Partnership in transsexualism. Part I. Paired and nonpaired groups

Abstract

In a group of 72 transsexuals, 26 out of 55 male-to-female transsexuals had partners and 9 out of 17 female-to-male transsexuals had partners. Forty percent of the group of 35 paired transsexuals had been married, but most of these marriages had ended in divorce or separation. Six male patients were still married at the time of the enquiry. The two groups differed significantly in several respects. Those with partners (the paired group) had more fathers or heads of family in social classes I-III, while those without partners (the nonpaired group) were more often without their father in the first decade of life. Significantly more of the paired group received psychiatrists' rating of stable social adjustment. There was a tendency for the paired group to have a more successful employment history since leaving school and to change their National Insurance cards more often in order to obtain employment in their adopted gender. The groups did not differ in the amount of social drift, self-confessed criminal behavior, age at referral, history of prostitution, or incidence of rejecting parents. There were also no significant differences on the following psychological tests: Wechsler Bellevue, Progressive Matrices, Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale, Maudsley Personality Inventory, Slater Selective Vocabulary—except that the nonpaired group knew fewer male words. Any differences between the two groups are perhaps best described in terms of social adjustment rather than any background social factors, personality, or clinical differences.