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Revision as of 15:31, 27 December 2002 by MartinHarper (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Transgender is a catch-all term for a variety of individuals, behaviors and groups centered around the full or partial reversal of gender roles. This includes a number of sub-categories, which include transsexuals, cross-dressers, transvestites, and drag queens.
Occasionally the term gender dysphoria is used to describe this tendency, and the reaction to its social consequences, as a psychological condition.
Transsexual
Main article: Transsexual
A transsexual is a person who establishes a permanent identity with the opposite gender to his or her sex. The typical explanation is of a "man trapped in a woman's body" or vica-versa. A transsexual makes or desires to make a transition from their birth sex to another gender, with some type of medical alteration to their body. This alteration may be hormonally induced, and may include sexual reassignment surgery.
Cross-dresser
Main articles: cross-dresser, transvestite, drag queen
A cross-dresser is any person who wears the clothing of the opposite gender, for any reason. Cross-dressers may be split into transvestites, drag queens (and kings), and others.
A transvestite is a person, usually a heterosexual male, who has a sexual fetish for the clothing of the opposite gender.
Drag involves wearing highly exaggerated and outrageous costumes or imitating movie and music stars of the opposite sex. It is a form of performing art practiced by drag queens and kings.
The term Drag King can also apply to everybody from the female-to-male side of the transgender spectrum who do not see themselves as exclusively male identified.
Other
Transgender is also used to describe behaviour or feelings that can not be cathegorised into these older sub-cathegories, for example, people living in a gender role that is different from the one they were assigned at birth, but who do not wish to undergo any or all of the available medical options, or people who do not wish to identify themselfes as transsexuals, men or women.
Many non Western cultures legitimized cross dressing. The berdache in many Native American tribes is recognized as a separate gender, a woman-living-man, not as a man who wants to be a woman. The husband of a berdache is not viewed as a berdache, but as a 'normal' male. In some societies there is a correspondig gender for man-living-women (amazons).
See also: intersexuals, autogynephilia, two-spirit