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Transgender Definitions
Know Your Language!
Tips for the Public Regarding Transgendered Individuals
Who's Who?
Transsexuals are individuals who have a gender identity
(the sense of being a man or a woman) different from their anatomical
sex. They often seek medical treatment to change their physical attributes
to correspond with their gender identity. This treatment may include hormone
therapy, electrolysis, and surgery. Psychotherapy and real life experience
in the new gender role is required for most medical treatment.
Cross dressers wear clothing usually associated with
the gender "opposite" to their anatomical sex. Cross dressing
may be part-time in the privacy of the person's own
home, public and even full-time. The difference is that crossdressers'
gender identity remains the same as their anatomical sex. They usually
do not seek medical treatment. Erotic pleasure is sometimes the motivation
for crossdressing, especially in younger people. Crossdressers can be
attracted to either same-sex or opposite-sex partners, or both.
Intersexed (hermaphroditic) individuals are born with
genitals which show characteristics of both sexes or are opposite to their
genetic sex. Many are surgically "corrected" in infancy, some
grow up to feel like they have had an essential part of themselves taken
away without their consent.
Transgenderists live as members of the other sex, but
without the extreme need or desire to alter their bodies that transsexuals
experience. Some live permanently as members of the other sex, while others
assume gender identities outside of the male-female two-gender model (Third
Gender). Transgenderists often take hormones, some have other treatments
(electrolysis), but few undergo surgical transformation.
Androgynes, Gender Benders, and Gender Blenders merge
the characteristics of men and women in various ways which are sometimes
subtle and sometimes shocking.
Drag Kings and Drag Queens present larger than life
images of men and women, exaggerating gender stereotypes for entertainment,
attention, or self-gratification.
Transpeople/Transgendered People are group nouns which
are often used to describe all transgendered and transsexual people (all
the above).
The Transgender Community is the term used for the organized
community of transgendered people.
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