The legal status of transgender people varies greatly around the world. Some countries have enacted laws protecting the rights of transgender individuals, but others have criminalized their gender identity or expression. In many cases, transgender individuals face discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, and other areas of life.
Shemale is a term most commonly used in the pornography industry to describe trans women or other people with male genitalia and female secondary sex characteristics acquired via hormones or surgery. Many people in the transgender community consider the term offensive and degrading. Using the term shemale for a trans woman may imply that she is working in the sex trade.
A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. The label of transgender man is not always interchangeable with that of transsexual man, although the two labels are often used in this way. Transgender is an umbrella term that includes different types of gender variant people. Trans men have a male gender identity, and many trans men choose to undergo surgical or hormonal transition, or both, to alter their appearance in a way that aligns with their gender identity or alleviates gender dysphoria.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iran face severe legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Sexual activity between members of the same sex is illegal and can be punishable by death, and people can legally change their assigned sex only through a sex reassignment surgery.
Renée Richards is an American ophthalmologist and former tennis player who competed on the professional circuit in the 1970s, and became widely known following male-to-female sex reassignment surgery, when she fought to compete as a woman in the 1976 US Open.
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.
Transgender rights in Iran are limited, with a narrow degree of official recognition of transgender identities by the government, but with trans individuals facing very high levels of discrimination, from the law, the state, and from the wider society.
TransGeneration is a US documentary-style reality television series that affords a view into the lives of four transgender college students during the 2004–2005 academic year. Two of the students are trans women, and two are trans men. Each of them attends a different school in the United States, and they are each at a different stage of their degree programs. The filmmakers document events in the students' academic careers, their social and family lives, and their transitions.
Blanchard's transsexualism typology is a proposed psychological typology of gender dysphoria, transsexualism, and fetishistic transvestism, created by sexologist Ray Blanchard through the 1980s and 1990s, building on the work of earlier researchers, including his colleague Kurt Freund. Blanchard categorized trans women into two groups: homosexual transsexuals who are attracted exclusively to men and are feminine in both behavior and appearance; and autogynephilic transsexuals who experience sexual arousal at the idea of having a female body (autogynephilia).
Sexuality in transgender individuals encompasses all the issues of sexuality of other groups, including establishing a sexual identity, learning to deal with one's sexual needs, and finding a partner, but may be complicated by issues of gender dysphoria, side effects of surgery, physiological and emotional effects of hormone replacement therapy, psychological aspects of expressing sexuality after medical transition, or social aspects of expressing their gender.
David Oliver Cauldwell was a prolific and pioneering sexologist, who coined the term transsexual as used in its current definition. Many of his monographs on sex, psychology, or health were published by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius in such forms as Big Blue Books. He was the editor of Sexology magazine's question and answer department. Cauldwell and Harry Benjamin were "two early and important American voices on transsexuality".
Tanaz Eshaghian is an Iranian-born American documentary filmmaker. She resides in New York City.
Marci Lee Bowers is an American gynecologist and surgeon who specializes in gender confirmation surgeries. Bowers is viewed as an innovator in gender confirmation/affirmation surgery, and is the first transgender woman to perform such surgeries.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression or both do not conform to that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Many experience gender dysphoria, which they may seek to alleviate through transitioning, often adopting a different name and set of pronouns in the process. They may pursue gender affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy and various gender-affirming surgeries. Not all transgender people desire these treatments and others may be unable to access them for financial or medical reasons. Those who do desire to medically transition to another sex may identify as transsexual.
In the study of transsexualism, the essentialist idea of a feminine essence refers to the proposal that trans women are females trapped in male bodies. This idea has been interpreted in many senses, as a female mind, spirit, soul, personality, etc., as well as in more literal senses such as having a female brain structure; it is also a psychological narrative, that is, a self-description of how some transsexuals see themselves, or of how they may portray themselves to qualify for certain medical treatments.
Transsexual people experience a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desire to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually seeking medical assistance to help them align their body with their identified sex or gender.
A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity and may experience gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria may be treated with gender-affirming care.
The history of LGBT people in Iran spans thousands of years. Homosexuality has been viewed as a sin in Islam, and is outlawed in almost all Muslim-majority countries, including Iran. In pre-Islamic Iran, a tradition of homosexuality existed, however most were intolerant of pederasty and sexual activity between two men, especially the Zoroastrians. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, Iranians were “far from immoral relations with boys”. In fact, most were not tolerant of homosexuality until the invasion of the Ghaznavids and Seljuks.
Sex Change Hospital is an American documentary-style reality television series about 12 transgender people who have sex reassignment surgery at the Mt. San Rafael Hospital in Trinidad, Colorado, under the care of OB/GYN Marci Bowers. The patients talk about their lives and viewers follow them through their consultations with Bowers, the surgical procedures, and their post-surgical experience.
Julia Grant was the first transgender person to have her transition chronicled on a mainstream UK television documentary in A Change of Sex.
