Crossdressing 101 for Webmasters

The transgender niche in general is a bit of a complicated world, and unlike promoting big boob or pantyhose porn if you classify a transgender model with the wrong name you’ve probably just lost a sale. So you might as well start off right and learn the terminology. Besides, this is the most common question I get from other webmasters, so now I can just direct everyone to this post

First off, the transgender community and the porn world don’t always see eye to eye on nomenclature, so I’ll of course focus on names as they are used in the adult entertainment industry. Expect to hear from the occasional irate surfer who was looking for a new transgender support forum, but if you follow this guide you shouldn’t be offending any models or potential members. Generically, transgender adult models are referred to as tgirls or gurls. These are fairly polite terms and safe to use in casual conversation. Transgenders in the adult industry largely fall in to two categories: those with boobs, and those without.

If the model has boobs she is a shemale or tranny. Note the pronoun “she”, this is important. Also note that if you call a transgender on the street a tranny you will get slapped An Asian tranny would typically be called a ladyboy – this term is a translation of an actual culturally accepted gender role in Thailand. Ladyboys usually have small boobs which may lead you to wonder why they fit in the “with boobs” category. The truth is that with the exception of some full-time professional models, most shemales are saving up for sex-reassignment surgery (and thus they have boobs, are taking hormones, etc). In any event, the intent of this person is to live full time as a female, boobs are usually just the most obvious sign of this. Probably not a good idea to tell Joe Surfer that his favorite tranny model will be getting her cock chopped off soon though!

A tgirl without boobs is a crossdresser or transvestite. These terms have different cultural connotations (particularly Europe vs the US) so I won’t go in to details. Either is suitable. Some crossdressers intend to get boobs eventually, but many (like me!) are happy to keep their biological gender and just dress up like a female. In spite of this, crossdressers should still be referred to as “she”. Kind of like the way you would refer to an actor by the name of his character in a movie. Crossdressers come in two major varieties – those that try to look like a female (effectively the girl-next-door or amateur equivalent of a shemale), and those who like to be (forced to) dressed up but probably still look a bit like a guy in a dress. The later are usually called sissies or panty-boys and the use of the female pronoun is intended to be derogatory, whereas for the former type of crossdresser it’s more a sign of respect.

Ok, maybe more than you ever wanted to know about what shemales and crossdressers call themselves (or maybe not? if you want more information about crossdressers outside of porn, see this article). But the key points are:

• - Shemales, crossdressers, and any sub variety you can think of should be referred to as female
• - The term ladyboy only refers to Asian shemales
• - Never call a model with boobs a crossdresser (if you call a crossdresser a shemale or tranny there is a 50% chance you’ll get away with it as a compliment)
• - If you’re not sure, tgirl is probably a safe alternative . . . though search volumes for tgirl are pretty low
• - Surfers who are in to this niche know these names well, so use them correctly