Coming to Terms with Transgenderism and Transsexuality
2 The term “transgender” was initially coined by Virginia Price to dissociate trans people such as herself, who lived full-time as a member of her identified sex without ever undergoing sex reassignment surgery, from transsexuals, whom she reportedly disdained; see Brown, “20th Century Transgender History and Experience,” and Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), x. For more on transsexuals who find organizing under the term “transgender” problematic, see Namaste, Sex Change, Social Change, 12-33, 51-57, 86-126; Max Wolf Valerio, “‘Now That You’re a White Man’: Changing Sex in a Postmodern World—Being, Becoming, and Borders,” This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, Gloria Anzaldúa and Analouise Keating, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 239-254. 3 I was inspired to begin using the term “cissexual” after reading one of Emi Koyama’s Interchange entries (www.eminism.org/interchange/2002/20020607-wmstl.html). Apparently, the related term “cisgender” was first coined in 1995 by a transsexual man named Carl Buijs.