Transsexual
What is a Transsexual?
Transsexuals are people who don’t feel like the sex they were assigned at birth matches their gender identity. A transsexual woman, for example, is a person who identifies as female despite being born with no female genitals.
This mismatch between one’s assigned sex and one’s gender identity forces many transsexual people to undergo gender confirmation surgery in order to look more like the person they truly feel inside.
Transsexual vs. Transvestite and Transgender
Transsexuals aren’t the same as tranvestite or transgender people, even though the three concepts are often cause for confusion. Here’s how the terms compare to one another:
- Transvestite: Refers to individuals who enjoy dressing up as the opposite gender but don’t necessarily feel disconnected from their assigned sex.
- Transgender: An umbrella term that includes transsexuals, but refers to the broader group of people who don’t feel connected to their assigned sex, including not only “men” who feel like women (and vice-versa), but also non-binary individuals. The term transsexual tends to exclude the latter.
Transsexuality in Porn
Like all things sex-related, transsexuality made its way into adult entertainment long before it was openly discussed in mainstream media. Transsexual women, for example, are repeatedly fetishized, and that doesn’t always help their already-difficult cause.
Transsexuality has been increasingly normalized in the 21st century and is now a feature of virtually all pornographic content, from adult magazines to VR porn websites. However, society’s longtime struggle for equal rights for trans people continues to be an issue in many countries.