TRANSSEXUALISM – AN INVESTIGATION

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUNDTranssexualism (also referred to as transsexuality) is a phenomenon that is not always well understood in society. From the time that this term was first used it has often been confused with sexual deviations such as homosexuality, bisexuality, transvestism or hermaphroditism. The term “transsexualism” was used for the first time in 1950 by Cauldwell, when George Jorgensen became Christine Jorgensen in 1951-52 in Copenhagen after a series of hormone treatments and a sex-change operation (Crown, 1976:231; Cavanagh, 1977:118; Louw, 1992:307; Comer, 1995:512). The first “sex-change” operations had already been performed in the 1930s; however, sex reassignment did not receive much attention until the highly publicised case of Christine Jorgensen (Bootzin, Acocella & Alloy, 1993:346). By 1980 sex-reassignment surgery was routine in at least forty medical centres in the Western hemisphere (Arndt, 1991 in Comer, 1995:512)