Introduction

It’s 2005 and we’re an advanced society, yet transsexuals are a group of people who still face disproportionate discrimination and everyday hassle for who they are.  Ignorance and a lack of understanding are partially responsible for a lot of hate crime.

This section of the CUSU LBGT site aims to dispel some myths and promote understanding about what it means to be transsexual.

Only a few decades ago, homosexuality was illegal and thought to be a mental illness.  Things have since moved on a long way for ‘LBG’ people – but the ‘T’ situation is still extremely difficult.  Transsexuals have recently been recognised by UK law, under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act – but in everyday life, it’s not something most people know much about, nor really understand.  Cambridge University is a fairly tolerant place, but discrimination, from the serious down to the petty, exists everywhere - no matter how ‘forward thinking’ a society or institution may be.  Knowledge and understanding are vital to promote tolerance and hence the purpose of this site in making just some information more easily available to us all. 

To be transsexual means to identify with the gender of the opposite sex.  Whilst a person is born with ‘male’ chromosomes (XY) or ‘female’ chromosomes (XX), a transsexual person born physically female (XX) will identify as male – emotionally, psychologically and in a social sense.  Vice versa for those born physically male.  In the third section some of the recently discovered biology behind this will be explained.

 Before continuing, one point about vocabulary: the words ‘transsexual’ and ‘transgendered’ are sometimes used interchangeably.  On this site when the word ‘transsexual’ is used it is to mean someone who identifies as the opposite sex and desires to undergo, or has undergone, a partial or full transition to become physically the opposite sex.  This can be done through lengthy hormone treatment, and surgery.   ‘Gender dysphoric’ is the term used in the law for someone who identifies as the opposite sex.