Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identity—their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth. The term replaced the previous diagnostic label of gender identity disorder (GID) in 2013 with the release of the diagnostic manual DSM-5. The condition was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), formerly the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), is a professional organization devoted to the understanding and treatment of gender identity and gender dysphoria, and creating standardized treatment for transgender and gender variant people. WPATH was founded in 1979 and named HBIGDA in honor of Harry Benjamin during a period where there was no clinical consensus on how and when to provide gender-affirming care. WPATH is mostly known for the Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People (SOC).
The Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People (SOC) is an international clinical protocol by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) outlining the recommended assessment and treatment for transgender and gender-diverse individuals across the lifespan including social, hormonal, or surgical transition. It often influences clinicians' decisions regarding patients' treatment. While other standards, protocols, and guidelines exist – especially outside the United States – the WPATH SOC is the most widespread protocol used by professionals working with transgender or gender-variant people.
John Michael Bailey is an American psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and professor at Northwestern University best known for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation and paraphilia. He maintains that male sexual orientation is most likely established in utero.
A sexual minority is a demographic whose sexual identity, orientation or practices differ from the majority of the surrounding society. Primarily used to refer to lesbian, gay, bisexual, or non-heterosexual individuals, it can also refer to transgender, non-binary or intersex individuals.
The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism is a 2003 book by the American psychologist J. Michael Bailey, published by Joseph Henry Press.
Androphilia and gynephilia are terms used in behavioral science to describe sexual orientation, as an alternative to a gender binary homosexual and heterosexual conceptualization. Androphilia describes sexual attraction to men and/or masculinity; gynephilia describes the sexual attraction to women and/or femininity. Ambiphilia describes the combination of both androphilia and gynephilia in a given individual, or bisexuality.
Ray Milton Blanchard III is an American-Canadian sexologist who researches pedophilia, sexual orientation and gender identity. He has found that men with more older brothers are more likely to be gay than men with fewer older brothers, a phenomenon he attributes to the reaction of the mother's immune system to male fetuses. Blanchard has also published research studies on phallometry and several paraphilias, including autoerotic asphyxia. Blanchard also proposed a typology of transsexualism.
Gender dysphoria in children (GD), also known as gender incongruence of childhood, is a formal diagnosis for distress caused by incongruence between assigned sex and gender identity in some pre-pubescent transgender and gender diverse children.
The American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard proposed a psychological typology of gender dysphoria, transsexualism, and fetishistic transvestism in a series of academic papers 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. Blanchard and his supporters argue that the typology explains differences between the two groups in childhood gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, history of sexual fetishism, and age of transition.
Gender incongruence is the state of having a gender identity that does not correspond to one's sex assigned at birth. This is experienced by people who identify as transgender or transsexual, and often results in gender dysphoria. The causes of gender incongruence have been studied for decades.
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.
The Sex Orientation Scale (SOS) was Harry Benjamin's attempt to classify and understand various forms and subtypes of transvestism and transsexualism in biological males, published in 1966. It was a seven-point scale ; it was analogous to the Kinsey Scale as it relates to sexual orientation, which also had seven categories.
The classification of transgender people into distinct groups has been attempted since the mid-1960s. The most common modern classifications in use are the DSM-5 and ICD, which are mainly used for insurance and administration of gender-affirming care.
Ira Basil Pauly is an American psychiatrist who was an All American college football player at UCLA, and is known for his influential work on transsexualism.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
A transsexual person is someone who experiences a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desires 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.
James M. Cantor is an American-Canadian clinical psychologist and sexologist specializing in hypersexuality and paraphilias.
Anne Alexandra Lawrence is an American psychologist, sexologist, and physician who has published extensively on gender dysphoria, transgender people, and paraphilias. Lawrence is a transgender woman and self-identifies as autogynephilic. She is best known for her 2013 book on autogynephilia, Men Trapped in Men's Bodies: Narratives of Autogynephilic Transsexualism, which has been regarded by Ray Blanchard as the definitive text on the subject. Lawrence is one of the major researchers in the area of Blanchard's etiological typology of transgender women and has been one of the most major proponents of the theory. While Blanchard's typology and autogynephilia are highly controversial subjects and are not accepted by many transgender women and academics, some, such as Lawrence, identify with autogynephilia. Lawrence's work also extends beyond Blanchard's typology, to transgender women and to transition more generally.
Sexual diversity or gender and sexual diversity (GSD), refers to all the diversities of sex characteristics, sexual orientations and gender identities, without the need to specify each of the identities, behaviors, or characteristics that form this plurality.
