Transsexuals

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An individual whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth, often seeking transitions through medical or social means
2. Someone who experiences a persistent identification with a gender different from their biological sex, which may involve transformation through various methods
3. A person who may undergo hormone therapy or surgery to align their physical body with their gender identity, challenging traditional gender norms

Etymology: Magnus Hirschfeld, the German sexologist, coined "Transsexualismus" in 1923, and the English noun arrived through a much later and narrower channel. The American physician David Oliver Cauldwell introduced "transsexual" and "transsexualism" to English in 1949, and the term was popularized in the mid-1960s, notably by the endocrinologist Harry Benjamin, in 1966. The word itself is a plain compound: "trans-", from Latin meaning "across" or "beyond", joined to "sexual", from Latin "sexus" (sex) through "sexualis". Nothing in its construction is mysterious; the novelty lies in the medical sense it was built to carry. The term was overtaken by the word "transgender", which John Oliven coined in 1965 and which became an umbrella term. By the 1990s "transgender" had largely but not entirely displaced "transsexual", and the older word now mainly survives as one narrower category within the broader transgender community.

Synonyms: transgender people, gender nonconformists