CRISIS OF AUTHORITY: MEDICAL RHETORIC AND TRANSSEXUAL IDENTITY

Abstract

Most definitions of transsexuality include a medical component, often by describing hormonal and surgical treatments sought by those individuals who perceive themselves to be and seek to live as the gender other than the one assigned to them at birth. Although people had these self-perceptions prior to the development of medical treatments to alter secondary sex characteristics, their identity is now largely understood through the prism of available medical treatments.