Variations in Sexual Behavior

Sexual Minorities: 7. Transsexuals

“Sex Change”

The popular term “sex change” is misleading, because it ignores the crucial distinction between sex and gender. As mentioned before, one is dealing here not with a “sexual”, but with a gender problem. The person’s chromosomal sex and self-identification as male or female do not change, but the body is brought into harmony with that self-identification. This is done through hormonal treatments and a series of cosmetic operations which remove the secondary and primary characterics of one sex and, as far as possible, replace them with those of the other sex. This is called “sex reassignment surgery”, and it comes in two varieties - “male to female (M-F)” and “female to male (F-M)”. For obvious reasons, the “male to female” operations are, as a rule, more successful, because it is easier to construct an artificial vagina than an artificial penis. Nevertheless, modern surgical techniques have made results possible that are quite satisfactory to the patients.