Trans vs Trans*

So about six months ago I started to see trans* poping up throughout the internet. As someone who is transsexual, genderqueer and has been educating on trans issues for many years I kinda felt it was my place to look deeper into the meaning of it. The theory is that trans* is more inclusive because, it is open to more communities and therefore is preferable to use. I however, do not see it that way and this is why.

Trans* (with an asterisk) is a term that has come from academia instead of the transgender, transsexual and genderqueer communities to describe these communities and some argue also other gender-variant identities. Trans (without an asterisk) came from the communities it was meant to describe. Too often do the trans communities get described by professionals whether in academia, the medical profession, social work (my profession) and psychology. Rarely do we take and create terms for ourselves partially due to the shame and transphobia within trans communities, the fact that many transsexuals may be trans-experienced but not identified and, that only in a few big cities are there enough of us to form our own communities. For me then it makes sense to use the term our community created instead of one forged from the ivory towers of academia, despite my own priviledge from being able to be part of academia (just sent in my MSW applications yesterday) which many members of the trans communities do not.

I also have a concern about lumping all gender-variant communities in with transgender, transsexual and genderqueer communities. For one transsexuals simply change sex and may be gender-variant (such as myself) or not (like most others). In addition I feel this marginalizes and erases the experience of cis gender-variant experiences. The example I will give is butch women. Butch women are often being placed under the trans* umbrella with or without their consent. What this does in my mind is that it erases butch as a legitimate identity for cis women somehow despite the fact that their sex and gender identity, but merely because their expression is masculine it is put under the trans* umbrella. What I propose is if you are looking to do that say trans (which includes transgender, transsexual and genderqueer communities) and gender-variant communities.

These two main concerns are only added to by the fact that it cannot be said in speech and that the asterisk is a wildcard character connoting that anything could be used at "trans" in that case would only be a prefix. But, that is grammar stuff lets not go too far down that road.

I know this is controvertial to some (in particular genderqueer activists), but I feel that there are some requirements/ common experiences that define trans which I don't want to be erased. This isn't to say that I'm going to go around policing identity, if someone tells me they are trans I take them at their word. Regardless these are the common experiences I feel are part of trans identity which are the spokes hold the umbrella together.
1) Some experience/ or desire for sex and/or gender transition.
2) Experience/ or desire for gender expression change
3) Experience/ or desire for pronoun and/or name change
I put them in the order of importance. I have not seen anyone who identified as trans or trans-experienced and continued to do so years down the road. So it is for these many reasons that I wish trans* would stay in academia and, why I will stick to my community made trans.