Can You Differentiate between a Transvestite and a Transsexual?

22.08.2010 | By: S. S.

Many people still get confused over the notions of transvestism and transsexualism. Here is an explanation.

A transvestite or a transsexual?

What is transvestism?

The time a transvestite spends with a female wig on his head, wearing women’s lingerie and clothes, is the time when he feels pleasantly sexually aroused. Therefore, he wears women’s clothes to be aroused. Transvestites are men only. It’s typical of them to be heterosexually oriented as well as to reject any thought of homosexual contact and any actual sex change, since it’s obvious that they belong to their biological gender. It’s their sexual orientation that distinguishes transvestites from homosexual men who can also behave extremely feminine. We don’t consider eccentric adolescents who merely want to attract attention with their unusual style of clothing to be transvestites.

According to the opinion of psychoanalysts, transvestite behavior usually shows very early in childhood because of wrong upbringing. If parents are too tender and lenient, or if they interrupt the psychosexual development, a boy's personal differentiation and individualisation, the child merges with his mother, so to speak, and later experiences problems with emancipation. His greatest delight is to subconsciously identify himself with his mother or to imitate her.

Transvestites like to go clubbing, meet other transvestites through newspapers, and perform as striptease dancers in front of surprised viewers. Partial transvestites are those who display transvestite behavior and cross-dress only before and during sexual intercourse as part of role play to make their sex life more exciting.

And what is transsexualism?

Men and women are considered transsexual if they feel a burning desire to change their sex (such an individual feels like a member of the opposite sex), which means a change to physical features and the social and legal status. These individuals are in great distress. Transsexualism is a specific sexual and gender identity disorder. Sigusch and his colleagues (1978) identify the following characteristics of transsexuals:

1. They’re firmly convinced that they belong to the opposite sex and that they were born in a wrong body.

2. They’re obsessed with a desire to change their physical appearance because, according to their opinion, it doesn’t agree with their feelings about their sex. This desire is often expressed very early in childhood and it gradually grows stronger until it ends in a real obsession.

3. They feel disgust at and hatred towards the sexual signs of their bodies (sexual organ, beard, breasts, vagina and menstruation).

4. Until they change their sex, they firmly reject contact with homosexual people, although some of them maintain it, particularly those who want to undergo surgery for male-to-female sex change. They also largely suffer from sexual aversion disorder (an avoidance of or aversion to genital sexual contact), since every sexual activity, such as masturbation, only reminds them of a painful reality of their physical structure.

5. They start cross-dressing already in childhood and after puberty in particular. Contrary to transvestites, cross-dressing doesn’t turn them on. Instead, it only eases their mind. Very soon they also start imitating the general behavior and speaking of the opposite sex, choose professions typical of them, and change the name and other personal features.

In general, men who want to become women experience more difficulties in adapting after their sex change surgery than women who become men. Women are more dynamic, relaxed, extroversive, active and sociable already before they have an operation. Suicide is committed somewhat more often after sex change. About 25% of transsexuals get married after the surgery, but only a few have a happy marriage.