Transgender

Transgender is generally used as an overarching, general term for a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups centered around the full or partial reversal of gender roles; however, compare other definitions below.

Transsexual

:Main article: Transsexual

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Transsexual people are people who desire to have, or have achieved, a different physical sex from that which they were assigned at birth. One typical (though oversimplified) explanation is of a "woman trapped in a man's body" or vice versa; many transsexual women state that they were in fact always of the female gender, but were assigned the male gender as a child on the basis of their genitals, and having realized that they are female, wish to change their bodies to match; transmen, naturally, feel exactly the opposite.

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The process of physical transition for transsexuals usually includes hormone replacement therapy and may include sexual reassignment surgery (a.k.a. gender reassignment surgery). For transwomen, electrolysis for hair removal is often required, while many transmen have breast-reduction surgery as early as possible, whether accompanied by genital surgery or not.

Related Topics:
Hormone replacement therapy - Sexual reassignment surgery - Gender reassignment surgery - Electrolysis

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Some spell the term transexual with one s in order to reduce the association of their identity with psychiatry and medicine.

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Terminology and concepts, compared to transgender

Transgender is often used as a euphemistic synonym for transsexual people by some. One set of reasoning for this is that it removes the conceptual image "sex" in "transsexual" that implies transsexuality is sexually motivated, which it is not. This usage is problematic because it can cause transgender people who do not identify as transsexual to be confused with them. It also seems to remove the issue of social presentation (gender, in its social sense) from the question, even though gender role and presentation is an important part of the equation.

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Furthermore, many transsexuals reject the term "transgender" as an identification for themselves, either as a synonym or as an umbrella term. They advance a number of arguments for this. One argument is that the use of the umbrella term inaccurately subsumes them and causes their identity, history, and existence to be marginalized. Another is that they perceive the term to be the breaking down of gender barriers, whereas transsexual people themselves usually identify as men or as women — just not as they were assigned at birth. A third occasionally mentioned is that they did not change gender at any point — they have always had their gender (identity), and the difficulty is their sex (anatomy), which they desire to change. However, others point out that transsexual people do change their gender role at some point, and that most non-transsexual transgender people always had their gender identity, too.

Related Topics:
Gender (identity) - Gender role

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A more problematic dispute with the use of the term "transsexual" is that it refers to processes of chemical and/or anatomical modification that do not actually render an individual reproductively viable after transition processes, nor change sex chromosomes. Particularly, criticism of transsexual women by some feminists includes the contention that their transition is cosmetic rather than fundamental, and they are thus not "really" changing their sex at all (thus the use of transgender). These critics claim that the presumption of reproductive viability is what distinguishes "women" from "men". This argument is used to discount the rights of identification and association with other women that transsexual women might claim. However, many arguments that link whether someone is a "woman" or a "man" based on reproductive capability, or chromosomes, fall apart when considering non-transsexual people who are infertile or non-transsexual men or women who have a chromosomal configuration different from other men and women in the general population.

Related Topics:
Chromosome - Infertile

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Probably many of these problems are associated with the history of the term "transgender" and its other definitions; see above.

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To respect the identity of those transsexual people who do not identify as transgender, the constructions trans, trans*, or transgender and transsexual sometimes are used to describe all transpeople.

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Further, many people who this article would define as transgender reject the term altogether, along with other related terms (transsexual, crossgender, etc.). This is most commonly seen with people who have changed sex but who do not define themselves as transsexual. A common statement is that a transsexual is someone who is undergoing a change from one sex to another; someone who has already done so is simply a "man" or a "woman". This brings up issues of the extent to which someone who is not a part of a group may define it, also seen in the case of, for example, "men who have sex with men" (MSMs), who do not see themselves as homosexual but could still be defined as such.

Related Topics:
Men who have sex with men - Homosexual

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