What's a Transgender?
Transgender is the state of one's "gender identity" (self-identification as woman, man, neither or both) not matching one's "assigned sex" (identification by others as male, female or intersex based on physical/genetic sex). Transgender does not imply any specific form of sexual orientation; transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, or asexual; some may consider conventional sexual orientation labels inadequate or inapplicable to them.
While people self-identify as transgender, transgender identity includes many overlapping categories. These include cross-dresser, transvestite, androgynes, genderqueer; people who live cross-gender, drag kings and drag queens; and, frequently, transsexual. Usually not included are transvestic fetishists (because it is considered to be a paraphilia rather than gender identification). In an interview, artist RuPaul talked about society's ambivalence to the differences in the people who embody these terms. "A friend of mine recently did the Oprah show about transgender youth," said RuPaul. "It was obvious that we, as a culture, have a hard time trying to understand the difference between a drag queen, transsexual, and a transgender, yet we find it very easy to know the difference between the American baseball league and the National baseball league, when they are both so similar.
What is a Transexual?
Transsexualism is when an individual identifies with a gender that is different from their biological sex. A medical diagnosis can be made if a person experiences discomfort as a result of a desire to be a member of the opposite sex, or if a person experiences impaired functioning or distress as a result of that gender identification. Transsexualism is stigmatized in many parts of the world but has become more widely known in Western culture in the mid to late 20th century, concurrently with the sexual revolution and the development of sex reassignment surgery.
The word "transsexual" is most often used as an adjective rather than a noun – a "transexual person" rather than simply "a transexual". Transsexual people prefer to be referred to by the gender pronouns and terms associated with their target gender. For example, a transsexual man is a person who was assigned the female sex at birth on the basis of his genitals, but despite that assignment identifies as a man and is transitioning or has transitioned to a male gender role and has or will have a masculine body. Transsexual people are sometimes referred to with "assigned-to-target" sex terms such as "female-to-male" for a transsexual man or "male-to-female" for a transsexual woman.
What is intersexed?
Intersex in humans refers to intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male. This is usually understood to be congenital, involving chromosomal, morphologic, genital and/or gonadal anomalies, such as diversion from typical XX-female or XY-male presentations; sex reversal (XY-female, XX-male), genital ambiguity, sex developmental differences. An intersex individual may have biological characteristics of both the male and the female sexes.
Some people (whether physically intersex or not) do not identify themselves as either exclusively female or exclusively male. Androgyny is sometimes used to refer to those without gender-specific physical sexual characteristics or sexual preferences or gender identity, or some combination of these. This state may or may not include a mixture or absence of sexual preferences
Gladys you write entirely WAY TOO MUCH in your blogs. Thats probably why no one comments on these things! But I remember this lovely talk about this in Deidre's. Those hypothetical situations that she put in our heads about "lets say I was gay" things. We STILL in the question too :) But anyways this was a very interesting topic and although I am not for it, I am not against it too much either. Its more so of the "they do what they do and I will do what I do" kind of thing. I feel that everyone should know about the difference and know that they are people too so they should be treated and called so accordingly. But anywho, very informative blog!!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Taylor...you do write alot but thats cause you have a lot of facts that you want to share with us and thats good so we can stay informed and its like a summary of what we learned over the summer.I had Mrs. Holly and she talked about this and even showed us alot of videos over this topic.
ReplyDeleteI remember learning about transgender people in my human sexuality class during the summer it was quite interesting. I even got the chance to meet a transgender that is something I had never done before.
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