After I commented the question, I realized I should have just used Google. Anyways, thanks for the answer esseffgeez and HTS.

Sometimes A is used for Asexual.

“Transgendered” implies that you’re not the same person you used to be. “Transgender” does not.

It’s basically the idea that if you are trandgendered, you have to have gone through a change. Like, for instance, if you were gayed.

Speaking physically, there are transgenders who have undergone a change. There are also those who have not, and simply identify as another sex without being able to, needing to, or wanting to alter their body.

It’s exclusionary. Saying “I’m [verb tense]” is significantly different from saying “I’m [noun]”

Self identification is a very powerful thing, and it pulls from a very large pool. I mean, you identify yourself, and I’m speaking to you specifically, in a lot of ways that are rigid. By sexuality, you identify as straight. In a way that I’m only assuming has that same rigidity in your life, you identify religiously as Mormon. Similarly, you identify – maybe topically – as Jamison. Since you had a child, you’ve identified as dad.

Identity can be fluid and it can be rigid. Parenthood is a great example here. You didn’t always identify as a father. So it’s fluid that way. But you’ll never again identify yourself otherwise. So it’s rigid.

Sexuality can also be fluid or rigid. We all know about people who struggle with sexual identity during adolescence. So there can be room for movement there. We also know people who have never identified in any way other than gay or straight or bisexual, and that’s not going to change.

Gender identification can be more difficult to sympathize with because it’s less universal. I mean, you’ve never identified as anything other than a male, and identifying as a male is perfectly natural to your mind because physically there is nothing to contradict the idea. Not surprisingly, I identify the same way.

But to create a common ground that – even if you don’t “get it” you can stand on to at least have perspective on it – think of this: Haven’t you ever looked in the mirror and felt that the person you saw there had absolutely nothing to do with the person you thought you were? However fleeting that experience was, however impermanent, just imagine it magnified. Imagine it affecting you on an even more fundamental level. Imagine that instead of this happening for a few months when you were 15, you had this experience every single time you ever looked at yourself.

Just imagine that. You know what it’s like to not feel like yourself. You know what it’s like to identify yourself in a hundred, in a thousand different ways. Conceptually, the prospect of identifying personally in a way that contradicts the way you exist physically isn’t foreign to you. It can’t be. In the concrete terms of the transgender experience, it can definitely be hard – even impossible – to understand the specific conflict.

But you’ve had identity conflicts that work in similar ways. We all have. Sometimes just connecting with that empathy can help take one step toward a more specific understanding.