These terms were created back in December of last year, and were meant to broadly group together trans people who are feminine and/or women, and masculine and/or men, respectively. Some of the experiences and reasons for these terms were talked about, but I want to go into more detail.
Translunar and Transtidal are meant to describe broad groups of trans people, being umbrella terms for the wide variety of masculine, feminine, man, and woman related terms in the community, such as trans feminine, trans masculine, trans man, trans woman, and even adfeminine, admasculine, nonbinary people of many different specific labels, those who are transitioning towards these things, and much, much more. I kept realizing I was having a hard time describing all the groups I meant when talking sometimes because of how many variations there are; at times, I would say “transmascs” when I was actually talking about a much wider group than that. I also simply wanted terms for trans people who are in these groups without any other requirements or designations about them.
In the original posts, many examples of why someone may be these labels were put down. I’ll go over them again here:
Being a trans man or a trans woman, or being transmasculine or transfeminine.
Feeling only partly connected to transmasculinity or transfemininity, or trans manhood or trans womanhood.
Wanting a more broad label similar to transmasculine or transfeminine, but that explicitly includes manhood / womanhood specifically rather than just masculinity or femininity
Being cisgender, but wanting to transition in some way, have surgeries of some kind, etc. in a way that you consider moving towards masculinity / femininity or manhood / womanhood.
Being some form of masculine / man or woman / feminine that does not fit into transmasculinity / manhood or transfemininity / womanhood.
Someone whose femininity / womanhood or manhood / masculinity is distinctly trans, but do not identify with the terms trans man, trans woman, transfeminine, or trans woman.
A trans person who is admasculine, adfeminine, sensfeminine, sensmasculine, or similar labels to this.
People who do not want their AGAB, sex, etc. assumed; only that they are trans and in some way aligned to femininity / womanhood or masculinity / manhood. This can absolutely include transmascs and transfems who do not want to disclose that they are those identities, and those who simply do not want to use any more specific label for the sake of comfort, safety, or preference.
Identifying with your AGAB, but feeling as though you’re transitioning towards it or have an identity similar to it that is distinctly trans- such as experiencing a different form of womanhood / femininity or masculinity / manhood.
Nonhuman, genderqueer, etc. men, women, feminine, masculine, etc. people who want a blanket term for their identity, or who feel as though they’re transitioning in a way that doesn’t feel transmasculine or transfeminine.
Those who are reclaiming parts of themselves that may have formerly been traumatizing or painful to them, and thus feel as though they’re only now transitioning to or realizing that side to themselves.
Those in systems who have an incongruent or otherwise non-conformant experience between headspace and the body (also called “eclian” or “azlian”)
Those who do not want to use any kind of more specific label and want to use something completely broad, or those with a vague experience with any of these things and don’t know a better word for it.
Someone who is simply trans and masculine / feminine or a man / woman, and likes these terms to describe themselves.
Much more.
You might be wondering why I would combine womanhood and femininity, and masculinity and manhood, into single terms. After all, these things are different! The simple answer for that is I wanted to include people who were either one, or both, into it, not just people who were one or the other. You do not need to be both a woman and feminine, or masculine and a man, you only need to be one. It was for the sake of broadness; you know how sometimes people say “trans women and transfem”? It was meant to include both groups, and even more than just that, inside of it. This is for ease of communication as well as inclusivity. It’s also because terms already exist for one or the other, and I wanted to make something that could refer to both or either one.
I also wanted these terms to be inclusive of those who are simply transitioning, and those who are transsexual or some other flavor of “trans,” not necessarily transgender specifically. Cisgender women who desire transitioning towards masculinity, or even have top and/or bottom surgery, for example, can be Transtidal, and vice versa for Translunar.
So, in short: Translunar is for any trans person who is aligned or connected with femininity and/or womanhood, or is transitioning towards it, and Transtidal is for any trans person who is aligned or connected with masculinity and/or manhood, or is transitioning towards it. Nothing else. They are broad and malleable umbrella terms because I was tired of worrying about the different requirements, nuances, and specific details of other terms describing similar things, and because I wanted to have a catch-all group for a very broad stroke of many types of people.
Now that I’ve gone over what these terms are, I should go over a couple things that they are not. They are not replacements for transmasc or transfem, nor are they simply combining transmasc and trans man and transfem and trans woman. There are a wide variety of people who fit into neither of those, but could still be translunar or transtidal. They are not meant to be the new version of anything, instead being umbrella terms that can hold others underneath them, as well as being labels that are inherently broad and completely flexible depending on personal experience. They are not about your AGAB, your birth sex, your proximity to transmisogyny, or anything of that sort. Discard any biases or ideas of these terms you might have about them; they are strictly what they say on the tin. This isn’t an effort to say the other terms are bad for having requirements to them, only that translunar and transtidal do not have them.
Now for a bit of stuff about the words. Translunar can be shortened to transluna or translun, and transtidal can be shortened to transtide or transtid. Translunarity and transtidality are how you can use these terms as adjectives! I also wanted to specifically make the terms translunarine and transtidaline; these can be for people who align with qualities of translunarity or transtidality, and may be more comfortable for people who are specifically masculine or feminine, since it looks similar to those words- but, of course, you can use either one regardless.
Furthermore, -lunar and -tidal may be used with other prefixes. For instance, someone may be isolunar or isotidal (isogender being for someone who is neither cis nor trans.) You can use these suffixes for whatever you please, really, I don’t mind. Consider yourself adlunar, senslunar, or something like that? Go nuts!
Now, for a bit of a disclaimer: I did change the translunar symbol between the original post and this one.
The one on the left is the original, and the one on the right is new. This was because, at the time of making it, I did not know that this symbol actually represented Lilith, as I had made that symbol from scratch completely on accident in my art program. Lilith is a Jewish figure, and because of that, I don’t feel comfortable using a literal exact lookalike to the symbol that represents her. So, I changed it. It still looks similar to the old one, but it is clearly distinct from it. I also made it a bit sharper and cleaner in general. Please do not associate any form of the Lilith symbol with translunarity out of respect for Jewish people.
I also cleaned up and boldened the transtidal symbol just a bit, but other than that I changed very little.
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That’s all, for the time being! Feel free to ask me whatever you’d like about these labels.
