Third-Gendering and Third-Sexing
Cissexual people who are in the earliest stages of accepting transsexuality (and who have not fully come to terms with their cissexual privilege) will often come to see trans people as inhabiting our own unique gender category that is separate from “woman” and “man.” I call this act third-gendering (or third-sexing). While some attempts at third-gendering trans people are clearly meant to be derogatory or sensationalistic (such as “she-male” or “heshe”), other less offensive ones occur regularly in discussions about transsexuals (such as “s/he” or “MTF”). While “MTF” may be useful as an adjective, as it describes the direction of my transition, using it as a noun—i.e., literally referring to me as a “male-to-female”—completely negates the fact that I identify and live as a woman. Personally, I believe that popular use of “MTF” or “FTM” over “trans woman” or “trans man” (which are more respectful, easier to say, and less easily confused with one another) reflects either a conscious or unconscious desire on the part of many cissexuals to distinguish transsexual women and men from their cissexual counterparts.
When discussing the act of third-gendering, it is crucial to make a distinction between people who identify themselves as belonging to a third gender and those who actively third-gender other people. As with any gender identity, when people see themselves as belonging to a third gender, that is their way of making sense of themselves and their place in the world, and it should be respected. As someone who has identified as bigender and genderqueer in the past, I believe that it’s important for us to recognize and respect other people’s gender identities, whatever they are. But it’s for this very same reason that I object to people who actively third-gender people against their will or without their consent. I believe that this propensity for third-gendering others is simply a by-product of the assumptive and nonconsensual process of gendering. In other words, we are so compelled to gender people as women and men that when we come across someone who is not easily categorized that way (usually because of exceptional gender inclinations), we tend to isolate and distinguish them from the other two genders. There is a long history of the terms “third gender” and “third sex” being applied to homosexuals, intersex people, and transgender people by those who considered themselves to have “normal” genders. This strongly suggests that the tendency to third-gender people stems from both gender entitlement and oppositional sexism.