resources
and publications
myths and misconceptions 
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In everyday language, transsexualism still refers to people who undergo a so-called 'sex change'. Many transsexuals do not see themselves as 'changing their sex', but rather affirming their rightful sex. These men and women continue to be mistakenly grouped together with gender-variant people under the broad category of 'transgender'. In the popular media the words transgender and transsexual are often used interchangeably to refer to people with any sort of gender-variant behaviour. Even worse, this is often truncated to tranny and used as a pejorative term, conjuring stereotypes of desperate, drug addicted street workers. The media frequently regards transsexualism as a deviant form of sexuality or fetish, particularly when referring to transsexual women and often mistakenly refers to transvestites and gender-performance artists as transsexuals. Among health care professionals who treat the condition, transsexualism refers to a specific diagnosis that is (at the present time) still listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) which is a medical text listing known psychiatric disorders. While the term transsexualism does not appear in the DSM, it is characterised by discomfort with the physically sexed aspects of one's body. The term used in the DSM1 is gender dysphoria (extreme distress regarding one's anatomical sex) or gender identity disorder (GID). Australian legislators and policy makers regularly link the experiences of conventional men and women encumbered with a treatable medical condition (transsexualism) with people who socially express themselves with a sex contrary to their birth-sex (transgenderism). Social activists regularly associate this medical
condition within the interests of the diverse sexuality
lobby of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, when
transsexualism is unrelated to sexuality.
Transsexualism is not a sexual practice, rather it is a
medical condition. When used in relation to social activism,
it confuses people and invites ignorance and misinformation
about the condition |
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ReferencesMen and women with transsexualism would argue against the inclusion of the condition in the DSM. These men and women do not 'suffer' from any form of 'gender identity disorder', given they know their own gender and only seek to affirm their rightful sex. |
