transgender (adj.)

Transgender individuals may be male or female but may also challenge the ⇒ two-gender model. For example, many ⇒ non-binary, ⇒ genderfluid, or even genderqueer individuals and those located entirely outside the category of gender also count themselves as transgender, but not all. The word component "trans" comes from Latin and means "across" or "beyond"; gender refers to social roles based on the ⇒ sex of a person.

The self-designation transgender was coined by Virginia Prince (1912-2009) and others in the 1970s. Prince did not see herself represented in the terms transvestite or transsexual available in the United States at the time. After all, on the one hand, her gender was not about disguise, and on the other hand, she did not seek any surgical changes to her body as envisioned by the medical model of transsexuality. Virginia Prince's self-designation as a "transgenderist" and the current term transgender are often accompanied by a desire to distance herself from pathologization by the medical-psychiatric model of transsexuality. It is not until the 11th version of the "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems" (ICD-11, in effect from 2022) that transgenderness is no longer listed as a "gender identity disorder" and is thus no longer categorized as a personality and behavioral disorder.

Since the 1990s, the term transgender has experienced increasing expansion. It is now used as a self-designation by a wide range of people and encompasses an infinite spectrum of genders. Many people who are transgender understand gender reassignment as a social rather than exclusively physical process of change, they emphasize social gender roles and gender expression, and criticize a fixation on the physical component of gender.
Transgender individuals may desire physical change, for example, to counteract an experience of dysphoria. This may include taking hormones that the body cannot produce. However, this is not a unique characteristic of people who identify as transgender.

Transgender is not synonymous with ⇒ transsexual. Many transgender people may reject a foreign designation by the generic term transgender for a variety of reasons, and the other way around. Non-discriminatory language respects and uses the self-designation of different people.

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