Transsexual itself is most respectfully used as an adjective. In other words, one who wishes to be respectful would refer, as this article does, to "transsexual people," "transsexual men," or "transsexual CEOs," but would not use phrases like, "Transsexuals prefer pistachio to rocky road." This more respectful usage appears to have resulted as a response to cumulative dehumanization. The idea appears to be that if used only as an adjective, transsexual will inevitably be paired with words such as "people," "women," and "men" in ways that help to reemphasize transsexual humanity and increase sympathy.
Transsexual people almost universally prefer to be referred to by the gender pronouns and terms associated with their target gender. For example, a transsexual man is a person who was assigned the female sex at birth on the basis of his genitals, but despite that assignment identifies as a man and is transitioning or has transitioned to a male gender role and has or will have a masculine body. Transsexual people are sometimes referred to with "assigned-to-target" sex terms such as "female-to-male" for a transsexual man or "male-to-female" for a transsexual woman. These terms may be abbreviated as "M2F", "F2M", "MTF", "F to M", etc. These terms are particularly helpful in preventing confusion, because to some people the term "transsexual woman" is a female transitioning to become a male, and to others a male transitioning to become a female. When the terms transmen and transwomen are used though, it is typical for them to be used to refer to the gender that the person identifies with, regardless of their appearance or state of transition.
Transsexual people are often considered as part of the LGBT community, and although many do identify with this community, others do not, or prefer not to use the terms at all. Transsexual people typically feel it important for people to understand that transsexualism neither depends upon, nor is related to, sexual orientation. Transsexual men and women exhibit a range of sexual orientations just as non-transsexual (some times referred to as Cisgender) people do, and they will almost always use terms for their sexual orientation that relate to the sex with which they identify. For example, someone assigned to the male sex but who identifies as a woman, and who is attracted solely to men, will identify as heterosexual, not gay. Likewise, someone who was assigned to the female sex, identifies as a man, and prefers male partners will identify as gay, not heterosexual. Transsexual people, like other people, can also be bisexual or asexual as well.
Older medical texts often referred to transsexual people as members of their original sex by referring to a male-to-female transsexual as a "male transsexual". They also described sexual orientation in relation to the person's assigned sex, not their gender of identity; in other words, referring to a male-to-female transsexual who is attracted to men as a "homosexual male transsexual." This usage is considered by many to be scientifically inaccurate and clinically insensitive today. As such someone who would have been referred to as a "homosexual male transsexual" would now be called and most likely identify herself as a heterosexual transsexual woman. Although the original usage is dwindling, some medical textbooks still refer to transsexual people as members of their assigned sex, but now many use "assigned-to-target" terms.
Alternative terminology
The transsexual community typically use the short form "trans", or simply "T" as a substitution for the full word "transsexual", e.g. TS, trans guy, trans dyke, T-folk, trans folk. Some may even use terms that have become controversial to some, such as tranny and/or trans, despite others considering these terms to be offensive. Those who do use these terms claim that they are diminishing the power of the term as an insult, just as some members of the gay and African-American communities have embraced slurs directed at them. Others feel that the terms are insulting or inaccurate regardless of the context. Some feel that such words are problematic because they do not differentiate between transsexual people, and people who are merely "playing" with gender.
Some individuals may prefer to spell transsexual with only one s, thus writing transexual. They will typically assert that they are attempting to divorce the word from the realm of psychiatry and medicine and place it in the realm of identity. This trend is most common in the United States, and is almost never used in the United Kingdom.
Some prefer the term transsexed over transsexual, as they believe the term sexual found in transsexual is misleading and implies that transsexualism is a sexual orientation.[citation needed] Another justification made for this preference is that they feel it more closely parallels with the term intersex, which is considered by them to be important as more transsexual groups are welcoming them because they feel both groups have much in common. It is, by some definitions, possible to be both intersex and transsexed. Other attempts to avoid the misleading -sexual have been the increasing acceptance of transgender or trans* and in some areas, transidentity.
Some transsexual people may also prefer transgender over transsexual, because this minority sees the issue to be about gender rather than sexuality. (Note that this distinction, violating norms of gender vs. violating norms of sex, is precisely why crossdressers, as one of many examples, are classified as transgender rather than transsexual.) This subset of transsexual people make a parallel with intergender, whose issue is about being between (inter) the genders rather than "intersexual". It is often assumed, particularly by transsexual people, that transsexualism is a subset of intersex. "Intersex" previously referred only to those who are physiologically intersex, e.g., with genitals that do not look classically male or female. (Despite that human genitals show an extremely wide variation in general, intersex people typically have genitalia that frustrate attempts to assign them within a binary sex system.) However, since sex in humans is composed of many different attributes, such as genes, chromosomes, regulatory proteins, hormones, hormone receptors, body morphology, brain sex, and gender identity, any variation among any of those attributes could fall under the rubric of "intersex." Transsexualism, in this view, simply becomes a form of being neurologically intersex that was mistakenly categorized outside of the rubric of intersex because of the historical lack of proof for a specific etiology.
Harry Benjamin agreed with German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld that transsexuals were a form of neurological intersex. Hirschfeld coined the term "Transvestite" in his seminal work on the matter, Die Transvestitien. In this work, he describes what is now known as transvestic fetishism as well as transsexuals. In 1930, he supervised the first genital reassignment surgery to be reported in detail in a peer-reviewed journal on Lili Elbe of Denmark.
The German term “Transsexualismus” was introduced by Hirschfeld in 1923.The neo-Latin term “psychopathia transexualis” and English “transexual” (sic) were introduced by D. O. Cauldwell in 1949, who subsequently also used the term “trans-sexual” in 1950.Cauldwell appears to be the first to use the term in direct reference to those who desired a change of physiological sex. (In 1969, Benjamin claimed to have been the first to use the term “transsexual” in a public lecture, which he gave in December 1953.) This term continues to be used by the public and medical profession alike. It was included for the first time in the DSM-III in 1980 and again in the DSM-III-R in 1987, where it was located under Disorders Usually First Evident in Infancy, Childhood or Adolescence.
The term "Gender Dysphoria" and "Gender Identity Disorder" were not used until the 1970s when Laub and Fisk published several works on transsexualism using these terms. "Transsexualism" was replaced in the DSM-IV by "Gender Identity Disorder in Adolescents and Adults".
Some people prefer that transsexualism be referred to as Harry Benjamin's Syndrome as it follows the naming conventions of intersex conditions. This term is named for Harry Benjamin, a pioneer in sex reassignment and research on transsexual people, whose work of the 1950s and 1960s, which culminated in The Transsexual Phenomenon in 1966. Many transsexual people who prefer this term assert that scientific research has strongly suggested that their condition is biological rather than psychological in nature. They also feel that 'trans' is misleading, as they believe that their gender was fixed in their brains, and has never changed. Thus that nothing about their steps in correcting themselves is actually "trans" at all, but rather they are simply taking steps to assert what they feel that they are already. A small number of people who are post operative and living in their chosen role prefer to call themselves either a neo-woman or neo-man, thus omitting references in the term 'transsexual' to sexuality or being in between (trans).
While the above gives a fairly comprehensive view of terminology, it is important to note that some people may feel that both 'trans' and 'sexual', are misleading, and others may take objections to terminology that are unique to their perspective. While a large variety of other terms exist from those presented here, they have not been excluded with bias, although almost all of them are somewhat controversial.
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