Transgender

« I discovered that I was transgender after joking around in the art room in 8th grade, (when I was 12) and one of my friends, who was also LGBTQ+, said that the charcoal on my face looked like makeup that a transgender guy would wear. I was stunned into silence. » — Dalton, 15 (nonbinary transmasculine)

Transgender is an umbrella term covering all gender identities or expressions that transgress or transcend society’s rules and concepts of gender. To be trans usually means to identify as a gender other than the gender one was assigned at birth. The category of transgender includes people who have the binary gender identities of female (transgender women) or male (transgender men), and is often framed solely in binary terms. The transgender umbrella does include people with nonbinary gender identities, but not all non-binary people refer to themselves as transgender.

Symbols

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  The transgender symbol, made of a combination of male (Mars), female (Venus), and a mix of both. Colors are optional.

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  The transgender pride flag, designed by trans woman Monica Helms in 1999, with stripes representing male (blue), female (pink), and other or transitioning (white).

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  In 2002 Jennifer Pellinen created a transgender flag Pink & blue stripes: female and male. The middle three purple stripes represent the diversity of the transgender community and genders other than female and male.

External Links

• TRANScending Identities: A Bibliography of Resources on Transgender and Intersex Topics

Further reading

• Girshick, Lori B. Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2008. Print.
• Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008. Print.
• Stryker, Susan, and Stephen Whittle. The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.