Talk:Transsexual

Kindly remember to put new topics at the end of the page, not the top.

---

Removal of ICD-11

-sche has removed several sections of text IGF and I have reverted the changes IGF with a request for discussion here. The largest block was a direct quote from an imminently reliable (and respected) source. I would like to understand why. Is it because the author did not explicitly use the term transsexual? If that's the problem, we really need to talk that through since they go on to include the literal definition of TS when talking about the desire to live their experienced gender "through hormonal treatment, surgery or other health care services..." Other removals seem, on the face of them, to rely on similar logic. Cheers, Last1in (talk) Last1in (talk) 21:49, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

As I pointed out in the merger discussion above, several sources in the article, including those I removed and others I was about to remove, a) are not about transsexual, and in some cases are even b) explicitly about a different topic which we treat in a different article, namely Transgender, which you yourself argue further up on this very page is a separate topic that cannot be equated to Transsexual. Statements about Transsexual are {{not in source}}. -sche (talk) 23:21, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I completely agree that Transgender is a different subject than this article's topic, but cutting a source because it's doesn't use the word, 'transexual', does not seem to improve either article. Please note that the source doesn't say 'transgender' either, but clearly and explicitly does include the definitions for both. As witnessed above, the edges of what should/shouldn't be in one or the other article is and will remain contention. Isn't it better to talk it thought and come to consensus? I think ICD-11 clearly belongs in both articles as it legitimately applies to both subjects (just as a source on human anatomy might be a solid source for both 'men' and 'women', different subjects with clear overlaps). Cheers, Last1in (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Taking a source which doesn't mention this topic at all, and coming to your own conclusion that it nonetheless secretly is about this topic, is original research. Furthermore, some of the sources you restored explicitly say they're about the other topic, not this topic. (Re "Isn't it better to talk it thought", isn't that what we're doing?) -sche (talk) 01:35, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

If I understand your statement correctly, you are saying that my equating this article topic with ICD-11 is WP:OR, right?

Just to be perfectly clear, the lede sentence in this Article says that it is about "people experience a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desire to permanently transition... [by] seeking medical assistance (including sex reassignment therapies, such as hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery) to help them align their body with their identified sex or gender."

(Colour added to both quotes with apologies to those who perceive colour differently)

I have equated that with a definition in ICD-11 that says, "incongruence between an individual´s experienced gender and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to ‘transition’, in order to live and be accepted as a person of the experienced gender, through hormonal treatment, surgery or other health care services to make the individual´s body align, as much as desired and to the extent possible, with the experienced gender." (emphases added)

I either do not understand your logic here, or you really are insisting on having the specific word, transsexual, appear in each and every cited source. I assume that you will also make the same insistence on Transgender, leaving ICD-11 completely out of both articles? I have a problem with that. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 16:45, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Improvement Proposal

RoxySaunders offered a superb suggestion in the now-defunct relist of the merge proposal (see Talk:Transgender#Merger proposal). I would like to propose that we attempt a rewrite timeboxed at one month and see if we can avoid a repeat of the above discussion. We can also use a concept from the world of software agility: Try; fail; fail better next time; repeat until success is achieved. RoxySaunder's original text is as follows:

There is enough content specific to this topic (and enough sources discussing it as its own concept) to warrant a standalone article. The mess we're in now is that much of the body just consists of excerpts of other trans-related articles, except sloppily using transsexual in place of transgender, or conflating it with some specific subset of trans people (e.g. those with dysphoria or who have medically/legally transitioned). This (not the article itself) is inaccurate and offensive. Following the guidance of various style guides[1][2][3], Wikipedia should probably not use transsexual to label any group of people except those who specifically identify with the term. Drop non-terminology content and keep Transsexual as an article about the term, and its use as a historical medical term and present-day identity label. –RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (💬 • 📝) 05:58, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I believe that a WP:WORDISSUBJECT article is an excellent compromise, but also think that an inclusive project (including a community review LONG before anything is posted) is important on a contentious topic like this one. I am unsure of the protocol for staging the collaboration for a major rewrite but will offer whatever assistance I can. Do we stage it as a subpage of this one, or in a sandbox? I am more than happy to spin either one up if someone can tell me the right approach. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 16:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

• I endorse this excellent solution. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 18:14, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
• Also endorse. But I want to alert anyone interested in this about some of the possible pitfalls to watch out for in articles about words. Such articles need to be very clear that the subject is the term, and probably require a hatnote (see (LGBT, for example), a carefully written lead sentence that doesn't just seem like a sloppy WP:REFERS error that nobody has bothered to remedy, scrupulous attention to proper use of italics when called for by MOS:WAW (basically, anywhere you can stick the word in front of transsexual in the text without changing the meaning of the sentence means it should be italicized; see use–mention distinction), and vigilance to prevent loss of focus, or divergence between body and lead, as the inevitable good-faith editors drop by later and change the lead to what they think is justifiably about the concept. The fact is, word-as-subject articles are rare (WP:NOTDICT does not prohibit them, but this may be misunderstood), and many editors, even experienced ones, don't always get it. A case study of the headaches this can cause can be found at Talk:Cisgender#Lack of focus and violation of LEAD (warning: long discussion; tl;dr: someone changed the lead to be about the concept and not the word, leaving the article neither fish nor fowl. Took quite some time to dig out of the hole this had caused, and there are still some loose ends.)

A remark was made in passing somewhere here to add parenthetical disambiguation to the title of articles about a term to further clarify what was going on with a word-as-subject article, as even all the other measures mentioned don't seem to be enough, such as what occurred at Cisgender, despite everything. Following that idea here would mean that the article title would become Transsexual (word). Given my experience with this issue in various word-articles, I support this, even though it would require a change to WP:AT, but I think it is necessary. This is a sub-battle that can and must be dealt with separately, and doesn't directly concern the proposal to rework this article, but it is part of the whole concept of the possible minefield awaiting you when you rework the article to be about the word, and I wanted you to be aware of it going in. (That "remark" was not a formal proposal, but should be turned into one, at WT:AT has been added: here.)

The list of sources after you're done with the overhaul will probably be entirely different than it is now, with the exception of those in the § Terminology section. If you spawned just that one section into a standalone article, you'd have an article with 48 references, so you're good to go as far as notability; so no worries on that score. Don't forget that in-links may need to be adjusted to point to transgender instead, or some other location. There are currently 2,797 of them, and this would be infinitely easier if this article could be renamed Transsexual (word), and might require a bot if it can't.

I'm pretty overloaded so probably can't help as much as I'd like with the actual conversion of the article, but I'll try to monitor the discussion and help here if I can. Thanks, and good luck with this really good proposal. Mathglot (talk) 01:23, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

So the best way to approach this is... (1) Talk subpage with comments here; or (2) a subpage on my sandbox with comments here; or (3) a subpage on my sandbox with comments on my talk (or another sub-) page? I have never done this before but am pretty good at following tips. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 01:35, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Not your sandbox, ideally; should be more public than that. Another possibility might be to do it at a WikiProject. I'd wait a bit for more suggestions; there's no hurry. Mathglot (talk) 01:42, 27 July 2023 (UTC) updated to add proposal links; Mathglot (talk) 02:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I would support having an article about the term at this title (as I said during the merger discussion), a la how we have an article on the term Negro, but Negro Americans, Black Americans, etc as a group are covered at African Americans. As to procedure, I would encourage either of the other editors who highlighted issues with the non-admin close of the merger discussion to proceed with a close review before we get too deep into this, since some possible outcomes of the close review have the potential to make writing a term article at this title much simpler. -sche (talk) 01:53, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

I've got a good piece of news to report: it turns out, that there are already a decent number of articles that use '(word)' or '(term)' as a disambiguator in the article title; so if we added to this proposal a request to move the title to Transsexual (word) as well, we can show that there is already precedent for it, and I believe it would be a lot clearer to our readers what the topic was. For details, see WT:AT#Examples of current usage. Mathglot (talk) 06:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

@CaptainEek and Sideswipe9th:: each of you raised issues with the close of the merger-discussion above; would either of you like to formally request a review of it? Especially given the additional comments made on Talk:Transgender and now in this section, it seems clear that the actual consensus is for there to not be two articles describing the same people (but instead for this article to describe the term), in which case a more accurate closure of the merger discussion would simplify moving forward on that. -sche (talk) 21:44, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: The additional comments made on Talk:Transgender were a consensus to not merge the articles. Your position on this issue is simply not representative of the sources or the community consensus. On either article. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 22:12, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

@Last1in They were? What am I missing? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 22:21, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

@-sche: I've asked the closer of that discussion if they'll self-revert. If not, I'll make a close challenge at AN. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:57, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

• After some discussion on my talk, I think that the close of the merger discussion is irrelevant to this scope change proposal. The merger would have resulted in this article ceasing to exist. But this proposed scope change will keep the article, merely shifting its focus to the terminology. I haven't seen any objection to the scope change, and think that we could probably just go ahead and implement it. Absent objection, lets make it happen? CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 06:30, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Consistent reference

i came to this article hoping for some insight into the transgender/transsexual phenomenon, but found myself mired in the politics of terminology. i had more the feeling that i was reading a food labeling regulation about different cuts of meat ("word as subject") rather than the lived experience of people, and the page is jargon heavy in a way that gives the medical perspective and the politics too much air. this does not help the reader to appreciate the human experience.

my first suggestion is that you announce in the terminology section that this is an evolving social issue and the terminology is sometimes contested or in flux, but that for clarity the page will establish a single consistent system of reference. trans MTF and trans FTM seem to me elegantly transparent if also patently redundant (MTF, FTM would do). the nuance between transgender and transsexual has little importance in my read, first of all because there do not seem to be objective diagnostic criteria or some kind of medical treatment scale to anchor the terms, and second because trans people themselves do not seem to agree on a definition and vary in how they prefer to be described. simple "trans" in all contexts seems to me to work perfectly well to embrace all concerned without prejudice; some trans people get surgery, some do not. (and i did not see and may have missed any breakdown of the proportion of trans people in each gender category progress to each stage of "intensity".)

i also found the treatment of trans to be clinically nondiscriminatory despite the obvious large differences between MTF and FTM apparent in the prevalence rates alone; surely there is also a completely different sociological encounter between a MTF and other women and a FTM and other men (for example shunning vs. violence).

the section on causes and origins offers little more than a handwave at genetics. cultural factors, religion, social support, identity trends and fashions, medical provision, health care and other issues must also explain why gender reassignment is (i will surmise) a more going enterprise in netherlands than in russia. the role of the family and the incidence of bias, stigma and violence deserves description.

if research has nothing to say about these sociological and cultural contingencies then that fact should be stated, if for no other reason than to contextualze "word as subject" niceties as too intricate to give a still evolving, socially contested and somewhat murky topic the straightforward analysis it badly needs. go forth and prosper. Drollere (talk) 07:54, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I think we all can agree that this article needs work, but the direction is exclusively toward the politics of terminology, not against it. An attempt to delete this article entirely was resolved just a few weeks ago. The majority position is that transsexual is an obsolete term for a particular stripe of transgender and this this article should contain info only on the term itself. The lived experience of transsexual people is that of all other transgendered persons since the two terms refer to the same thing. I am not sure why you'll find no discussion of the difference in experience between those whose assignment at birth was male versus female, but I think that it would be a valuable addition to the transgender article. Thanks & Cheers, Last1in (talk) 14:03, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Recent self-use

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/07/the-experiences-challenges-and-hopes-of-transgender-and-nonbinary-u-s-adults/

Just to demonstrate there is recent self-labeling with this term. There is a Venn diagram in this 2022 report (in the "Identity and the gender journey" section) that lists "transsexual" as one term people used to describe themselves. VintageVernacular (talk) 22:54, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 January 2024

Change "sex reassignment" to "gender affirmation" or "gender affirming." "Sex reassignment" is considered outdated. Jesswall1 (talk) 21:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

 Done RWILD✉ 18:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

By whom? - Lisa (talk - contribs) 18:03, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

See above. Done by user RWILDONLINE. Mseingth2133444 (Did I mess up? Let me know here) 02:43, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 1 March 2024

A transsexual person is someone who experiences a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desires to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually seeking medical assistance (including gender affirming therapies, such as hormone replacement therapy and gender affirming surgery) to help them align their body with their identified sex or gender.

This statement is false. You cannot transition to a different sex. Your sex is determined by your chromosomes and cannot be changed with any type of therapy or surgery. 78.149.42.11 (talk) 16:11, 1 March 2024 (UTC)