Transgender Warriors

Drag is a type of performance in which people dress in the clothing commonly associated with the opposite gender in the traditional gender binary. Drag costumes tend to be elaborate, creating a heightened, heavily aestheticized gender expression. Drag performers might dress in drag part of the time or all of the time. People who perform in feminine drag (who are often, but not always, gay men) are called drag queens; people who perform in masculine drag (who are often, but not always, lesbians) are called drag kings. Drag is an inclusive space of gender experimentation. It is also relatively common for trans women to perform as drag queens and for trans men to perform as drag kings. Drag has become more well known in mainstream media due to the popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race, though it has been an important part of LGBT culture for many decades.

FTM (female-to-male) and MTF (male-to-female) are terms used to describe trans people—trans men and trans women respectively. While they are still in use today, they are most common as self-identifiers and are not often used to describe people. FTM appears in Transgender Warriors, though only in the portrait gallery and appendices. MTF does not appear in the text, though Feinberg does describe people as “male to female” and “female to male” in many instances. A lot of the terms used in Transgender Warriors have a great deal of overlap, and many of them have shifted in meaning since Feinberg’s book was published. Today, MTF and FTM, when they are used, usually describe binary trans people who make a complete shift from one gender category to the other. Feinberg uses “male to female” and “female to male” much more expansively to describe a variety of types of gender expression that cross established gender lines either temporarily or permanently. Today, these two terms are often discarded in favor of transfeminine and transmasculine, respectively.

Intersex is a term that refers to anyone whose sex characteristics do not fully align with the characteristics traditionally assigned to “male” or “female.” Feinberg also uses the terms “intersexual” and “intersexed,” both of which are now considered outdated. When babies are born, they are assigned a sex (male or female) depending on the appearance of their genitalia. Babies with ambiguous genitalia are sometimes subjected to surgical and hormonal interventions to make their genitalia align more closely with a binary sex category. In many cases, these interventions are not medically necessary, and they may be done without the parents’ knowledge or consent. There are many different ways for a person to be intersex, including both physical and hormonal variations. Some intersex people identify as transgender or non-binary, while others do not. While the trans and intersex communities are distinct from one another, there is a lot of overlap in their experiences and the issues they face.