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.
Gender-affirming surgery is a surgical procedure, or series of procedures, that alters a person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their identified gender. The phrase is most often associated with transgender health care and intersex medical interventions, although many such treatments are also pursued by cisgender and non-intersex individuals. It is also known as sex reassignment surgery, gender confirmation surgery, and several other names.
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.
Stephen Thomas Whittle, is a British legal scholar and activist with the transgender activist group Press for Change. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Equalities Law in the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. Between 2007 and 2009, he was president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Having been assigned female at birth, he is described as "a radical lesbian before his sex change and now a leading commentator on gender issues", who after the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into force in April 2005, achieved legal recognition as a man and so was able to marry his female partner.
Gender dysphoria in children (GD), also known as gender incongruence of childhood, is a formal diagnosis for children who experience significant discontent due to a mismatch between their assigned sex and gender identity. The diagnostic label gender identity disorder in children (GIDC) was used by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until it was renamed gender dysphoria in children in 2013 with the release of the DSM-5. The diagnosis was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term disorder.
Eli Coleman is an American sexologist. He is professor emeritus and former director of the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota. In 2007, he was appointed the first endowed Chair in Sexual Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. He has published research on sexual orientation, sexual dysfunction and compulsivity, gender dysphoria, and sex offenders.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual. Transgender is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity differs from the gender typically associated with their assigned sex at birth, it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer. Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender. The term may also include cross-dressers or drag kings and drag queens in some contexts. The term transgender does not have a universally accepted definition, including among researchers.
The International Journal of Sexual Health is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research on sexual health as a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being. It is the official journal of the World Association for Sexual Health. The editor-in-chief is Eli Coleman.
Paisley Currah is political scientist and author, known for his work on the transgender rights movement. His book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity examines the politics of sex classification in the United States. He is a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was born in Ontario, Canada, received a B.A. from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and an M.A and Ph.D. in government from Cornell University. He lives in Brooklyn.
Puberty blockers are medicines used to postpone puberty in children. The most commonly used puberty blockers are gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, which suppress the natural production of sex hormones, such as androgens and estrogens. Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty in children with precocious puberty. They are also used to delay the development of unwanted secondary sex characteristics in transgender children, so as to allow transgender youth more time to explore their gender identity. The same drugs are also used in fertility medicine and to treat some hormone-sensitive cancers in adults.
Gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT), also called hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or transgender hormone therapy, is a form of hormone therapy in which sex hormones and other hormonal medications are administered to transgender or gender nonconforming individuals for the purpose of more closely aligning their secondary sexual characteristics with their gender identity. This form of hormone therapy is given as one of two types, based on whether the goal of treatment is masculinization or feminization:
The real-life experience (RLE), sometimes called the real-life test (RLT), is a period of time or process in which transgender individuals live full-time in their identified gender role in order to be eligible to receive gender-affirming treatment. The purpose of the RLE has been to confirm that a given transgender person could function successfully as a member of said gender in society, as well as to confirm that they are sure they want to live as said gender for the rest of their life. A documented RLE was previously a requirement of many physicians before prescribing gender-affirming hormone therapy, and a requirement of most surgeons before performing gender-affirming surgery.
Arlene Istar Lev is a North American clinical social worker, family therapist, and educator. She is an independent scholar, who has lectured internationally on topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity, sexuality, and LGBTQ families.
Transgender health care includes the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of physical and mental health conditions for transgender individuals. A major component of transgender health care is gender-affirming care, the medical aspect of gender transition. Questions implicated in transgender health care include gender variance, sex reassignment therapy, health risks, and access to healthcare for trans people in different countries around the world. Gender affirming health care can include psychological, medical, physical, and social behavioral care. The purpose of gender affirming care is to help a transgender individual conform to their desired gender identity.
Detransition is the cessation or reversal of a transgender identification or of gender transition, temporarily or permanently, through social, legal, and/or medical means. The term is distinct from the concept of 'regret', and the decision may be based on a shift in gender identity, or other reasons, such as health concerns, social or economic pressure, discrimination, stigma, political beliefs, or religious beliefs.
Facial masculinization surgery (FMS) is a set of plastic surgery procedures that can transform the patient's face to exhibit typical masculine morphology. Cisgender men may elect to undergo these procedures, and in the context of transgender people, FMS is a type of facial gender confirmation surgery (FGCS), which also includes facial feminization surgery (FFS) for transgender women.
Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is a controversial, scientifically unsupported hypothesis which claims that some adolescents identify as transgender and experience gender dysphoria due to peer influence and social contagion. ROGD is not recognized as a valid mental health diagnosis by any major professional association, which discourage its use due to a lack of reputable scientific evidence for the concept, major methodological issues in existing research, and its stigmatization of gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
The Center for Applied Transgender Studies (CATS) is an independent nonprofit research organization founded in 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. The organization works to promote empirical academic research on issues of relevance to transgender populations globally and mobilizes scholarly knowledge to engage in both policy advocacy and public education. Together with Northwestern University Libraries, CATS publishes the platinum open access peer-reviewed academic journal Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies.
Friedemann Pfäfflin is Professor of Psychotherapy and head of the Forensic Psychotherapy Unit at the University of Ulm. He was a trained as a psychiatrist at the University of Hamburg. He visited the Gender identity clinic at Johns Hopkins University in the 1970s and has worked in this field since then. He worked at from 1978 to 1992 at the Institute for Sex Research and Forensic Psychiatry at Hamburg University. He received his Privatdozent in Psychiatry in 1993. He then moved onto to work at Ulm again working in Gender Identity. His range of research interests include Gender dysphoria, research into psychotherapy, Forensic psychiatry, and History of psychiatry. From 1995 to 1997, he was President of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association now called World Professional Association for Transgender Health. He founded The International Journal of Transgenderism now International Journal of Transgender Health in 1997 with Eli Coleman. He was also previously the president of The International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy.
