothing else. How can you consider a transwoman to be "fully transitioned" without vaginoplasty? Doesn't make sense.

An alternative explanation to clarify your apparent confusion follows in the next paragraph.

She-Male has two word elements which indicate Breast-Penis(Optional with Testicles). Woman-He, She-Man and She-He are clumsy variations which are not used but also all refer to the same thing. But without breast augmentation or presence of penis said person cannot qualify as She-male. Thus by logical progression, 'fully transitioned' (not loaded at all) refers to 'all three elements being completed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.41.31 (talk • contribs)

"Full transition" and "partial transition" suggest that a person's decision to take certain steps but not others means their transition is incomplete. That's a very loaded supposition. Many people only take certain steps and have no interest in other steps. It's loaded in the same way that terms like "pre-" "post-" and "non-operative" suggest that an operation is the be-all and end-all of a transition. It places emphasis on surgeries which have nothing to do with whether someone has completed transition. Transition isn't about what surgeries someone has had. Jokestress (talk) 22:29, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Edits by 60.49.44.11

I just reverted all edits by User:60.49.44.11. Those edits removed one-third of the reliable sources. Please do not remove sourced material without discussing it here first. Jokestress (talk) 19:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Edits by Jokestress

I just reverted all edits by User:Jokestress. Reliable sources cited only qualify as original research. Please do not add sourced material without discussing it here first.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.46.122 (talk • contribs)

If you continue to be disruptive, I am going to take steps to have the article protected. If you'd like to discuss changes, please do so here. Jokestress (talk) 07:15, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

You are being disruptive, and I too am going to take steps to have the article protected and inform all the necessary contacts I have access to about this un-WP-like article being coloured by your perception. If you'd like to discuss changes, please do so here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.50.46.122 (talk) 07:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

comment:protection will mean you won't be able to edit, jokestress will. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 07:32, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Then they should rename Wikipedia as Jokestress-Pedia then. I'm going to try to put a stop to this (i.e. get Jokestress and CardinalDan's accounts suspended) via the official route instead. Wish me luck! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.82.47.100 (talk • contribs)

Their own opinion

Did not this article once state that the persons in question (female-bodied but with male genitals) did not want to be called so because they consider themselves women?

2010-08-16 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Desire for NPOV inclusion of self-labeling

This is an article which evokes a lot of emotions for people. I need to preface my comments below by saying that I know what it's like to be considered "less than a woman", I understand that this is not something any woman wants to experience on a general basis, and people should be aware that the vast majority of transsexual women who have transitioned to live full-time in the female gender find the label "shemale", or any label which does not identify them as a woman, to be invalidating and offensive.

That being said, I think it is inauthentic that the article suggests it is impossible for a woman to self-identify as a shemale outside of the professions of sex work. I am a non-operative female transsexual. When I say that, it is generally assumed that non-op refers only to GRS, as GRS and/or plans for GRS have been the traditional marker of transsexuality for most transsexual women. Non-operative isn't actually accurate, mind you: I've had many cosmetic operations, just not specific operations on my genitals in order to make them look or behave like an approximation a typical woman's vulva. But I find "shemale" non-offensive when applied to me personally, and I know several other trans-women of like mind.

The landscape of gender has changed substantially over the past few decades. As transgender acceptance grows, the diversity of gender presentation will continue to grow. There already exist a number of subcultures which, while sexually oriented, are not limited to "sex work": BDSM, furry, Japanese manga, and even certain dating communities, to name a few. The term "shemale" is embraced by a small subset of transsexual women, particularly non-ops such as myself, because it is an unambiguous description of their gender (female) and sex (male genitalia). Certainly, there are many men and women out there who are preferentially attracted to people with male genitalia and female appearance, and if these individuals are looking for a long term relationship, a pre-op transsexual (one taking hormones and planning to have genital surgery) may not at all be what they are interested in. There are also other world cultures which have words with identical meaning to "shemale" that lack the stigma, as the public existence of women having men's genitalia is a part of the culture (e.g., some countries in East Asia).

I realize that I am in the distinct minority, but I know enough transsexual women to know I am not alone in self-identification with other-gendered terms. The connotations section is the same message repeated a dozen times: shemale is offensive to transsexual women, and it is only used by transsexual women in the context of sex work. I agree that the word shemale is less often used outside of sex work, but there are many people who self-identify with "shemale" who are not sex workers. The fact that people can and do self-identify with "shemale" without selling their bodies, particularly in certain subcultures which are more open to sexuality, should be something the article does not exclude with its language. The way it is currently written it seems like this is not possible, but all you need to do is go on alternative dating sites or log on to MU clients or IRC or read transgender-specific fiction online to see that there is a rather wide use of this term outside of the context of blatant pornography or intentional insult.

The main problem with most of the "research" quoted in this article is that it is supported by little more than a slew of self-contradictory POV among psychologists, sociologists, feminists, nonfiction authors, sex researchers, etc, spanning several decades. These opinions attempt to characterize the nature of the word to most trans-women, and they are largely correct, but not exhaustive. Additionally, a lot of the quotes seem to call transsexual women "women" if they are planning GRS, but call them "men" if they are not planning it, which reinforces the traditional view that "you're not really transsexual unless you can both afford to, and wish to, pay a doctor to mutilate your genitals".

The bottom line is this. If someone comes to this page what they probably want to know is: "What does shemale mean?" Shemale is a term used most frequently in sex work; it means someone with outward female appearance, usually including breasts, and male genitalia; and most transsexual women (especially pre and post-op) find the term offensive. The long diatribe over and over by various researchers about how trans-women are always offended by it and it's never used outside of sex work, is inaccurate when taken in its entirety. TricksterWolf (talk) 00:58, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia has policies and guidelines regarding personal unpublished opinions and fringe beliefs. The small number of people who consider the term shemale scientific or unproblematic constitutes a tiny minority. The article needs to reflect consensus: this is a term that emerged from both anti-trans feminist ideology and pornography. In fact, one reason people like Janice Raymond used it is because it was so closely connected to pornography, which they consider an industry created by men to subjugate women. Their rhetoric states that "shemales" are part of a larger assault on womanhood, and that trans women "rape" non-trans women's bodies by their very existence. The article cites a Kate Bornstein report of someone who uses it as a value-neutral identity, and there may be others in books and papers. That was the only one I found at the time. However, it's clear from the vast majority of reliable sources that the word is closely tied to sex work, and it's primarily used in that manner by both the sex industry and its second-wave feminist opponents. If we have additional published citations that reflect other uses, we should include them. I'm happy to help with finding others. Jokestress (talk) 15:53, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say about encyclopedic content. Just to be very clear, I don't want to introduce fringe content (and I know that few women identify with the term shemale; the only times I do are within those groups which are accepting of the term). My concern is more that parts of the article, especially the Connotations section, sound like a soapbox by quoting widely disparate groups in an attempt to prove (or get the point across) that "shemale" is largely a slur. Granted, it IS largely a slur, but the purpose of an article is to inform, not convince. If you had seen this article in past years then you know it used to be much less encyclopedic. I think given the sensitivity transsexual women often feel about being perceived as female this article will probably always be tempting to soapbox on.

Your response has been very enlightening, and I think it would add something to the article. Before I saw your response I didn't really get the relevance of including anti-trans feminist opinion in a paragraph with sex researchers, psychologists, transsexual activists, etc. All the quotes are saying similar things, but they're from different times and perspectives. I think the "Connotations" section is a loose and somewhat incoherent jumble of quotes and it is the part that bothers me the most about the current version. Mightn't it be better to separate it into categories based on "opinions in feminism", "opinions in research", etc.? Or perhaps separating the opinion by era would be good enough, because historical perspectives (in feminism, for example) are often quite different from current perspectives. I don't think it merits headers, but separating the quotes out with a brief comment in text would make it more digestible (for me at least).

Either way, I'll look into additional sources later. TricksterWolf (talk) 19:16, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

FWIW: My own feelings about "shemale" parallel TricksterWolf's (and personally, I'm hoping to undergo SRS): the term may be intended by some as an insult, and may be associated in some people's minds solely with pornography, but I always thought that "shemale" was... descriptive. Interestingly enough, the #1 definition in my non-WP:RS crowdsource for all things slang (Urban Dictionary) has shemale : A woman with a penis. (1532 up, 308 down). So Mildred Brown and Chloe Rounsley said "She-males are men" in True Selves back in 1996? Fascinating. Could it be the case that the "connotations" of the term are evolving? Offhand, however, I am not aware of any WP:RS sources supporting this contention.

I was only prompted to look over the current entry on "connotations" by TricksterWolf's comment, but it does read a lot like a rant to me... how much hammering is really required to nail this term down as a pejorative (in many people's eyes... though surely not those of the consumers of "shemale porn")? -- bonze blayk (talk) 23:17, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

The term is almost exclusively used in sexualized depictions of trans women, like porn, pageantry, transgender fiction, and other formats where it's part of a sexualized (often masturbatory) script. Shemale is indeed descriptive. It describes a very specific type of sexualized body configuration, designed to appeal to those who wish to have sex with someone with that configuration or embody that configuration themselves, often as part of a masturbatory fantasy. The former are informally called transfans; the latter are informally called wannabes. Jokestress (talk) 08:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Joke?

That "artist's rendering" seems to be the woman image with an MS Paint penis. That's not very interesting. It doesn't suggest anything unintuitive about shemales. If they were really just women with penises, there wouldn't really be anything for a picture to elucidate. There are possibly some other characteristics that might be reasonable to display. A photograph would be fine for that, but the current image is just a ridiculous waste of space.72.84.187.95 (talk) 08:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)