Gender Identity Disorder, Identity, And The Basis For A Political Movement

With the establishment of these gender identity clinics, and the financial backing of philanthropist Reed Erickson, a transsexual man, the health care needs of transsexual people gained increased attention and support. Despite this new attention, the clinics used Benjamin’s model of “true” transsexuals. This differentiation between “true” transsexuals and other gender variants became a serious and highly important diagnostic decision as gender affirming surgeries were irreversible. This resulted in many transsexual individuals to be denied access to hormones and surgery. Specifically, transsexual men encountered difficulties, as transsexuality was primarily seen as a male-to-female only transition. In fact, during the late 1960s the United States leading UCLA Gender Identity Research Clinic debated whether trans men should be considered transsexuals. Many trans men themselves did not label themselves as transsexuals as they only knew about other transsexual women (Meyerowitz, 2002; Beemyn, 2014).

In “Intro-How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States,” Joanne Meyerowitz writes about the beginnings of transsexuality. She beings the article by defining cross-gender identification, as “the sense of being the other sex, and the desire to live as the other sex” (Meyerowitz 432), while transsexuality, “being the quest to transform the bodily characteristics of sex via hormones and surgery” (Meyerowitz 432). According to Meyerowitz, transsexuality began in the early 20th century. Experiments on changing sex, began in europe on animals. Then in 1920, on humans. Joanne Meyerowitz writes that “the debate on the visibility and mutability of sex” began after Christine Jorgensen, an american who went to Denmark to get a sex change in 1950, became a media sensation in America. While professionals were figuring this out, people “who identified as transsexuals, transvestites, lesbians, and gay men” (Meyerowitz 433) were having the conversation and creating the language within themselves. This conversation on sex change, occurred alongside the sexual revolution in the 60’s, opening “the movement of the organizing of programs, clinics, conferences, and associations to promote study of and treatment for transsexuals” (Meyerowitz 434).

People have been transgender and gender nonconforming for longer than many may realize. The first case of a documented person who was transgender dates back to

In a world moving advancing with near instantaneous publication worldwide the fringe edges of society have become more visible. One group of people that has had the spotlight shined on them is those suffering from gender dysphoria–persons who are not comfortable living in the bodies that they are born with and are often referred to as transsexual. As of 2010, there was an estimated population of less than 1,000 of these fringe members of our society incarcerated in state and federal facilities. (Brown)

Through examining the ways intersex individuals are treated in a medical setting, one can see how science only allows binary bodies to be created. Crawley et al. (2007) discusses intersex individuals and the standard treatment of intersex children, being to alter their ‘abnormal’ genitalia to resemble one of the two genders. This has become the normal treatment as if this is necessary, but the only threat the child is in danger of is not fitting perfectly into the heteronormative standard of correct genitalia. Because surgical intervention proves we alter and change one’s sex, it becomes difficult to claim that sex and gender are solely biological, when clearly one’s gender and sex becomes largely altered the moment they are born into society. Anne Fausto Sterling, outlines her concept of the five sexes, explaining that intersex is a term used to describe any individual that doesn’t fit into the narrow categories of male and female. She explains that the same process that was in play in the Middle Ages is

The word “transgender” is a broad term inclusive of many subgroups. Currently there is no single universal definition. For the purposes of this paper, transgender is defined as an individual whose gender expression is different from their birth sex. Sex, for the purposes of this discussion, is defined as the physical anatomy that currently defines male and female. Gender identity refers to the individual’s internal sense of being male, female, both, or neither. Transgender individuals feel discomfort between what the gender they identify internally with and their outward physical sex characteristics. Gender expression refers to how an individual presents themselves to society. Sexual orientation the physical or emotional attraction towards another person, whether male or female. This is different than gender identity. Transgender individuals may be attracted to persons of the same sex or opposite sex. This paper will address specifically the transition of those individuals born anatomically male but identify their gender identity as female. Male-to-female transgender individuals are often referred to as MTF individuals.

Previous to the 19th century, most intersexual individuals led ordinary lives. Their genital difference was mostly accepted as part of the difference which occurs in nature. Intersex was never a health problem (Daaboul, 2000). It was in the 19th century where intersex became a medicalized and individuals born intersex were categorized as “abnormal” and “diseased” (Daaboul, 2000). The drive of medicine in the last century has been to “cure” intersexed individuals by using surgical, hormonal and psychological therapies to make them clearly female or male. However, the practical and psychological outcomes of this approach have been poor. Many intersexed individuals have suffered severe mental and bodily damage from medicine’s efforts to make them

In the book, The Transgender Phenomenon, a study was conducted of ‘gender blenders’, by Ekins and King in 2006. This combined the ethnomethodological understanding of gender and also the norm of (binary) sex. They demonstrated how medicine has been fundamental for how the sex of individuals is defined.

Gender identity ailment is customarily referred to as transexuallism. Transvestism refers to the apply of obtaining sexual pleasure by using dressing within the garments of the reverse sex. In these days the term move-dressing is more commonly used due to the fact that it does now not allow for a mistake of transsexualism, which is a whole gender exchange from the long-established sex. Transvestism is a paraphilia for which the major characteristic is severe sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies involving dressing in garb of those of the reverse sex. It is totally fundamental to note that just since an man or woman is classified as a transvestite does now not mean that they're necessarily homosexual. Broad stories had been carried out

In the West a paradigm shift change occurs in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s regarding transgender identities. This move emerges from two different sources; one, from a growing activist faction of the transgender community and two, from academia, where an ascendant poststructuralism/postmodernism from various disciplines such as the Social Sciences and the Humanities is challenging (or queering) the hegemony of traditional social structures, such as the essentialist framing of gender. Instead it recognizes, reifies, and disseminates a social constructivist or social-approach model to gender. Our identities are less an imprecise product of DNA chromosomes and fetal hormones than an enforced reflection of social mores and discourses. Just as biology is not destiny,

Gender Identity Disorder is classified as a mental dysphoria that describes patients that have a strong desire to identity with the opposite sex. GID marginalizes and infringes on the civil rights of transgender people (Winters). GID categorizes all of transgender people into one group. This type of medical conclusion leaves the transgender community into feeling isolated and targeted. There is no scientific evidence or data to back up this disorder, and there have been no studies that show transgender is linked to environmental, genetic, or other factors. Some scientific reasoning can be related to the chromosome pool, and the lack/abundance of Y and X chromosomes. Gender identity disorder can be deteriorating in many ways. Transgender people are given these titles that have nothing to do with mental health, only personal preference, and are targeted because they do not fit within the social

Gender is often a factor that fundamentally shapes a person’s identity. This is evident within most societies, where there are engrained “roles” for each gender, including fulfilling different expectations, taking different jobs, etc. These roles are harmful for many reasons, such as through their use as tools of oppression, but one of the most understated effects are on transgender people. The adjective “transgender” is defined by the American Psychological Association as “an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, expression, or behavior does not conform with that associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.” This definition is extremely comprehensive; many others are more limited to outdated stereotypes, experiences, and

Throughout history there has been a controversy regarding the topic of sex and gender. This topic has sparked many debates and the discussion about the distinction of the two continues to grow. Through studying sex and gender, there has been an interest in learning about the relationships they form with sexual orientation. The study of sex and gender is a wide topic and has many subtopics within it that guide researchers with key information. Within sex and gender, there are circumstances in which a person’s gendered identity does not align with their biological genetics and they live as the gender they identify as. Due to social construction, the ideas of masculinity and femininity have popularized leading society to have an effect on gender and how we perceive it as it can facilitate the way in which gender is expressed and how it is transforming over time.1 Around the world many groups of individuals have been discovered who identify themselves as transgender or transsexual. As society and culture continue to evolve, it is important to learn about how gender roles effect the way an individual grows and views the world and how they perceive the differences of sex and gender.

Society’s views on gender is based upon the physical and genetic sex at birth. Every individual is assigned a gender, but numerous of human beings have felt that they were placed in the wrong one. Gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder, is defined as a conflict between an individual’s physical gender or appearance they were born in and the one that which he or she desires to be. People who experience this to the extremist level are referred to as transsexuals. Transsexuals have severe gender dysphoria. They are imprisoned in an unwanted body and have high aspirations of changing their body to correlate with their own gender identity. They also experience distress consisted of anxiety, depression, and irritability. Transsexualism in male

Gender identity disorder (GID) or transsexualism is defined by strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one’s own assigned sex. (“Psychology Today”) Due to a recent change to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, “Gender Identity Disorder” will be replaced with “Gender Dysphoria”. For the purpose of this paper those two terms will be interchangeable. This paper will explore the symptoms that lead to a gender identity disorder diagnosis as well as the treatment process and obstacles a person with this disorder may face. It is a difficult process and is not something somebody would endure unless they truly