When I first connected in the 1990s, the adjective "transgendered" was popular. Later, I began to hear people dropping the "-ed", a choice I understood—the extra consonant only made the word harder to pronounce, and using "transgender" as an adjective avoids the connotation that "transgender" is a transitive verb, e.g., "my surgeon transgendered me." All the same, I had a really hard time dropping the "-ed". My objections were purely grammatical. We say "gendered clothing," so why "transgender person"? It just sounded incorrect :) But, of course, language is flexible. It just took me years to begin to hear that word differently.
Of course, as soon as I internally accepted "transgender" as an adjective, I heard people frequently shortening it to "trans"! And my grammatical reaction was: That is a prefix!! Not a standalone adjective!!
Also, I felt that to imply that "transgender" was the primary meaning of "trans" was to appropriate meaning from an otherwise useful prefix that many people used for many purposes. For example, in the early 2000s, I worked for a social service agency that referred to "trans families" as parents and adoptees who were of different races, i.e., short for "transracial adoption." So I felt that calling myself a "trans person" was taking a word that, in my experience, referred or could refer to a completely different experience.
I am just now feeling fluent in "trans" as a standalone adjective, and I appreciate it precisely because it is so broad. It can do a lot — socially/politically — because of its flexibility.
The flip side is that it doesn't describe much about me individually. Back in the day, I originally wanted to be "not a woman," and the alternative seemed to be "man," which was fine with me. I wanted to "pass," i.e., look like a cis man, and now I do, and I'm happy with that. I didn't want people to perceive me in a gender-intermediate category or to realize I was trans (except if I was in control of my own information management, releasing my info for limited purposes). I thought of transition as a process to go through, and there would be life on the other side — exactly what, I didn't know, but I imagined it would be something not primarily or entirely defined by the journey that had brought me there. Thus I still think of myself as "a transsexual," i.e., someone who went through a specific process in the 1990s, and I also think of myself as "a man." Calling myself a "transsexual man" is so much more personally descriptive than simply calling myself a "trans person." I mean, "transsexual" was always a gross and problematic word, and yet it was fairly accurate for me personally. I didn't ever find a word of similar precision that avoided the connotations of a psychological diagnosis. Anyway, the politics of the word "transsexual" (especially today) are terrible, and the politics of "trans" are good. When I say "trans," I'm striving for my words to be of use to others. It's an artifact of our political moment, as words are always changing. "Trans" says nothing about how I feel about my own gender or how I live my life.
