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Hi Chrissy and Emma, First of all, kudos to Chrissy for her role as organizer/moderator of such an important topic. I enjoyed your discussion although I was at a disadvantage of not having seen the videos. What it means to be a woman is probably at the heart of feminism and being trans. In my way of thinking, a woman is a woman, no matter the way she got that way. And yes, as a former English teacher, language does evolve or we'd still be speaking old English or something even less understandable to us moderns. This whole line of thinking goes along with the article I just read about Hiroshi Ishiguro who is making autonomous human-like robots. His background is in art, and he considers himself an artist who creates and represents what he observes and feels--in this case, what makes a human, a human. His robots are getting so close to acting and responding like people. This is deep and heavy stuff to be sure. But what is the essence of a woman, or a man, or a human being for that matter? For now, I have to say, we are who we are, and leave it at that.

You both raise excellent points, thank you. As I ponder this more I suspect that as I’m still so early in my transition that I’m a little shy about unequivocally believing and stating that I am a woman. All I can say is I’m Working On It!

I've definitely moved around on that one - from being fine with transgender woman, to trying to ignore the transgender part - where I am now is that I am a woman, and I am transgender. I personally don't want to have the transgender or trans put in front of the woman. To me I think it suggests some "other" type of woman in a way that other modifiers don't do (like talking about someone as "white woman" or a "black woman" is never thought of as suggesting that they aren't women, just a particular intersection - putting "trans" in front feels like it suggests that we are somehow less than a woman - and people like Jenni Murray reinforce that feeling). I think that's reinforced by the idea that - as opposed to "white woman" or "black woman," you don't hear people talking about being a "cisgender woman" (I mean you do hear the term, but few people would just randomly say it). I was actually going to use that very point in response to her comments too - the fact that I don't want to be referred to as a "transgender woman" doesn't mean that I'll object to an organization using that term where it's appropriate - I might ask them not to refer to me that way, but I understand that it is an accepted term. One of the better responses in our discussion to JM's complaint about language - and this applies to other (usually conservative) people who complain about new terms, is that "that's what language does! It evolves!" Which is so very true, language changes and adapts to new situations or new ways of thinking, and that's a very good thing, even if it gets a little confusing sometimes :-)