So about the dictionary-
It's been a while, hasn't it?
I'm gonna start off with a personal anecdote, because I'm incapable of keeping this blog to solely one topic. But it's relevant and directs a lot of what I do. This has been in my drafts for a bit, so yesterday here actually refers to Tuesday.
Yesterday, I wore one of my favourite shirts. It's black with hawaiian shirt-style flowers all over it. If you remember when I was on the Pinc List in 2022, it's the same shirt I'm wearing in my picture. Unlike most of my shirts, it doesn't cover my butt and the shirt itself is meant to be quite snug. Anyway, yesterday I had an appointment in Aberystwyth at 10:30 and I live in a village nearby - which is very close by car, but I don't drive, so it's about 25-30 minutes on foot, depending on how fast you're walking.
Now, I'm a trans man. I'm on T. Sometimes I pass, but other times I don't. I've known that I am trans since I was 14 and had plenty of egg-cracking moments before then besides. I've been on T since June 2023. It is now May 2025.
As I'm running part of the way to town to make up for lost time (didn't want to be late) a man perched on top of a large lawnmower catcalled me about my butt as I ran past.
*Pang*. The sudden realisation of what happened hit me at once. I had been misgendered and sexually harassed in the same instance. This is not the first time this has happened to me. But it still hurts every time it happens. It would be unacceptable if it happened to s cis woman - and its still unacceptable when it happens to a trans man who is mistaken for a cis woman.
I kept running and made it to my appointment on-time.
The point of that anecdote was to demonstrate with a real-life example I experienced in 2025 of being a trans man facing sexual harassment and misogyny. You do not have to be a woman to experience misogyny, in fact, misogyny is often aimed at cis men in order to emasculate them by other cis men. E.g. "That's so girly", "You run like a girl". But I digress - the main point of me sharing my own experience like this is to demonstrate that trans men cannot reliably pass more than any other trans person and that trans men still face misogyny after coming out or starting medical transition.
If this seems relatively uncontroversial to you so far - that's brilliant. Hold onto that - because you're bang on the money there. There are, however, many people who disbelieve trans men when we come forward to talk about our experiences. Even trans men who have faced much more severe examples of sexual harassment and misogyny than I have, who have bravely come forward to talk about what they've experienced.
The term transmisogyny is broadly used to describe the transphobia principally directed at trans women. The term exorsexism is (one of a few terms) broadly used to describe the transphobia principally directed at nonbinary people. And the term transandrophobia is (one of many) terms broadly used to describe the transphobia principally directed at trans men (of which my experience falls under).
However, the final concept is not accepted by some people, who for some reason believe trans men shouldn't have a word or any terminology to describe our experiences. They are unfortunately ignorant to the experiences of trans men like me and attack their own queer siblings for wanting to describe their own experiences.
How does this relate to the dictionary?
As you know, it is my long term goal and plan to create a Welsh-English dictionary of LGBTQ+ terminology. I plan to leave no stone unturned and have hundreds of historical terms in my research already, which will make their way into the pages of the dictionary. But there is also room for neologisms. That includes relatively recent terms in English like transmisogyny, exorsexism and of course, transandrophobia. All of which will be translated into Welsh for the dictionary as suggestions for what Welsh equivalents of these terms could be like, but are by no means prescriptions.
Interestingly enough, Welsh has a historical precedent of borrowing English terminology for LGBTQ+ subjects that are themselves relatively recent terms in English. This happened in the 1500s and in subsequent centuries. In one instance, a term had hardly existed in English for 20 years before it was used in the translation of the Welsh Bible, of all places. My point being - this has happened before.
I sometimes get the sense that people expect smaller and more marginalised languages to lag behind larger languages such as English, French and Spanish when it comes to developing or borrowing LGBTQ+ terminology. But this is a narrative which makes marginalised languages seem "backwards" and adds to the negative perception of such languages - which is critical to challenge and undo for the survival of marginalised languages such as Welsh. Contrary to expectations, some marginalised languages do "keep up" as it were in some areas. Therefore, when it comes to the dictionary, Welsh shall have no lag behind English and will be as equal and full.
Therefore, Welsh will include terminology that is relatively new and recent, such as transmisogyny, exorsexism and transandrophobia, from the get-go.
I'm currently on a hiatus with regards to working on the dictionary. But when I am no longer on a hiatus (after I've dealt with some rather pressing things in my life) this is what you can expect to see in the dictionary.
