Myths and misconceptions |
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Despite the fact that almost everyone in Western society has heard about transsexualism, or may know of someone affected by it, misconceptions about the condition abound. These distortions are fostered by the use of inconsistent terminology, by ignorant and sensational media reportage, as well as considerable ignorance within the medical fraternity itself. All these misconceptions have the effect of fostering a negative impact on the lives of these people who have a recognisable, treatable medical condition. 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 as 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 is 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 wrongly 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 that lists 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 DSM 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 with people who socially express themselves with a sex contrary to their birth sex. 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 encourages ignorance and misinformation about the condition.
Further reading |
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