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Abstract

Although behavioral science has an established role in jurisprudence, the two disciplines have not always kept pace. A relatively recent behavioral science advance has been recognition of the sexual identity anomaly of transsexualism. At the time I co-edited the first interdisciplinary textbook on this variation in 1969, writers necessarily defined the term "transsexualism" whenever used, including in professional works. Now, school children know the meaning. The courts, however, have not fully appreciated the advances in science's understanding of the complexities of either sexual identity or transsexualism. This Comment describes that gap and the legal consequence.