https://thegenderbook.tumblr.com/post/41848208449/the-transgender-umbrella-page-from-the-gender
A Brief Summary:
Trans does not mean one thing; until recently I assumed it was another term for Transsexual, which I understood to be a person who felt that they should have been born as the opposite sex and had taken steps to change their physical body to align with how they felt.
To be legally recognised as the opposite sex in the UK there is no requirement for changes to be made to the body but there is a requirement for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria. People undergoing any part of a process to ‘re-assign sex’ are protected from discrimination under UK law.
A man can be legally recognised as a woman while still having a male body, and a woman can be legally recognised as a man with a female body. Because gender dysphoria manifests as a deep discomfort with a person’s biological sex many people suffering with it will make at least some changes to their body to appear as the opposite sex. For others it may be limited to how they dress or the name they use. A majority of trans identifying people do not seek surgery or diagnosis, estimates suggest that around 97% of transwomen retain their penis.
Trans-rights campaigners are seeking to have the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria removed and for people to be able to self-identify their legal sex. Campaigners say that people are who they say they are, if a man says he is a woman, this is what ‘she’ is and vice versa, or have no sex at all (non-binary) and there should be no expectation that they change their body in any way.
From the umbrella picture above you can see that for trans-rights campaigners any expression of gender non-conformity is seen to be ‘transgender’ if the individual feels that being ‘trans’ best describes them. This is supported by definitions given by the two major trans rights organisations in the UK, both include cross-dressing (which is often sexually motivated) as a transgender identity.
So, to Trans Rights Campaigners Transgender means anyone who says they are trans, but to change legal sex in the UK a person must have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Researchers have found 3 main pathways to developing gender dysphoria:
Childhood onset: Gender non-conforming children (boys who want to express themselves in a feminine way, girls who are tomboys) the majority of who go on to be gay or lesbian as adults. A few persist in wanting a cross-sex identity in adulthood. No way to ascertain which children will persist into adulthood has been found, although if the dysphoria begins in childhood and continues through puberty it is likely to persist.
Autogynephillic: Some teenage boys and men develop dysphoria as a result of a sexual attraction to the fantasy of themselves as a woman. This may have been precipitated by non-sexual cross dressing in childhood, or cross dressing in secret. Adults may have been cross dressing for many years before developing a desire to transition full time. Sexologists Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey suggest that 75% of Male to Female transsexuals in Western Society are motivated by AGP.
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: A recent phenomenon, since 2010 there has been a huge increase in the number of teenage girls presenting with gender dysphoria, in the UK a rise of over 5000% from 32 girls in 2009/10 to 1740 in 2008/19, a statistical trend also seen in other countries.
More Detailed Information
Trans Rights Groups Definitions:
The 2 main organisations campaigning for transgender rights in the UK are Gendered Intelligence and Stonewall.
Gendered Intelligence - Trans is an umbrella term for various people who feel that the sex that they were assigned at birth does not match or sit easily with their sense of self. The world is
generally divided into two categories - men and women. Sometimes it is thought that
trans is complicated because a trans person doesn’t fit neatly into these two
categories. Indeed the concept of ‘trans’ raises questions about what it even means to
be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’.
The trans spectrum encompasses transsexual and transgender people, crossdressers,
and anyone who challenges gender norms. It may be that a trans person feels more
the “opposite” sex and so chooses to use medical intervention in order to align their
body with their mind or their outside appearance with their internal feelings. Crossdressers may dress to express the more masculine or feminine side of themselves, or simply because those clothes feel more comfortable.
Trans; An umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth.
Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.
Legal Definition:
There is no definition of Transgender given in UK law, there are two relevant Acts applicable to all 4 countries of the UK: The Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010. (I will explore the law in more depth in another article).
The GRA does not use the term Transgender, it legislates for a person who has “lived” as the “other gender” for 2 years and who has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria (by a medical practitioner working in the field of gender dysphoria) to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate. A GRC makes a person’s “acquired gender” their legal sex.
There is no requirement in the GRA 2004 for a person to undergo any surgery or changes to their physical body in order to be granted a GRC.
The Act does not give any definition of either gender or sex, nor does it detail what is meant by living as the other/acquired gender. It does not define gender dysphoria, however it links it to previously used medical diagnoses:
25 “gender dysphoria” means the disorder variously referred to as gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder and transsexualism,
In the Equality Act 2010 Gender Reassignment is a protected characteristic:
7(1)A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.
(2)A reference to a transsexual person is a reference to a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
Sex is also a protected characteristic in the Equality Act. Neither sex nor gender is defined in the act, there is no explanation of what changing ‘other attributes of sex’ means. It gives examples of people protected under the characteristic gender re-assignment:
Examples
A person who was born physically male decides to spend the rest of his life living as a woman. He declares his intention to his manager at work, who makes appropriate arrangements, and she then starts life at work and home as a woman. After discussion with her doctor and a Gender Identity Clinic, she starts hormone treatment and after several years she goes through gender reassignment surgery. She would have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment for the purposes of the Act.
A person who was born physically female decides to spend the rest of her life as a man. He starts and continues to live as a man. He decides not to seek medical advice as he successfully ‘passes’ as a man without the need for any medical intervention. He would have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment for the purposes of the Act.
Under the law a person is seen to be Transsexual if they are living as the opposite gender to their biological sex with or without medical treatment. They are protected from discrimination based on their gender reassignment and are able to seek a GRC to become legally seen as a member of the opposite sex.
A Sexologist & Psychologist Perspective:
Ray Blanchard PhD is a psychologist and professor of psychiatry in Canada, he spent 15 years (1980-1995) working in a gender identity clinic with transsexuals. Michael Bailey is a psychologist and professor who researched sexuality in the 1990s.
Both Blanchard and Bailey both wrote about there being two mains types of male to female transsexuals, the boys who had displayed effeminate behavior in childhood and who were same sex attracted as adults. (Research shows consistently that around 80% of boys who have gender dysphoria in childhood go on to become gay adults, only around 20% persist with wanting to be the opposite sex or believing they are the opposite sex).
The other type they noted were men who had not been gender non-conforming as children, and for whom cross-dressing and fantasizing about becoming a woman began in puberty and was a sexual experience. Ray Blanchard coined the term Autogynephllia (AGP, meaning love of oneself as a woman) in 1989 to describe what these men were experiencing. Blanchard’s work followed on from previous sexologists in the C20 who had also observed this phenomenon, along with that of transvestites (men who were sexually aroused by wearing women’s clothing).
There are women who want to be seen as men and want to transition, however the majority of people visiting the gender clinics were men. Of the female to male transsexuals the majority seen were same sex attracted women, with Blanchard only seeing one heterosexual woman (attracted to men) in his time at the clinic.
In their 2017 article “Gender Dysphoria Is Not One Thing” Blanchard and Bailey agree on a third main type of gender dysphoria, that of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. This manifests in teenage girls around puberty who had shown no signs of being gender non-conforming prior to puberty. This was the phenomenon described by Lisa Littman in her research which was published in 2018, Lisa noted a social contagion element amongst these girls and a connection with use of social media sites such as Tumblr.
Blanchard & Bailey also noted a further 2 types of gender dysphoria presentation which they felt are more rare; in females who displayed an autohomoerotic component, fantasizing about being gay men, and in gender dysphoria manifesting in people with severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia.
A Transgender Perspective:
I am not transgender, so base my information here on videos, blogs and podcasts by trans identifying men (tranwomen) and trans identifying women (transmen). Of course there is no single perspective, transmen and transwomen are not a homogenous group, their opinions are as diverse as any other group of people.
Some transwomen find that the AGP label describes them well and helps them understand their personal experience (eg Debbie Hayton) , others deny the existence of Autogynephila and find it demeaning and insulting. I will cover AGP in more depth in a separate article.
Some transwomen and transmen (Blaire White, Buck Angel, Jen Smith, Aaron Kimberly) are against the medicalisation of children and believe that psychotherapy is important prior to making such a life changing decision. Others believe that if a child says they are actually the opposite sex that needs to be accepted without question and they should be encouraged to transition both socially and medically as soon as possible, this is the stance taken by the UK charity Mermaids. Proponents of the Affirmation Only approach view explorative psychotherapy as ‘conversion therapy’ and an attempt to change the gender identity of the person.
Transgender Activists believe that people should be allowed to self identify as whatever sex they choose, and that internally felt gender identity is more important than biological sex, some even denying that biological sex is real. This leads transwomen such as Veronica Ivy and Grace Lavery to insist that they are not biologically male, not just women, but that they are female, and that women can have penises.
Some other transpeople (India Willoughby, Aaron Kimberly, Blaire White) believe that transition was a solution to their gender dysphoria and that it is a medical condition, they agree that the medical diagnosis should remain in place as a necessary safeguarding measure. Their views diverge when it comes to whether sex reassignment surgery should be a necessary part of the transition process and whether they should use spaces meant for people of the opposite sex.