Abstract
Language and human cognition are intertwined in such a way that the words we use have a strong influence in the way we see the world. As Finland is culturally a part of the Western world but Finnish as a language is not related to the Indo-European languages that cover most of the Western linguistic map, it is instructive to look at some core trans-related terms in Finnish and English. In particular, the different ways of dividing the conceptual space of gender/sex/sexuality make a difference in fighting the sexualization of trans people. To some extent it also affects the degree to which gender identities are seen as being socially constructed, although here the term identity itself steers toward a social explanation and away from other possible etiologies.
