The Transsexual Phenomenon

Abstract

Recent announcement that Johns Hopkins has established a gender identity clinic to screen applicants for sex change surgery and that two such operations have been performed at that respected hospital, has stimulated interest in the problem of transsexuals. This term was chosen by Dr. Harry Benjamin to describe those rare individuals who feel that they belong to the opposite sex, wish to live as such, and consider their sex organs disturbing deformities which they want removed. He carefully distinguishes them from transvestites who wish to dress as members of the opposite sex but are satisfied to remain members of their own sex. In this book, based largely on his own observations of 193 male and 27 female subjects, Benjamin discusses the problem at length. He considers the etiology obscure, although stating that childhood conditioning or imprinting may be significant in some cases. He expresses the belief that true transsexuals cannot