t-girl

T-girl is based on transgender woman or trans woman, a person who was assigned male at birth but whose gender identity is female. T is short for trans(gender) and girl, of course, is a term for a young female. The transgender man equivalent of a t-girl is t-boy.

Early instances of t-girl online are found in personals posted on gender-and-sexuality-based Usenet groups in the late 1990s. Today, t-girl is sometimes used in the pornography industry to label or promote content. Some have argued that this use of t-girl fetishizes or objectifies transgender woman. Others, such as a self-identified transgender commentator Daniella Argento in 2018 blog post on the term, have observed:

Wherever the usage is, the pornographer follows. However, I simply cannot agree that a word being used by a pornographer invalidates other uses of that word. It is simply a nonsensical argument. Using obscenities in polite society does not raise their register. Using high register words to describe obscenity does not destroy the meaning of the word.