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Transgender is a term which was created in the 1990s to describe individuals whose appearance, behavior, or self-identification varies from binary gender norms.
In one sense, transgender is a global term that encompasses crossdressers, transsexuals, and transgenderists.1 However, when taken to mean transgressively gendered,2 transgender can be seen as encompassing anyone who feels uncomfortable with, dislikes, or resists John Wayne/Marilyn Monroe gender stereotypes.
In this interpretation, gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals are transgendered because they transgress gender norms in regard to sexual orientation, and all women who are less than perfectly feminine and all men who are less than perfectly masculine (i.e., almost all of us) can thus be described as transgendered.3
The American society itself can be viewed as somewhat transgendered because for the past several hundred years it has been steadily relaxing strict male/female gender norms. This is perhaps most apparent in the changing sartorial styles and increasing civil equality of women. The casual dress of most contemporary American women would have been considered scandalous 50 years ago and was illegal less than 100 years ago, when women were routinely arrested for appearing in public in trousers. Changing gender norms are also reflected in the American workplace, in which women enter occupations and achieve levels of authority and responsibility once closed to them.
Transgender, then, is not only a new term but also an alternate way of looking at gender. Transgender sensibility blends elements of feminist, gay, and deconstructionist theory to posit that male and female genders are not natural categories but are socially constructed and vary from culture to culture and, over time, within cultures.
Under the medical model which prevailed from the mid-nineteenth century until the rise of this transgender sensibility in the mid-1990s, individuals whose gender presentation varied from binary norms were considered not merely different, but deviant. The transgender model has changed the locus of pathology from the gender-different individual to the society that will not tolerate difference.This shift has forced a reevaluation of traditional clinical categories to which these people have been assigned and cast light upon the often-erroneous and sexist assumptions of clinicians and researchers who have studied these populations.
Transgender sensibility has also enabled transgender and transsexual people to cast aside their shame and forge...