- What is it to be transsexual?
- history of transsexuality
- gender dysphoria
- sex change
- transgender and transsexual
- transgender pride flag
- Transphobia
- Other gender identities
We explain what transsexuality is, its history and other gender identities. Also, what are the stages of sex change.
What is it to be transsexual?
Transsexuality (sometimes also called transsexualism) is the gender identity of the people who consider themselves to be individuals of the opposite sex to which their bodies naturally present themselves. Thus, trans women are those who were born with a male body, but identify themselves as women; while trans men are those who were born with a female body, but identify themselves as male.
Transsexuality is an identity of gender distinct from the traditional, part of the spectrum of transgender identities. This means that it is different from people cisgender either cis, those whose biological sex corresponds to their psychological or emotional gender identity. Transsexual people tend to hide the sexual features of their own body, adopt the traditional clothing of the opposite sex, and even undergo treatments and surgeries in order to reassign their sex.
Transgender people typically identify themselves with the label trans, or with “umbrella” terms such as transgender, non-binary gender or as sexually diverse people. The purpose of these categories is to be as non-exclusive as possible, given that throughout the history of humanity, people trans they have been marginalized, rejected and stigmatized as psychiatric patients, sexual deviants or even criminals and delinquents.
Transsexuality is a very rare identity condition, typical of approximately 0.3% of the world's population, but strongly stigmatized and even persecuted in much of the world. Transsexuality and the possibility of gender reassignment (legal and/or surgical) is illegal in many countries and was considered a mental illness until the end of the 20th century.
It is important not to confuse transsexuality with transvestism (the desire, often with an erotic tint, for wearing the traditional clothes of the opposite sex), nor with the intersex (a medical condition also known as hermaphroditism).
Nor should it be confused with any existing sexual orientation, since a trans person can be attracted to men, women, or any gender identity. Gender identity refers only to the way an individual internally conceives of himself, not to erotic-romantic tastes and affinities.
history of transsexuality
It is complex to trace a history of transsexuality, since there is evidence of trans people in ancient mythological traditions, and even in ancient cultures such as India, in which there is the possibility of recognizing a "third sex".
The study of transsexuality proper had its beginning in the middle of the 19th century, when the still young disciplines of psychiatry and psychoanalysis became interested in the so-called "identity disorders", which mainly had to do with the identity sexual, that is, whether people identified themselves as male or female and why.
Studies on the subject by physicians and psychologists such as Nikolaus Friedreich (1825-1882), Jean Étienne Dominique Esquirol (1772-1840), Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), and later in the twentieth century by Havelock Ellis (1859 -1939) and Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) were important in the recognition of the homosexual and transsexual condition, despite the fact that these were initially considered as "deviations".
Such is the case of the German endocrinologist Harry Benjamin (1885-1986), who coined the term transsexual for patients whom he treated with hormonal supplements of the sex with which they identified.
Since 1977, however, the WHO included transsexuality as a medical syndrome, and not as a mental illness. This is how it currently appears in official medical documents such as the DSM IV (Diagnostic Manual). However, pressure from protesters around the world led the WHO to include transsexuality in a section identified as "relative conditions of sexual health" in 2018, under the name of "gender incongruence".
gender dysphoria
"Gender dysphoria" is a medical term, which replaces the old "gender identity disorder" with which transsexuality was identified, understood at that time as a mental pathology. Gender dysphoria is defined as the profound discomfort or feeling of discomfort produced in an individual by the discrepancy between their biological sex and their gender identity. Which can lead to problems like depression, anxiety and other afflictions of a mental or emotional nature.
Gender dysphoria is a real problem in the community trans, a frequent cause of serious anxiety problems and even high suicide rates. Its origin is still being studied by specialists, without knowing if it is due to genetic, environmental or hormonal causes during the embryonic stage or infancy.
sex change
Lili Elbe was one of the first people to perform sex change surgery.Sex change is a complex procedure, still under study and definition, which consists of two stages:
- The chronic hormonal treatment of the individual to induce in him the secondary sexual traits of the sex with which he identifies.
- The subsequent surgical removal of those organs of their biological sex, in addition to the eventual reconstruction of the desired genitalia. This implies surgeries whose purpose is to give the transgender person a body more in line with the gender with which they identify.
The first sex change surgeries took place in the 20th century, although not always in the public eye. The first that is known took place in 1912, described by Hirschfeld, and it is known that there were later cases thanks to his disciple Felix Abraham, and also that it was a practice in which doctors affiliated with Nazism were interested.
Famous, however, are the cases of the Danish painter Lili Elbe (legally Einar Mogens Wegener, 1882-1931), who asked Hirschfeld to surgically turn her into a woman in 1930 and died from the sequelae of the operation; and the case of US soldier George Jorgensen who in 1952 underwent similar treatment with relative success, for which she changed her legal name to Christine Jorgensen.
transgender and transsexual
The terms transgender and transsexual are often used interchangeably, and to some extent may become synonymous, but they do not designate exactly the same thing. To understand this difference, it is important to start from the fact that there are several gender identities other than the traditional one (cisgender), one of which is, precisely, transsexuality. However, to name this set of divergent or alternative identities, the term transgender.
So every transsexual person is a transgender person.But not every transgender person is necessarily transsexual: this category usually also includes people agender, non-binary, among other possible identities. On the other hand, the terms transsexual and transvestite still have a certain problematic connotation, given that they were used for decades to discriminate against and pathologize people trans.
transgender pride flag
Community trans International has created a flag to identify its movement of struggle for visibility, recognition and institutional protection. This flag consists of a rectangle made up of five thick and horizontal stripes: one white in the middle position, two pink ones in the upper and lower position immediately next to it, and two light blue stripes in the outer positions, above and below.
This flag was created in 1999 by the American trans woman Monica Helms, and used for the first time in the LGBT pride parade in the city of Phoenix, United States in 2000.
Transphobia
Transphobia is the aversion, hatred or fear of transgender people, and like other types of phobia (homophobia, for example) it can lead to situations of harassment, discrimination and even violence. The term “transphobia” is a neologism emerged at the beginning of the 21st century, with which it seeks to make visible (and therefore de-normalize) the differentiated and pejorative treatment that transgender people often suffer, such as job discrimination, school and street harassment, and even physical violence and sexual.
Other gender identities
In addition to transsexuality, other gender identities are currently recognized, such as:
- cisgender. These are people whose gender identity coincides with their biological sex. This does not mean anything about their sexual orientation, and therefore there are cis people heterosexuals and cis homosexual people.
- Agender. It is about those people who do not identify with any established identity gender, neither between the traditional ones (man-woman), nor in the trans spectrum. Agender people are also called “gender neutral”.
- fluid gender. It is about those people whose gender identity is not particularly stable, and oscillates between masculine and feminine, or even between other identities, depending on the environmental conditions or the internal condition of the individual. Its genre, as the name of the category indicates, “flows” from one place to another.
- non-binary gender or Genderqueer. It is about those people who identify with a gender outside the traditional division between masculine and feminine, either because they embrace both genders at the same time, or because they do not identify with either, or because they assume certain aspects of one and the other. . It is an “umbrella” term for everything that is difficult to classify in the other identities.