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RETURN TO > TRANSGENDER ISSUES > COMMITTEES & PROJECTS > HOME
Transgendered
Persons – a primer to better understanding
By Transgender Nation – Washington, DC
1. What does ‘Transgendered’ Mean?
A ‘transgendered’ person is someone who exhibits appearances or behaviors opposite their birth sex. Their gender identity differs from their physical sex. Transgendered people are born this way and have no choice in who they are.
2. Who are Transgendered People?
Transgendered persons include pre-operative and postoperative transsexuals; transgenderists (persons living full-time in a gender opposite their birth sex with no desire to pursue surgery); transvestites (preferred term: cross-dressers, those whose gender expression occasionally differs from their birth sex); passing women and stone butches, usually lesbians whose gender expression is male and who also identify themselves as transgendered. Transsexual and transgenderist persons can be female-to-male (transsexual or transgendered men) as well as male-to-female (transsexual or transgendered women).
3. Are Transgendered People Gay?
Most transgendered persons identify themselves as heterosexual. Their intrinsic difference is their gender identity, not their sexual orientation: these are two different things altogether. However, transgendered people are perceived by most people as homosexuals, and thus are discriminated against in similar ways.
4. How are Transgendered People discriminated against?
Like gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, transgendered people face employment and housing discrimination. They are also denied public accommodations and access to health care for their medical conditions. They are also potential targets for hate crimes: verbal harassment, hate mail, hateful telephone calls and even acts of violence committed by the same persons who hate homosexuals and bisexuals. But unlike gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, transgendered people are much more likely to fall victim to discrimination and hate crimes due to their more obvious appearances.
5. What about their Privacy?
Like the majority of gay men, lesbians and bisexual people who keep their sexual orientations secret, the majority of transgendered persons also strongly desire to keep their transgendered states secret. Like gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, transgendered people are also vulnerable to their sexual minority status being revealed against their will, i.e., being ‘outed".
6. How do you distinguish between different types of transgendered persons?
The largest subgroup of transgendered persons, heterosexual cross-dressers, are men who apart from their occasional cross-dressing lead lives that are quite ordinary in all other respects. Most cross-dressers are married and many have children, so they have much to lose from their transgendered state being revealed. They wish to remain in the sex they were born, unlike the transsexuals.
7. How about the Transsexuals?
Transsexual and transgenderist (non-operative transsexual) persons differ from cross-dressers in that they come to feel they can longer continue to live their lives in the gender associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
8. Why do they feel that way?
The overall psychological term is called gender dysphoria, an intense feeling of pain, anguish, and anxiety from the mis-assignment of a transgendered person’s sex at birth. All transgendered people suffer from it, but the feeling becomes more acute for transsexuals and transgenderists, usually in the middle of their lives. These feelings lead many transgendered people into depression, anxiety, chemical dependencies, divorces and other family problems, even suicide. In order to seek relief from their gender dysphoria, transsexual and transgenderist persons transition, or to begin living their lives in their true genders, which are opposite their birth sexes. This means they literally must "out" themselves to their employers, their families, their friends, everyone.
9. Why is that necessary?
Gender transition is impossible to hide, since gender is a pervasive facet of all aspects of one’s life. Beyond being the only way of relieving some of the gender dysphoria they suffer, transition for transsexual persons also marks the beginning of the minimum one-year period when they must be able to demonstrate to their psychotherapists their ability to successfully live and work full-time in their true gender. Demonstrating success in transition is an absolute prerequisite for sex reassignment surgery (SRS), which is the only known relief from the intense, physical gender dysphoria of transsexual people. The crucial importance of this real life test to a transsexual person is impossible to overstate: it is literally life or death.
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Some Basic Guidelines to Cover These Individuals in Stories
1. Full-time Living Status:
If a transgendered person is living fill-time in the gender opposite their birth sex (i.e., a "man" living as a woman or a "woman" living as a man) prior to or without sex reassignment surgery, that person should be referred to at all times with terms appropriate to their current gender.
Usage Tip: "Transgendered Woman" is appropriate for male-to-female persons.
"Transgendered Man" is appropriate for female-to-male persons.
"Transgendered Person" is appropriate for non-specific individuals.
2. Part-time Status:
If a transgendered person is not living full-time, they may intend to do so the future. Do not assume that a cross-dressed person is a "transvestite," someone who engages in cross-dressing only occasionally.
Usage Tip: Instead of "transvestite," the preferred term is crossdresser.
"Male Crossdresser" or "Female Crossdresser" are appropriate for these persons only if it clear they do not live full-time nor intend to. (see #6).
3. Surgical Status:
Generally speaking, if a male-to-female or a female-to-male transsexual has had sex reassignment surgery, the appropriate terms are "Transsexual Woman"or "Transsexual Man."
However, most post-operative transsexuals are extremely sensitive about their transsexual status.
This information should be considered confidential and should never be used in a story without their clearly given prior consent. (see #6)
4. Pronouns and Possessive Adjectives:
To refer to transgendered persons using pronouns and possessive adjectives appropriate to their birth sex (i.e., "he" or "his" for male-to-female persons, "she" or "her" for female-to-male persons) is equivalent to calling a gay man "faggot" or a lesbian "dyke." It is extremely offensive.
Usage tip: At all times, use pronouns arid possessive appropriate to their current gender.
5. Avoid Aspersion by Using Quotation Marks:
Never put the appropriate pronouns or possessives in quotes. Never put the sexual orientations or genitalia of transgendered persons in quotes.
6. Self-Identification:
Ask an individual transgendered person how they wish to be identified. We all like to describe ourselves differently, and some variance in terminology is to be expected. Self-identification is an important right. When in doubt, just ask.
These suggested guidelines serve two purposes. Precise usage of the appropriate terms contained herein when covering transgendered persons will improve journalistic accuracy. In the interest of civility, correctly using the specific terminology while avoiding inflammatory and derogatory wording in media coverage of transgendered persons is both impartial and respectful. To do otherwise is to be insulting, injurious, and slanderous. To do otherwise is to intentionally show disrespect to transgendered human beings. That is called transphobia.
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Transgendered Terminology
(taken in part from The AEGIS Transition Series, © 1991, American Educational Gender Information Service, Decatur, GA)
Crossdresser: One who wears the clothing of the other sex. Males who crossdress for erotic reasons, also known as transvestites, tend to prefer this term
Gender: A psychosocial construct, which changes over time and is distinct from sex, which is an individual’s biological state of maleness or femaleness.
Gender Dysphoria: An intense persistent discomfort resulting from one’s own perception of the inappropriateness of sex assignment made at birth.
Gender Identity: One’s own personal sense of being a man or a woman, a boy or a girl.
Heterosexuality: Sexual preference for those of the opposite sex.
Homosexuality: Sexual preference for those of the same sex.
Sex: The biological state of maleness or femaleness determined at birth, as opposed to gender, which is a psychosocial construct.
Sex Reassignment: Modifying the body to make it as much as possible like that of the other sex, in order to facilitate living in the social role that is associated with that sex.
Hormonal Sex Reassignment: exogenous administration of estrogens (for male to female) or androgens (for female to male) to affect the development of secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex.
Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS): Permanent surgical refashioning of the genitalia to resemble the external genitalia of the other sex.
Standards of Care: A set of minimum guidelines formulated by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc., and designed to safeguard both transsexual persons and those who provide professional services to transsexual persons. By imposing various requirements on both the service providers (Doctors and psychotherapists) and the consumers (the transsexual patients), the Standards of Care minimize the chance of an individual making a mistake and later regretting the decision to change one’s sex, which is a permanent procedure.
Sexual Orientation: Sexual preference for erotic partners of the same, opposite or either sex. An individual may be heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual.
Transsexual: An individual who is profoundly unhappy in the sex assignment made at birth, and who seeks to change or has changed their body to be as much as possible like that of the opposite sex, in order to facilitate living in the gender normally associated with that sex. Changes to the secondary sex characteristics are accomplished through Hormonal Sex Reassignment, and to genitalia and/or breasts through Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS). Additional cosmetic surgeries and procedures such as electrolysis may also be involved. In most cases, the transformation process is governed by the Standards of Care and takes several years to complete.
Transition: the period where a transsexual begins to live their life in the new gender of choice. It also marks the beginning of the one-year period during which, according to the Standards of Care, a transsexual must demonstrate that he or she can live successfully in their new gender of choice in order to be considered as a candidate for genital sex reassignment surgery.