After the response I got to my last column (“Sexual landscape”), in which I asked the trans community to help me understand their culture, I have come to one very obvious conclusion: Trans people are smarter than the rest of us. Well, at least smarter than me.

Each letter I received was so well thought out and so finely written that I began to believe all trans people must be Ph.D.s, or something. Thanks to all the “trans-linguists” (thanks for that word, Ms. Wilson) who so generously gave of their time and patience to help me navigate through the minefield of terminology and feelings.

Now I know that a transwoman is someone who transitioned from male to female and a transman is one who has moved from male to female.

Regarding the difference between transsexual and transgender, “You land right in the middle of the label wars,” as Ms. Wilson put it. There seem to be three different points of view on this subject.

1. One is that “transgender” is about the same as “transsexual.” The younger trans people prefer the term transgender because it doesn’t contain the word “sex” and therefore doesn’t cause the same knee-jerk, lascivious response from straight people that the term transsexual does.

2. Another group thinks of the term transgender as an umbrella term that covers many types of gender variants and fetish-oriented people. The term is used (wrongly, many think) by the gay community to refer to people who have completed the move to their target sex.

3. “Transgender” is a word coined by a transvestite named Virginia Prince, who, according to the online encyclopedia Glbtq.com, used the word transgender to explain Prince’s desire to live socially as a woman without physically changing Prince’s body.

Unlike Prince – who viewed gender as a persona, either male or female, that one could scuttle back and forth between – trans people who have gone so far as to change every aspect of their life, including their physical bodies, don’t view their gender as a street they can cross again and again. Rather, trans people see that their body is on one side of the street and their gender is on the other, and they need to get their body across to where their gender is. A kind of somatic alignment.

My next question was about sexual orientation.

From the outside looking in, I thought sexual orientation (whether you are gay or straight) may trump gender identity because of cases I’d heard where a lesbian became a man, then became a gay man – or vise versa, where a gay man becomes a woman, then becomes a lesbian. Seems I was backassward.

Everyone who responded was adamant that it was the other way around. Sexual orientation took a back seat to gender identity. The drive to achieve one’s true sex had nothing to do with any kind of sexual desire. No trans person changes their sex for any kind of sexual pleasure. It’s all about getting right with yourself first. Who you decide to sleep with after you transition is a separate issue.

Some people keep the same orientation. For instance, a man living a straight life – including having a sexual attraction to women – becomes a woman and then is still attracted sexually to women. So the obvious question from the peanut gallery is, “If you wanted to sleep with women, why didn’t you just stay as a straight man, for crying out loud?”

The answer is, “One’s got nothing to do with the other.” Sometimes a person is so tied up in their gender issue that true sexual orientation doesn’t come up until one’s true gender is settled. Kind of like a closet within a closet. Add hormone therapy to the equation and all kinds of new feelings can surface. All agreed that you just don’t know which way the balls gonna bounce once you start adding hormones into the mix.

Finally, I wondered in my last letter why trans people continued to associate with the gay community. Emphatically, the answer was, “Most don’t.”

Most trans people don’t claim any tie to the gay community. Those trans people who are friends of our community are just that: friends. To paraphrase Mr. Moreno: If, in your mind, you’re a hetero male but in your body you’re a female, you have to date women who like female-bodied people. So, technically, you are a lesbian and you make friends with members of the gay community. So, of course, you are going to continue to have friends in the gay community after you transition. What kind of person dumps their friends?

I was happy to hear that last part. After learning so much about trans people, I am honored that these good people want to remain part of our community. Next Pride, I will know why they are marching, and I will cheer loudest of all.