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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2015 2:59:43 GMT -6
Transgender people experience a mismatch between their gender identity or gender expression and their assigned sex. Transgender is also an umbrella term, as, in addition to including trans men and trans women whose binary gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (and who are sometimes specifically termed transsexual if they desire medical assistance to transition), it may include genderqueer people (whose identities are not exclusively masculine or feminine, but may, for example, be bigender, pangender or agender). Other definitions include third-gender people as transgender or conceptualize transgender people as a third gender, and infrequently the term is defined very broadly to include cross-dressers. Many transgender people experience a period of identity development that includes gaining better understanding their self-image, self-reflection, and self-expression. The degree to which individuals feel genuine, authentic, and comfortable within their external appearance and accept their genuine identity is referred to as transgender congruence. Being transgender is independent of sexual orientation; transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, etc., or may consider conventional sexual orientation labels inadequate or inapplicable. Evolution of transgender terminologyIn his 1965 reference work Sexual Hygiene and Pathology, psychiatrist John F. Oliven of Columbia University coined the term transgender, writing that the term which had previously been used, transsexualism, "is misleading; actually, "transgenderism" is meant, because sexuality is not a major factor in primary transvestism." The term transgender was then popularized with varying definitions by various transgender, transsexual and transvestite people, including Virginia Prince, who used it in the December 1969 issue of Transvestia, a national magazine for cross dressers she founded. By the mid-1970s both trans-gender and trans people were in use as umbrella terms,[note 1] and 'transgenderist' was used to describe people who wanted to live cross-gender without sex reassignment surgery (SRS). By 1976, transgenderist was abbreviated as TG in educational materials. By 1984, the concept of a "transgender community" had developed, in which transgender was used as an umbrella term; in 1985, Richard Elkins established the "Trans-Gender Archive" at the University of Ulster. By 1992, the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy defined transgender as an expansive umbrella term including "transsexuals, transgenderists, cross dressers" and anyone transitioning. The term trans man refers to a man who has transitioned from female-to-male, and trans woman refers to a woman who has transitioned male-to-female. Health-practitioner manuals, professional journalistic style guides, and LGBT advocacy groups advise the adoption by others of the name and pronouns identified by the person in question, including present references to the transgender person's past; many also note that transgender should be used as an adjective, not a noun (for example, "Max is transgender" or "Max is a transgender man", not "Max is a transgender"), and that transgender should be used, not transgendered. People who are neither transgender nor genderqueer — people whose sense of personal identity corresponds to the sex and gender assigned to them at birth — are termed cisgender. Transsexual and its relationship to transgenderThe term transsexual was introduced to English in 1949 by David Oliver Cauldwell, and popularized by Harry Benjamin in 1966, around the same time transgender was coined and began to be popularized. Since the 1990s, transsexual has generally been used to describe the subset of transgender people who desire to transition permanently to the gender with which they identify and who seek medical assistance (for example, SRS) with this. However, the concerns of the two groups are sometimes different; for example, transsexual men and women who can pay for medical treatments (or who have institutional coverage for their treatment) are likely to be concerned with medical privacy and establishing a durable legal status as their gender later in life. Distinctions between the terms transgender and transsexual are commonly based on distinctions between gender (psychological, social) and sex (physical). Hence, transsexuality may be said to deal more with material aspects of one's sex, while transgender considerations deal more with one's internal gender disposition or predisposition, as well as the related social expectations that may accompany a given gender role. Many transgender people prefer the designation transgender and reject transsexual. For example, Christine Jorgensen publicly rejected transsexual in 1979, and instead identified herself in newsprint as trans-gender, saying, "gender doesn't have to do with bed partners, it has to do with identity." This refers to the concern that transsexual implies something to do with sexuality, when it is actually about gender identity. Some transsexual people (those who desire or have undergone), however, object to being included in the transgender umbrella. The definitions of both terms have historically been variable. In his 2007 book Transgender, an Ethnography of a Category, anthropologist David Valentine asserts that transgender was coined and used by activists to include many people who do not necessarily identify with the term, and states that people who do not identify with the term transgender should not be included in the transgender spectrum. Leslie Feinberg likewise asserts that transgender is not a self-identifier (for some people) but a category imposed by observers to understand other people. However, these assertions are contested by the Transgender Health Program (THP) at Fenway Health in Boston. It notes that there are no universally accepted definitions, and terminology confusion is common because terms that were popular in at the turn of the 21st century may now be deemed offensive. The THP recommends that clinicians ask clients what terminology they prefer, and avoid the term transsexual unless they are sure that a client is comfortable with it. Harry Benjamin invented a classification system for transsexuals and transvestites, called the Sex Orientation Scale (SOS), in which he assigned transsexuals and transvestites to one of six categories based on their reasons for cross-dressing and the relative urgency of their need (if any) for sex reassignment surgery. Benjamin considered a moderate intensity "true transsexual" to need either estrogen or testosterone as a "substitute for or preliminary to operation"; people who meet Benjamin's definition of a "true transsexual" but do not desire SRS include Miriam Rivera. There are also people who have had SRS but do not meet the definition of "transsexual", such as Gregory Hemingway. Other identitiesIn addition to trans men and trans women whose binary gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex, and who form the core of the transgender umbrella, being included in even the narrowest definitions of it, several other groups are included in broader definitions of the term. These include people whose identities are not exclusively masculine or feminine but may for example be androgynous, bigender, pangender or agender — often grouped under the alternative umbrella term genderqueer — and third-gender people (alternatively, some references and some societies conceptualize transgender people as a third gender). Although some references define transgender very broadly to include transvestites / cross-dressers, they are usually excluded, as are transvestic fetishists (because they are considered to be expressing a paraphilia rather than a gender identification) and drag kings and drag queens (who are performers and cross-dress for the purpose of entertaining). Intersex people have genitalia or other physical sexual characteristics that do not conform to strict definitions of male or female, but intersex people are not necessarily transgender, since they do not all disagree with their assigned sex at birth. Transgender and intersex issues often overlap, however, because they both challenge the notion of rigid definitions of sex and gender. Genderqueer, including androgynous and bigenderGenderqueer or non-binary identities, which are not exclusively masculine or feminine but instead are agender, androgynous, bigender, pangender or gender fluid, exist outside of cisnormativity. Bigender and androgynous are overlapping categories; bigender individuals may identify as moving between male and female roles (genderfluid) or as being both male and female simultaneously (androgynous), and androgynes may similarly identify as beyond gender or genderless (postgender, agender), between genders (intergender), or moving across genders (genderfluid) or simultaneously exhibiting multiple genders (pangender). Limited forms of androgyny are common (women wearing pants, men wearing earrings) and are not seen as transgender behaviour. Androgyne is also sometimes used as a medical synonym for an intersex person. Genderqueer identities are independent of sexual orientation. Transvestite or cross-dresserA transvestite is a person who cross-dresses, or dresses in clothes of the opposite sex. The term "transvestite" is used as a synonym for the term "cross-dresser", although "cross-dresser" is generally considered the preferred term. The term 'cross-dresser' is not exactly defined in the relevant literature. Michael A. Gilbert, professor at the Department of Philosophy, York University, Toronto, offers this definition: " is a person who has an apparent gender identification with one sex, and who has and certainly has been birth-designated as belonging to [that] sex, but who wears the clothing of the opposite sex because it is that of the opposite sex." This definition excludes people "who wear opposite sex clothing for other reasons," such as "those female impersonators who look upon dressing as solely connected to their livelihood, actors undertaking roles, individual males and females enjoying a masquerade, and so on. These individuals are cross dressing but are not cross dressers." Cross-dressers may not identify with, or want to be the opposite gender, nor adopt the behaviors or practices of the opposite gender, and generally do not want to change their bodies medically. The majority of cross-dressers identify as heterosexual. People who cross-dress in public can have a desire to pass as the opposite gender, so as not to be detected as a cross-dresser, or may be indifferent.
The term "transvestite" and the associated outdated term "transvestism" are conceptually different from the term "transvestic fetishism", as "transvestic fetishist" describes those who intermittently use clothing of the opposite gender for fetishistic purposes.In medical terms, transvestic fetishism is differentiated from cross-dressing by use of the separate codes 302.3 in the DSM and F65.1 in the ICD.
Drag kings and queens Drag is a term applied to clothing and make-up worn on special occasions for performing or entertaining, unlike those who are transgender or who cross-dress for other reasons. Drag performance includes overall presentation and behavior in addition to clothing and makeup. Drag can be theatrical, comedic, or grotesque. Drag queens have been considered caricatures of women by second-wave feminism. Drag artists have a long tradition in LGBT culture. Generally the terms drag queen covers men doing female drag, drag king covers women doing male drag, and faux queen covers women doing female drag. Nevertheless, there are drag artists of all genders and sexualities who perform for various reasons. Some drag performers, transvestites, and people in the gay community, have embraced the pornographically-derived term Wilson to describe drag queens or people who engage in transvestism or cross-dressing, however this term is widely considered offensive if applied to transsexual people.
LGBT community The concepts of gender identity and transgender identity differ from that of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation describes an individual's enduring physical, romantic, emotional, or spiritual attraction to another person, while gender identity is one's personal sense of being a man or a woman. Transgender people have more or less the same variety of sexual orientations as cisgender people. In the past, the terms homosexual and heterosexual were incorrectly used to label transgender individuals' sexual orientation based on their birth sex. Professional literature now uses terms such as attracted to men (androphilic), attracted to women (gynephilic), attracted to both (bisexual) or attracted to neither (asexual) to describe a person's sexual orientation without reference to their gender identity. Therapists are coming to understand the necessity of using terms with respect to their clients' gender identities and preferences. For example, a person who is assigned male at birth, transitions to female, and is attracted to men would be identified as heterosexual.
Despite the distinction between sexual orientation and gender, throughout history the gay, lesbian, and bisexual subculture was often the only place where gender-variant people were socially accepted in the gender role they felt they belonged to; especially during the time when legal or medical transitioning was almost impossible. This acceptance has had a complex history. Like the wider world, the gay community in Western societies did not generally distinguish between sex and gender identity until the 1970s, and often perceived gender variant people more as homosexuals who behaved in a gender-variant way than as gender-variant people in their own right. Today, members of the transgender community often continue to struggle to remain part of the same movement as lesbian, gay and bisexual citizens, and to be included in rights protections. And in fact, the role of the transgender community in the history of LGBT rights is often overlooked, as shown in Transforming History.
as seen on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender
hope this helps you.
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