Transsexuality

Abstract

Transsexuals have been defined as individuals with a cross-sexual identity. Although a transsexual individual is transgender, not all transgender individuals are transsexual. The distinction may be more clearly understood by thinking of transsexuals as wishing to change or attempting to change their sex from that at birth and transgender individuals as those who blur the boundaries between genders, e.g., the societally accepted representation for masculinity/femininity or male/female roles. An individual may be transsexual even if he or she has not undergone sexual reassignment surgery to change his or her biological sex. It has been estimated that approximately 1 out of every 11,900 men (male to female) and approximately 1 out of every 30,400 women (female to male) are transsexuals. Estimates of the sex ratio have varied widely, from 2.5 men to 1 woman in the Netherlands to 5.5 women to 1 man in Poland.