Yesterday, in Game Design/“Re: I’d really like to design an IF but…”, someone used a slur to refer to transgender people, and another poster spoke up and said that he was unaware that it was a slur.
There are multiple transgender and genderqueer people active in the interactive fiction community and the indie game dev community, so it’s important to be educated on this topic.
The GLAAD site is a good reference for information about transgender people. A few useful pages:
glaad.org/transgender/trans101 - A quick FAQ
glaad.org/reference/transgender - Appropriate and inappropriate ways to speak about transgender people
glaad.org/transgender/allies - How to be supportive and respectful of transgender people
And a few terms for quick reference:
Transgender (trans for short) - This term refers to someone whose gender was incorrectly assigned at birth. So a woman who was incorrectly assigned male at birth would be a transgender woman, but man who was incorrectly assigned female at birth would be a transgender man. This word is an adjective, not a noun - so “transgender people” is correct and respectful, but “transgenders” is not.
What pronouns to use for a trans person - People should always be referred to by whatever pronouns they want. If in doubt, it’s okay to ask “What pronouns do you prefer?” Referring to a trans person by the wrong gender (for example, referring to a trans man as “she”) is disrespectful.
Genderqueer - This term refers to someone whose gender identity does not match either male or female.
Cisgender (cis for short) - This term refers to someone whose gender identity/expression match the gender assigned to them at birth. The vast majority of people are cisgender.
These are slurs that cannot be used respectfully:
“she-male,” “he-she,” “it,” “trannie,” “tranny,” “shim,” “gender-bender”
If you’re in doubt about whether or not something is respectful, feel free to PM me with questions. I’m a cis ally rather than a trans person, but there are important trans and genderqueer people in my life, and this is something I care about deeply. I can probably either answer your question or direct you to someone better able to answer it.