Tucker Lieberman
2 min readOct 24, 2024

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Maybe! Though I think of "aversion" still as attempting to describe the psychology of the person who is averse to trans people, rather than with the effect they're having on a trans person. It depends whether aversion is an emotion that someone can be aware of having.

One use of "phobia" occurs in chemistry. It just means one molecule repels another. A hydrophobic surface is water-resistant, for example. It derives from the word "fear," but obviously isn't meant to suggest that the molecule feels fear.

I often use "transphobia" like that — to describe behavior that excludes trans people or resists the fact of our presence or existence anywhere, regardless of what the person who does it is thinking/feeling.

Lots of people disagree with me and typically hear "transphobia" as attempting to diagnose the feelings of the anti-trans person.

Trans-exclusionary might work, since it describes the effect on trans people (namely, we are excluded). Anti-trans people, of course, insist this term specifically is a slur against them, particularly when it's in conjunction with the term radical feminist (the TE followed by RF). Trans-exclusionary is often an accurate term, and thus they want to shut it down.

When I try to choose a recognizable term to describe my own experiences, and an anti-trans person tells me I'm being offensive to them, I have a sense that their whole shtick is intentional (since they don't want me to report or explain negative impacts and they have no plan to change in response to that information), at which point I'm comfortable calling their behavior transphobia. I'll never know exactly what it feels like to be them or what emotions they feel when they hear the word trans, but at least I know they're choosing their words and actions intentionally.

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Tucker Lieberman
Tucker Lieberman

Written by Tucker Lieberman

Cult classic. Author of the novel "Most Famous Short Film of All Time." Editor for Prism & Pen and Identity Current. tuckerlieberman.com

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