transvestigator

English

Etymology

Blend of transgender +‎ investigator.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /tɹænzˌvɛs.tɪˈɡeɪ.tə(ɹ)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /tɹænzˌvɛs.tɪˈɡeɪ.təɹ/, /-tə-/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪtə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: trans‧ves‧ti‧ga‧tor

Noun

transvestigator (plural transvestigators)

1. (Internet slang, conspiracy theories) A person who performs transvestigation; someone who routinely conducts or promotes informal investigations into whether a public figure is secretly transgender, generally by analyzing that person's appearance and anatomical structure.
   • 2019 November 7, Devastated 24/7 (@roo_tea), Twitter‎^[1]:

     You gotta be kidding me. Transvestigators are wild. Here I am just tryna find some Anne Hathaway movies and I see this. [screenshot of a Google search in which the top "people also ask" result is "Was Anne Hathaway born a boy?"]

   • 2020 August 10, Ann Coates (@setoacnna), Twitter‎^[2]:

     No you can't always tell. Of the trans women I've known who told me they were trans I certainly couldn't "tell" when I met them. And the transvestigators just suspect every cis woman.

   • 2022 May 19, Lylac Doll (@LylacDoll), Twitter‎^[3]:

     I've known cisgender women who were kicked out of restrooms by transvestigators. It's the most poorly developed of all the Bigotry Sciences right behind phrenology.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:transvestigator.

Translations

Translations

• French: transvestigateur (fr) m, transvestigatrice f

References

• “Online Anti-LGBTQ Hate Terms Defined: “Transvestigation””, in GLAAD, launched 2022