Yet Another...Two...
~ by emma on March 5, 2008.
http://emmag.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/part-2/The term transsexual, which I still use as an empowerment/validation of my own gender self identification, was inspire by a specific context, the need to address gender variance in opposition to birth sex, within the existing binary system of gender categorization. Harry Benjamin, the term's creator, would have preferred to use the term intersexuality to describe the phenomenon he observed, but deferred to the American medical community's insistence that this term be reserved solely for physical hermaphroditic birth conditions exclusively. He was consciously aware that the variations in natural expression of gender were not always naturally aligned to the demonstrable biological considerations governing the usual determination of birth sex. Quite frequently in his writings, he honestly admits his own inability to definitively assert conclusions beyond this primary acknowledgement; that the expression of gender is not a simplistic reiteration of birth sex. Rational thinking largely governed his entire assessment of the data he accrued by observation within the existing context. He postulated numerous provocative questions, and proposed several rational, potentially useful solutions in terms of that existing context. His primary objective was, foremost, to alleviate, where possible, the significant observable distress experienced in individuals when the alignment of gender expression and birth sex designation existed contradictorily enabling them to live more fulfilling in their own lives.
