Vanessa Law

What Is a Transsexual Anyway?



Posted: Saturday, June 07, 2008

by
Cross Dresser Heaven

The world of gender is confusing. There are many people who struggle with their gender and self ide
ntity on a daily basis. Those who have never questioned their gender are confused by people who do. What is gender anyway? Medical science used to say that your gender was your biological sex at birth. For those who had ambiguous genitalia doctors quickly sought to "fix" the person and bring their physical sex into alignment with their gender. Unfortunately answering the question, 'what is gender', is more complicated than just looking between your legs. You also need to look between your ears. People in the transgender and intersexed community spend years, if not decades, coming to terms with their gender identity. Where gender goes beyond the sex you're born with, but encompasses both the internal gender you identify with, as well as your external gender expression. Sometimes the dissonance between their biological sex and their gender identity causes them to seek to make physical modifications to their bodies to bring their biological sex in line with their gender identity. People who live as the opposite gender are called transsexuals. Not to be confused with other members of the transgender community such as crossdressers and drag queens. Transsexuals identify as woman and undergo many painful surgeries such as facial feminization, breast augmentation and sexual reassignment surgery. A person who lives as a woman but has not undergone sexual reassignment surgery is said to be "pre-op" or pre-operative, and someone who has gone through the operation is post-operative. As simple as this may sound, these labels are the cause of much controversy in the transgender community, as many times post-ops perceive themselves as superior in some way to pre-ops. "More of a woman", if you will. Hugs, Vanessa difference between transgender and transsexual
Vanessa is a transgendered person who gets joy from helping others in the transgender community accept themselves.Her website is Cross Dresser Heaven
This Article has been viewed 306 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by James P Krehbiel
 3 years 242 days ago.
125 fans.
Vanessa, Excellent explanation of a difficult topic. I have counseled transsexuals and their stories and struggles are painful to hear. Thanks.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.