I was talking recently with a good friend who is politically strongly in favor of what you might call the transgender rights movement. What I actually called it in the discussion we were having was "transgenderism," which caused her to object. She said they didn't like that word, and there was no such thing as "transgenderism," only people who are trans.
That surprised me a lot, because I hadn't intended the word as a pejorative: I meant it to be exactly equivalent to "feminism," which is a philosophy she strongly espouses. Just as feminism is a philosophy with a political component that advocates for changes to the law and society for the benefit of women ("femina"), so too this seems to be a movement with a political component that advocates for changes to the law and society for the benefit of trans people.
One may, of course, argue about whether the proposed changes will in fact benefit the class of people it means to benefit; one may argue about the propriety of advocating for benefitting one class of Americans over another. (There's a kind of irony especially in doing so from the ground of equality, though as you all know the argument is that things are so unequal that even more unequal treatment is the only way to level the field.) Still, I wasn't trying to argue about the business at all, I was just trying to refer to it. All I wanted out of the word was a way of naming the thing under discussion. Apparently even referring to the political movement is tracking as offensive for some reason, and the polite thing to do was to pretend that there was no political movement, only people of a certain kind.
This strikes me as very strange. One would think that they would be only too happy to acknowledge the similarity between their movement and the feminist movement, especially those of them who are trans-women. It's rather obviously an outgrowth, has adopted many of the same arguments, and is broadly supported by feminists (with the exception of the 'trans-exclusive radical feminists,' as such women are called by, er, the political movement under discussion which apparently shouldn't be named).
A kind of basic hostility to an accurate description of the world is a strange thing to try to build upon. I understand the old Marxist ploy to try to get people to consent to a lie in order to disrupt their morale, and even their morality. This was coming from a good friend, though, who really believes she is helping and motivated only by kindness towards the transgender. Her motives I don't question, but how strange it seems to me to commit to this kind of refusal to refer to a political movement that obviously exists, is quite vocal and active, and which is a clear outgrowth of her own movement that is similarly named.
