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I don't exactly disagree with you and I certainly don't want to say your feelings about the term are invalid, they're very valid. I'd like to be very clear that I don't wander around calling people transsexual.
But for me personally, at least in a medical context, I think it's better than some other options. More precisely, last year my official diagnosis for health insurance purposes was "TRANSSEXUALISM", all caps, I still have the letter from insurance because I find it deeply hilarious for some reason I can't quite place, probably because "transsexual" is such an outdated term. This year they updated my diagnosis to "gender identity disorder" and I gotta say, I hate that. I don't think my gender is disordered, I'm just not cis, that's all. I'd much rather be labeled a "transsexual" than told I have "gender identity disorder".
It's part of the whole medicalizing trans identities fucking sucks, but those of us who need hormones do need to interact with a healthcare system that assumes all healthcare exists because we're unhealthy in some way. I wish my diagnosis could just be, like, "needs testosterone".
This got long, sorry. Basically, I, personally, only speaking for myself here, would much rather be diagnosed with "TRANSSEXUALISM" than "gender identity disorder".
Historically, the "transsexualism" diagnosis is a subset of "gender identity disorder". Up until the ICD-10, "transsexualism" (F64.0) is the only subset of GID that is recognized as deserving of gender affirming care. That's what i was referring to when i said the term was used to exclude certain trans people, it's not just about gatekeeping them from trans communities, but putting up arbitrary boundaries to deny gender affirming care to as many trans people as possible. Neither of these diagnoses are in the ICD-11, which goes with "gender incongruence". And that term exclusively refers to dysphoria, not to being trans in itself.
Good god the medical system is awful about trans stuff, isn't it? Absolute nightmare of a system, when it would be so easy to just give hormones to people who are like, hey, my life is better with hormones.
I didn't actually realize that was the history of these terms, thanks for explaining. I guess "gender incongruence" is better, at least it's not saying the person experiencing it is disordered. Still though, especially this far into transition, I don't actually feel any "incongruence". I'd be miserable if I had to stop taking testosterone, but having experienced that feeling, I wouldn't describe it as gender incongruence, or, frankly, even having anything whatsoever to do with gender! My body just runs better with a testosterone-dominant endocrine system.
Ah well, the medical system is what it is, and despite the fact that the terminology used for us fucking sucks, there's not really a better option right now.