Myths and Misconceptions about TS

In everyday language, the word transsexualism is used to refer to people who undergo a so-called ‘sex change’. Many of these people do not see themselves ’changing their sex’, but rather affirming their real 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 ugly stereotypes. 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, TS 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. The term used to refer to the condition of TS in the DSM is gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder (GID). Men and women with TS often argue against the inclusion of the diagnosis of TS in the DSM. These men and women do not ‘suffer’ from any form of ‘gender identity disorder’, given they are well aware of their own gender and only seek to affirm their rightful sex.

Australian legislators and policy makers often mistakenly 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 the medical condition of TS within the interests of the diverse sexuality lobby of gay, lesbian and bisexual people. In this way, they encourage ignorance, confusion and misinformation about the condition. TS is completely independent of sexuality and it is not a sexual practice.