Why Some Trans People are Reclaiming the Term 'Transsexual', and Why I Am One of Them

Why are so many trans people calling themselves transsexual lately?

If you are out of the loop, it might sound like a step backwards. Transsexual is an older term that has been out of fashion for decades.

Until recently, the term was mostly associated with the bigoted system of medical gatekeeping that most trans people, including those that are reclaiming it, have no love for. The current reclamation has nothing to do with that.

While transgender is a broad term to describe those whose genders are different from those assigned at birth, transsexual is a more precise term for those who use hormones and other techniques to change their sex.

As access to the means of changing sex have grown, and as these means have become more effective at changing our secondary sex characteristics, a growing importance has been placed on these tools.

As I have argued, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is not just a set of tools, it is the very means by which we take control of our own bodies.

It ought to be protected and cherished.

At the same time, the rise of fascism has put access to HRT in jeopardy.

Wherever fascism takes hold in government, in the medical system, and in the hearts of doctors, access to transsexual medicine is cut off.

These forces try to enforce a monopoly of medicine over those they see as undeserving of it.

That result is that anyone reliant on their doctors for hormones is either cut off, or forced to follow the demands of others.

This attack on our basic needs is intolerable. It also puts into focus how our needs are quite different from some groups under the transgender label.

Some trans people need cross-sex hormones to live. Some trans people don't.

This is not just a medical distinction, it’s a fundamental difference in needs. Some trans people live their lives and organize their communities around maintaining access to the means of changing sex at all costs. Some trans people don't have to think about that.

There ought to be a way to talk about this difference outside of medical jargon.

The term that many have found fit to use for this purpose is ‘transsexual’, with the process of transition called “changing sex”.

In the past, the term "changing sex”, if it was taken seriously at all, referred only to surgeries that changed a person’s genitals to be different from those at birth.

This is why, until recently, it was standard to force transsexuals to be sterilized and have bottom surgery before their legal gender markers could be changed.

This has all changed. The more we learn about the biology of sex characteristics, the more ways we discover in which Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) alters the sex characteristics of the human body.

This has led to the rise of the term “transsexual medicine” to describe the process.