Asterisk in trans*

Hi, why do you use the asterisks in identities? I find “trans*” puts a wall between trans people and nb people

Thanks for reminding me to update all my descriptions! I see that I totally forgot to update the bios that I send out to events and conferences I’m a speaker at. 

I updated the description on my home page though immediately when I saw your message. Honestly, I was a great fan of the asterisk just a few years back, maybe two or three. It was a symbol that I found to be great for recognizing diversity and being a fan of different searching tactics, regular expressions etc. I immediately associated the asterisk as “anything can come after trans”. Like so -> trans*.

However, I started talking to trans people of age who reminded me that the asterisk is not something that speaks to their experience and that it is hard for them to be able to identify with such a “computerized” way of describing oneself. And this was when I stopped.

After that I read a few different blogposts, especially this one and I got to the point where I also stopped having conversations about it.

Thanks again for pointing out that it was still present in some of my work. I know that a number of my tumblr posts still use the asterisk with “trans” (the one about being poly and pan is most probably the culprit here). I’ll be revisiting these later on to see how they hold up. I don’t like editing my work retroactively, but putting some explanation in a form of a footnote wouldn’t hurt. Thanks again!