There's a very common misconception that 'gender modality' refers to words like 'transfeminine', 'cisandrogynous', or 'trismaverine'. Prefix + quality. What a gender modality *actually* is is those prefixes! Trans-, cis-, tris-, iso-, ipso-, and so on. Not terms that describe what someone's gender itself is, but rather, terms that describe the relationship between one's gender and external expectations of what their gender are. We've been meaning to make a post explaining this for a long time, and this isn't that post, so in the meantime if you do want to read more about modality, here's a link to the Nature article (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01719-9) where it was coined
What this post *is* about is figuring out what to call those terms that *are* modality + quality. The terms that commonly get misunderstood as being modalities themselves
We've been tagging them as 'transitioning terms' for a while but that's not a great tag for it. For one thing, it only includes 'trans' terms, and doesn't make room for other modalities such as cis, abs, or iso. The phrasing also suggests that the act of transition is involved, when this doesn't accurately reflect the diversity of trans experiences
We've been mentally microwaving this for a while now but we can't think of any solutions, so I'm making a post about it in the hopes of sparking some conversation about it and maybe getting a better term to use!
Tagging @io-archival, @your-bigender-big-brother, @themogaidragon, and @dragonpride17 since off the top of my head, you seem like you both have the background knowledge for and interest in this conversation. There is no obligation to respond nor join in!
