Transgender

The term transgender refers to a diverse group of individuals whose gender does not match their biological sex at birth. It is an umbrella term that describes a wide range of gender-variant groups and individuals, from those who engage in transgender behavior on occasion, such as cross-dressers, to those who do so at all times.

Transgender is a word whose meaning has shifted over time. A version of the term was first used in 1969 by Virginia Prince in Transvestia, a magazine for cross-dressers. At that time, Prince used the term transgenderal to refer to a person who lived full time in the gender opposite their sex but had no desire to undergo sex reassignment surgery. With the printing of Leslie Fienberg's pamphlet “Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come,” in 1992, the term took on a broader scope, as Feinberg used transgender to refer to all people who were gender variant. This is the meaning of the word as it is currently used. It refers to not just those who identify themselves as transgendered, but to many different groups, including cross-dressers, transsexuals, androgynes, and genderqueers.

As the definition of transgendered has changed and many different groups have claimed some kind of fransender identity, it can be confusing to determine [Page 844]who is being referenced by the term. The definition used here is very broad and inclusive, but some estimates use narrower definitions. Therefore, it can be difficult to determine the number of transgendered individuals. In the United States, the estimates vary from 1 percent of the population to as high as 2 percent to 3 percent.

The remainder of this entry examines transgender-ing in various ways. First, the differences between sex, gender, and sexual orientation are examined in order to provide a better understanding of transgen-dering. The second part of the entry describes three theories of gender that have been used to explain transgendering. The final section defines and describes several different groups that fall into the category of transgender: transsexuals, including male-to-female and female-to-male, transgenderists, genderqueers, androgynes, cross-dressers, and drag performers, including drag kings and drag queens.