[MonikaT]

...Whether I'm transgender or transsexual I'm not entirely certain, indeed how can you tell (wise comments would be useful here!)...

Rachel xxx

Yeah, I'm confused about that too. I'm trans... something but not sure which. Both terms seems like "political geese" as do, Gender Identity Disorder and Gender Dysphoria. ...All I know is I would prefer to be inside the other version or model, so to speak.

Some may disagree with me, but generally speaking, a transsexual is a person whose body and mind are not in sync, i.e., female brain, but male body, or male brain, but female body, hence the need, not desire, but need, to change the body to match the mind since attempts to change the mind to match the body have all failed; it appears to be hard-wired. Somewhere along the way, someone invented the word "transgender" to encompass all people who are gender variant. In other words, all cross dressers, transvestites (not sure why the term is used separately when it is Latin for cross dresser), gender queer, gender f#ck, transsexuals, and anyone else who does not fit the gender binary are transgender. It is an umbrella term that a lot of transsexuals hate.

Dysphoria means what it says--a state of unease. In this case, gender dysphoria would be a state of unease with one's gender as determined by the body and the mind not matching. Gender is in the brain. Sex is determined by the configuration of the genitalia.

GID is the fancy term used by mental health professionals to categorize anyone suffering from a mismatch between genitalia and brain gender. When I say suffering, I mean just that--it causes psychological pain. The only accepted cure is to fix the mismatch through hormones and surgery. However, not everyone fits that extreme. There are plenty of people who aren't absolutely 100% either gender and wish to live somewhere in the middle between the two extremes. I suspect there are a lot more people in the middle than anyone knows or suspects.