this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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(Please don't read my comments as aggressive, because I'm not meaning them that way; I appreciate this discussion.)
Yeah, so it expanded the group it applied to while making the term less functional.
I get why they'd want the term (because then you'd fit in with a pre-established group), but I disagree that it should apply that broadly. I suppose that "transgender" would apply to that case you listed above for lack of a better term, because it still enforces some kind of binary on the behaviour, and I don't really see there being a functional binary except in media.
Words are wonderful and descriptive when you know how to use them and I've always felt that there is no perfect synonym for most. Broadly applying specific terms has always felt like a dumbing-down to me and I feel it only hurts discussion and understanding. I wish we created more terminology for edge cases instead of breaking specificity to apply to everything.
Most people I know who are not cis use "trans" or "trans/non-binary" as an umbrella term for "not cis", and they generally don't use either "transgender" or "transsexual". This continues the "Trans meaning the group of people, and not specifically the pre-fix" school of thought, which I think is interesting.
I think that English stopped being wonderful and perfectly self-descriptive once contronyms came into being. But it's still fun to look up how/when/why words change over time. It can be a better look into culture than a lot of history books.