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The three terms can refer to people who partly or fully do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. However, the terms cannot be used synonymously as they do have different connotations. Besides that, terms can be used/considered as self-labelling or non-self-labelling terms by trans* people, which is why the individual self-labelling term of a trans* person should always be respected. For trans* people, it can be a painful experience when they are assigned with the wrong gender identity on the basis of physical characteristics or behaviour. Gender dysphoria describes the suffering due to a wrongly assigned gender identity.

Transsexual

The term transsexual is based on the binary gender norm and refers, therefore, especially to the categories man/woman. If trans* people use this as a self-labelling term, it can express that their gender identity is the ‘opposite’ of the gender they were assigned at birth. The term is used especially in medical, psychological und legal means. Due to the historical context, the use of the term transsexual by cis people is seen as discriminatory and rejected by trans* people. Since the 1950’s, ‘transsexuality’ was defined as a disease by the medicine and psychology and listed as such in the international classification of diseases (ICD). This categorisation supported the stigmatisation of trans* people. Due to longstanding activism of the trans* community, which make clear that their identity cannot be classified as a disease, in 2022 the WHO will change the name of the diagnose ‘transsexuality’ to ‘gender incongruence’ and will no longer pathologies it as a mental illness in the ICD10. Medically the identity as trans* will then be defined as a question of ‘sexual health’

Next to the medical context, the term ‘transsexuality’ also gets criticised as misleading, as being trans* is independent of one’s sexual orientation and refers to the gender identity. However, some trans* people prefer the term ‘transsexual’ instead of ‘transgender’. Through the English word ‘sex’, they can put the focus of their self-definition on the fact that their body differs from their gender identity.

Transgender

Transgender refers to the English term ‘gender’. The term arose in the 1970’s, when trans* people became more visible in public. The term closed the gap between the medical term ‘transsexual’, which only refers to two gender and the term ‘travesty’, which means temporarily acting as the other gender. The reference to the English word ‘gender’ shall allow that people who have a gender identity other than male or female can identify with that term.