Talk:Transsexual/Archive 11

Transgender and Transsexual Merge
The last time this was tried was 2018. The world has changed a lot since then, and I think a vast majority of the transgender community (including myself and many others I know) believe the term is archaic and has no business having its own Wikipedia page. Where the person who tried this in 2018 said "Transsexual is starting to be considered outdated, inaccurate, or offensive," I'm saying that it is already outdated, inaccurate, and offensive. Transsexual should be a subsection of transgender. Purplycake (talk) 15:20, 5 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Transsexual is a terrible term.--2601:C4:C300:2890:4C8A:B212:6078:C5D6 (talk) 21:51, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, a lot of this article duplicates transgender or is literally copied from there. There is scope for a section on the term itself but the content on trans people should be at transgender. Galobtter (talk) 22:33, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah no it shouldn't, the original definition is transsexual and people still use this to describe themselves since transgender also includes cross dressers. They shouldn't be merged together at all and Transexual shouldn't have to be removed just because it doesn't validate people with no dysphoria. 2607:9880:16B8:75:D8FC:679B:3525:9406 (talk) 04:09, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Purplycake Please don't speak for others, transsexual is still widely used and has many reasons for continuing to be in use. For one, it differentiates those that do medically transition and those who don't.
 * Your personal biases and opinions shouldn't be a factor in decisions like this. Duchy2 (talk) 15:27, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Many people still identify with this term as a legitimate identity who do not identify with the label of transgender (and see transgender as a dated and offensive label), many gender abolitionist trans people see themselves as changing their sex and see gender is a redundant construct, transgender and transsexual do not mean the same thing. 104.220.121.45 (talk) 08:52, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

f::Transsexual is not outdated, nor should it be absorbed into an umbrella term like transgender. Transsexual describes those of us who suffer body dysphoria over our natal gender that is only alleviated by full transition, medically and surgically. For us, being trans is not a political identity, but a medical problem that has a cure, and needs curing. Stop trying to subsume our identities and lives with your gender studies talking points. We arent the same. 2600:1700:4F00:BC00:FCC8:34F3:3F53:3AC4 (talk) 12:38, 3 June 2023 (UTC)


 * As noted in a couple sections further up on this page, the overlap between the two topics is extensive (compromising indeed the bulk the article), and creates quite the sourcing nightmare (if we reviewed every source in this article, I wonder if we would find that they in fact all scope themselves to being about transsexual people, or whether many scope themselves to being about transgender people and hence are technically improperly used). Normally, articles are about topics, and one article covers a topic known by multiple words, even where different people (e.g. of different ages or political bents or nationalities) prefer different words, e.g. African Americans and Black Americans are one article (and the article Negro is only about the term), or Anorak and Parka. But Wikipedia is by nature [small-c, and for that matter large-c] conservative, conserving existing (separate) articles, and it is by nature behind curves, because it follows sources—it doesn't lead—so sources have to get far enough ahead of Wikipedia for Wikipedia to know what direction to follow them, if I may strain a metaphor. Things are moving in the direction of these articles being merged, both in the world at large (how sources cover the topic and terminology) and on-wiki (hence when a merger was proposed in 2015, there was consensus against it; in 2018, there was no consensus, quite a shift), but I don't know if things have reached the point where there'd be consensus to merge yet. I suppose the only way to find out is a WP:PM. -sche (talk) 01:09, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Disagree on merging. The two terms mean different things. Some transsexual people refuse to identify with the term transgender for various reasons. Likewise, some transgender people refuse to identify with transsexual. The biggest difference seems to come down to historical reasons and whether or not the person views gender dysphoria as a medical condition. Pauliexcluded (talk) 03:54, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Support merging per what -sche highlights on articles being about topics and not words. This thing reads like a WP:POVFORK of Transgender. As for a merge discussion being needed, I think this is the merge discussion. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 07:15, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I have notified WT:LGBT and WT:WPGS of this discussion. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 07:18, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Support merge. These are substantially the same topic and any nuanced distinctions and debate about the preferred terminology can be covered in the merged article. --DanielRigal (talk) 10:22, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Support merge. I would say there is enough evidence to merge the two together, due to the overlap as -sche puts it, and I also think things are moving toward both topics being merged. I can also see the transexual page as a content fork from Transgender, and would say that any nuances can be covered in a merged article. I tend to disagree with other people commenting on here like 2600:1700:4F00:BC00:FCC8:34F3:3F53:3AC4 and 104.220.121.45. Such a merger is not an attack on anyone identifying as transsexual. I would further disagree with Duchy2, who claims that "transsexual is still widely used and has many reasons for continuing to be in use" (is there any evidence for this?) And as for "personal biases and opinions", why is that an issue? At least they are being honest about their views, as some people on here hide their views being niceties, which is never good, especially if those views are nasty. Regardless of the views of the OP, this is still being decided by users on here who may, or may not, have the same views of the OP, so I honestly don't see an issue with it whatsoever. Historyday01 (talk) 13:19, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment What do RS say about the term and use? I see a lot of speculation and discussion about "widely used" or "substantially the same topic" but to support this merger, I believe most editors should strive to see how RS use the term now. Has there been a shift in reliable use of the term "transsexual" to now be synonymous with transgender? Consensus needs verifiable sources to support this use of the term, and thus the merger. King keudo (talk) 19:57, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I personally am supporting the merger as I see similar content on each page. Here's some other sources I found:
 * "According to the APA Style guide, the term “transsexual” is largely outdated, but some people identify with it; this term should be used only for an individual who specifically claims it."- APA
 * "[Transssexual is] an older term that originated in the medical and psychological communities...the transgender community rejected transsexual and replaced it with transgender. Some people within the trans community may still call themselves transsexual."- GLAAD
 * Some, like the Intersex Society for North America, seem to use them interchangeably, as does the National Center for Transgender Equality, and ISSM. There is undoubtedly more, but that is what I could find on short notice. Historyday01 (talk) 18:14, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Supporting merge. The idea that "Transgender" and "Transexual" are two seperate identities/concepts is an idea created within the past 10 years by fringe elements of the transgender community and is not adpoted by the majority. There are no credible sources that outline the idea of "Transgender" and "Transexual" as being different concepts on the basis of transexuals having a more medical approach to transitioning, this is merely a concept created by fringe online communites that has no research to back it up and very few if any credible sources describing this position. Due to this, the idea of this article being seperate from the transgender article on the basis of this specific concept that they are seperate things is a biased opinion and seperating them due to the opinion of fringe online groups and not reliable sources is a violation of policy. Keeping them seperate for this reason is intinsically a violation of NPOV policy because it would be legitimizing one side's point of view, which is made worse by the fact that there aren't any credible sources outlining this point of view. Because the term is incredibly archaic, very rarely used within the LGBT community and almost never used within medical literature pertaining to transgender/transexual people, there is no real reason for keeping them seperate except for the modern redefined meaning of "Transexual" which should not be considered legitimate, as described above. Given this and the fact that a large majority of this article reuses/rephrases content from the transgender article, there is no compelling reason as to why they should not be merged. JuliaHM123 (talk) 21:59, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @JuliaHM123 This isn't a full refutation of your argument as I don't have the time for that.
 * This is merely to show you that what you're claiming is false and indicative of not having done your research.
 * https://www.issm.info/sexual-health-qa/what-is-the-difference-between-transsexual-and-transgender
 * https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender-people-gender-identity-gender-expression#:~:text=Some%20transgender%20people%2C%20transsexuals%20in,often%20seek%20gender%2Daffirming%20treatments. Duchy2 (talk) 13:04, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose merge, per Duchy2's sources directly above, Last1in's note on the absence of sources directly below, the distinction we still make by having separate articles for Gender and Sex, and WP:PRECISION — the denoted/referent populations overlap but are not the same.  –  . Raven  .talk 05:00, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose merging at this time (if we are !voting): Either this merge is premature, or it's ripe and the sources have not yet been presented. • First off, I am impressed with all of the sources that have been put forward by proponents. Oh. Wait. There aren't any, as King keudo points out. -sche's point is important as well; we trail sources, we do not lead them (I think that Maddy rather missed -sche's point). • Most folks above are focusing on the irrelevant issue of whether trans{suffix} people identify with one or the other term. That is important for biographical articles, not for those about a subject. In a shocking number of cases, such articles are titled with terms that are anathema to the people so labelled (Ex am pl es). I am as ____ as folk (or 'as three-dollar bill' for Americans) and yet deeply loathe the term queer because of its original meaning. I don't object to the article, though (or the Gay one for that matter; happy is good). •• As unfamiliar as it is to find myself on the opposite side of a !debate from DanielRigal, the status quo (two articles) must persist until the preponderance of sources (or at least some high-quality sources) equate the two unequivocally. No one above has provided such evidence. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 00:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment While I believe things may be moving in the direction of a merge, I don't that it is clear that they should be yet, and per WP:CRYSTALBALL, we can't be sure what will happen in the future with these terms. I don't think extensive overlap in content can be a sole reason to merge: related topics in topical sidebars will often have such overlap for example, but this means that they are related, not that they need to be merged. And I don't believe they are forks, either, so what would be the policy-based rationale for a merge? My sense is that transgender is more of an over-arching umbrella term, that in its broadest form can include numerous different subtypes, whereas transsexual is much more limited. In the terms of WP:Summary style, the article Transgender would be the parent article, and Transsexual would be (one of) the child articles. Finally, TG is already 52kb prose bytes, and and TS is 36kb, and a merge would put it well into WP:SIZESPLIT territory, so they would just have to be split out again, if not the same way, then along some other division. Mathglot (talk) 06:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Weakly oppose merging I am not an expert at all, but I believe that the two concepts are potentially different enough for two pages in some people's eyes. See what I've collected at Wiktionary:Citations:transgender. There are some cites that treat the two terms as identical, but there are some that really try to distinguish. I invite others to add cites there or on the transsexual page. I saw one comment that said that this divide was only created ten years ago. But here's a source (that I quote at Wiktionary:Citations:transgender) from 1988 (about 35 years ago) trying to divide transgender and transsexual: "Gender identity is whether or not a person perceives him/herself to be a man or woman (see ‘man’ and ‘woman’). The problem arises when a male perceives himself to be a woman, and vise versa. Notice I said man or woman, and not male or female. The difference is important. Male and female are biological terms, while man and woman as they are used here are modes of being, ways to be, which are based on psychology and sociology rather than biology. (see ‘gender dysphoria’) Sexual identity is a ‘transsexual’ issue and may involve sexual re-assignment surgery, but may not involve cross-dressing. Gender identity is a ‘transgender’ issue and does not involve surgery, but almost always involves cross-dressing." So do I agree with that quote? No. I'm just saying that it's a viewpoint. I'm uniformed and probably should not vote here. But I urge cautious circumspection in whatever decision is made, and I feel there may be two different articles here. Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:58, 12 June 2023 (UTC) (Modified)
 * "As an afterthought, I think I might be entitled to point out that I (and others in the same position) who have had electrolysis, taken hormones and live as a woman full time am not a transexual, are wrong. While all of these things are done by those who ARE transexuals, it does not follow that all who do them are transexuals. This is the same false logic that society follows when it in effect says (wrongly in both cases) that homosexuals wear dresses and make up, therefore all males who wear dresses and make up are homosexuals. I’m sure most of you have been resenting that implication for as long as you’ve been TVs. Naturally I resent the assumption that I am a TS for the same reason—the logic is false. I, at least, know the difference between sex and gender and have simply elected to change the latter and not the former. If a word is necessary, I should be termed a “transgenderal.”" (I add this here as a potentially relevant comment- not sure)
 * Support merge because almost all uses of the term "transsexual" are for the concept now called "transgender". Previous merge discussions suggested that the term transsexual was either or both dated or technical. In the past 10 years more has been written on this subject than the entirety of the historic discourse, so unusually for Wikipedia source checking, we have a lot of WP:WEIGHT on recent sources which almost uniformly use the term "transgender". The article text cites GLAAD as a champion for transitioning all use from transsexual to transgender. Other LGBT+ rights organizations recommend the same, and I think that there are no stakeholder organizations advocating for preservation of the term "transsexual". I acknowledge that there are technical or historic applications for a term "transsexual", but those are not the norm, and even in cases where someone uses a specific definition where transsexual is acceptable as a term, even then using the term transgender is preferable. Ambiguity in this is gone. As I read the current text of this transsexual article, I feel this is all better called transgender. If there is a distinction to be made, then that distinction should not happen with this present text, which can be merged to transgender.  Bluerasberry   (talk)  17:46, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * > "I'm uniformed and probably should not vote here." — Servicemembers can vote too! ;)  –  . Raven  .talk 06:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment: I agree that transsexual can be a sub-topic of transgender. The question here is, should we merge the articles? It is a terrifyingly slippery slope to conflate these. I beg you to stop and think of articles that many folks (and some highly respected sources) also think of as 'transgender'. Please do not bathe me in flames for bringing up things that I do not agree with, but sources already mentioned above conflate transgender with transvestitism, drag culture, non-binary and an array of other concepts. Each of those articles could -- but certainly should not -- be combined here. What possible benefit does Wikipedia gain by the merge when we have sources that make a clear distinction? One less article? The lede's first sentence solves any chance of confusing the reader. More to the point, what do we gain by doing it now? English is in serious flux over terms related of sex, gender, and the distinction between the two. Please explain in encyclopaedic terms the risk incurred by leaving the articles separate until a preponderance of sources clearly and unequivocally equates the terms. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 00:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment: Basically the entirety of the transmedical community online rejects the use of the term "transgender" to describe themselves, because it's inaccurate. This is a massive step in the wrong direction. The term is not outdated, inaccurate or offensive when it is still widely used in recent medical literature and describes a specific subset of people well. There are issues with the article Transsexual itself, but getting rid of the article instead of simply correcting those issues? That's absurd. 2A05:9CC4:7B:71A0:E064:5192:FEA:3A10 (talk) 07:17, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the pages should be merged, and a section added to the Transgender page that cover the term Transsexual, in which the things being debated in this talk section could be added and argued about. Ive never heard a single trasgender person refer to themselves as "A Transsexual" HistVa (talk) 09:12, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Many transgender people aren't transsexual. The categories overlap but are not identical. –  . Raven  .talk 06:43, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * no just because the meaning of Transgender has been changed to mean the same thing as Transsexual by the the conservative Mass media.
 * If you got back 10 years in Wikipedia you will discover that transgender had for the previous 15 years meant something else
 * Transgender meant challenging 'traditional' gender assumptions.
 * When Pride became LGBT it was with that definition of Transgender not Transexuality.
 * Transgender for over 15+ years had meant inclusion & diversity
 * It included Drag, transvestites, cross-dressing, non binary gender, butch & femme and there are tons of secondary and tertiary articles that support that being the wider understanding.
 * Wikipedia is built on the use of secondary & tertiary references NOT ON PRIMARY REFERENCES
 * Otherwise what I said woukd rule the roost because I was part of the team that changed Pride from L&G pride to LGBT Pride & promoted Transgender around the planet from the mid 1990's 82.6.88.43 (talk) 00:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * STRONGLY OPPOSE MERGE not sure if my last post went up
 * But as someone with a PhD in Gender History having another part of out history white washed by the neoTERFs would be annoying.
 * Simply go back 10 years on Wikipedia you will find a completely different definition. One that had mountains of secondary & tertiary references to it in general media. For 15 years from the Mid nineties around the planet. Transgender meant people who challenge 'traditional' gender assumptions.
 * Yes Virginia Prince used it to mean something else, but that is a PRIMARY source. But wkikpedia unlike academia sees Secondary & Tertiary sources as showing the strongest evidence of the common unserstanding.
 * If PRIMARY are to be treated as inportant then my word should all that needed to be heared because I was part of the team that changed Pride from Lesbian & Gay to LGBT Pride and spent years promoting it arround the world.
 * The point of LGBT Pride was to get back to the origonal inclusive meaning of the word Gay that proto TERF/GC's had managed to grab and rewrite so that one could be a married heterosexual 'political' lesbian and tell actual lesbians that they were aping heterosexuality or too masculine, whilst a lot of Gay Men were rejecting drag and transexuals etc because they had previously been closeted 'straight acting' homosexual men who had fought against the gay rights movement.
 * Please people go read your history. Go look at books like Transgender Warrior by Leslie Feinberg or Lesbians talk Transgender by Zach Nataf. Go look at thd first International transgender film & Video in London in the 90's 82.6.88.43 (talk) 00:49, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, while each term has it's own history, nowadays the difference is between the categories described is pretty minute, transsexual being when someone has undergone gender reassignment surgery and transgender when they have not. The divergence is mostly driven by the (small) minority belief in transmedicalism as the only true source of valid transness. Someone below has likened it to Christians and Jews, while it's probably better characterized as a minor doctrinal difference.
 * Few people who are not trans cares about the difference, and those that do, mostly do so for political reasons, trying to split trans people into valid/invalid subgroups.
 * There is a general medical consensus that these are the same thing as well.
 * This, combined with the fact transsexual is considered an offensive term should give sufficient weight to, if not merge the article, shuffle around what content goes where. Bart Terpstra (talk) 16:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * While opinions on the merge can certainly (and legitimately) differ, the factual statement "There is a general medical consensus that these are the same thing as well" conflicts with the text of a footnote at the article you linked, transmedicalism: [Lex Konnelly:] ... those who subscribe to this view ratify medical authority in regulating transgender experience, insisting that deviating from the established medical model undermines public acceptance of trans communities.... This appears rather to be complaining that the medical consensus does not agree these are the same thing. –  . Raven  .talk 20:16, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's an accurate reading of the quoted passage.
 * What is intended is: that there is a strategy where one should strictly limit oneself to what the medical community has determined to be transgender people, and not consider people who may not meet all the criteria as fully trans, arguing that it will create better optics, decreasing the chance of backlash and help with mainstreaming trans identity as valid.
 * However, by that definition, transsexuals are a strict subset of transgender people and are a subset created for political reasons, rather than an honest ontological argument about the categories they would make absent of the political pressures.
 * And the existence of people who belief this to be a good strategy does not necessarily reflect actual consensus in the medical community that the sets are distinct or otherwise not a strict subset. Bart Terpstra (talk) 21:09, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Venn A subset B.svg> transsexuals are a strict subset of transgender people and are a subset created for political reasons Since the category "transsexual" antedates the category "transgender", that would have required time travel or prophecy, knowing that in the future the category "transgender" would be created.
 * Venn0001.svg
 * Also, to be a "strict subset", it would have to be the case that all transsexual people were also transgender people. In a Venn diagram, that's represented by one circle entirely inside another.Instead, we have people who are both transsexual and transgender, people who are transgender but not transsexual, and people who are transsexual but not transgender. That is called overlapping or intersecting sets, and in a Venn diagram is represented by something like the picture on the right. (This follows from gender and sex being two different things.)The existence of each of these categories has been documented with links below.I don't think this argues for the existence of anything called "fully trans"; the distinction is between the two different types of "trans-", "transgender" and "transsexual", which happen to share a prefix. –  . Raven  .talk 23:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You are now disagreeing with the article itself, which reaffirms it is a subset. Bart Terpstra (talk) 23:20, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Then says, but some transsexual people reject the label of transgender. — which puts them outside the superset of which they're supposed to be a subset... spoiling that circle-in-a-circle diagram.That it is not merely a personal dislike of the other term, but declaring they don't meet the definition, is borne out by their actual quotes, which (again) see below. –  . Raven  .talk 23:25, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, they reject the label because if they get labelled as transgender, they might be invalidated all together, according to their transmedicalist reasoning.
 * It is not a categorical claim, but one of optics and preference. Bart Terpstra (talk) 23:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * > ... they reject the label because if they get labelled as transgender, they might be invalidated all together... It is not a categorical claim...This appears not to be the case. There are in fact two (logically opposite) denials of being transgender from transssexual people:
 * Having transitioned physically, their sex and gender are now identical, thus they have no "gender dysphoria", no difference between physical sex and gender such as many transgender people have. -or-
 * Having transitioned physically, they never did transition in gender, still present as their original gender, and have no wish or intention to change it. Such people are called, among other terms, transwoman [or MtF] "butch", and transman [or FtM] "femme".
 * In fact, it would be "invalidating" them to reject their rejection of the "transgender" label. –  . Raven  .talk 00:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think you are not correctly using the words "gender dysphoria", "gender", "femme", or "butch" here either.
 * I do not think we can come to a further agreement. Bart Terpstra (talk) 00:07, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That would be a pity, but sometimes it happens. You have my good will in any case, just as I assume yours. As to whether *I* am correctly using those terms, I can only refer you (again) to the links and quotes below where they are used in that way, e.g. here. –  . Raven  .talk 00:32, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It should also be noted that goodhart's law is in full effect here, because trans people have been politicized, which results in the fact that neutral doctors have a hard time studying the phenomenon because trans people are incentivized to lie to conform to whatever image the medical establishment already has of them to ensure they can get access to forms of healthcare readily available to cis people who ask for it at their GP, despite similar risks and concerns (i.e. orchiectomy because of pain or hormone treatment because of hair loss, etc).[1]
 * The fact that trans people receive diminished access to these treatments despite having an absurdly low regret rate (99% satisfaction, taking into account 27 studies), compared to cis people having similar procedures, should be sufficient evidence that despite the consensus in medical science, this does not yet reflect in GPs medicinal practice.[1][2][3]
 * This argument generally extends beyond the UK as well, like the United States and the Netherlands.
 * p.s. 1 explains sources 2 and 3.
 * Bart Terpstra (talk) Bart Terpstra (talk) 21:57, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think we should do our best to resist politicizing issues ourselves, or surrendering to politicization by others.The words "gender" and "sex" are clearly distinguished, each from the other, no matter the politics that rage around those topics. To transition between genders, and to transition between sexes, are also distinct. –  . Raven  .talk 23:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There is no escape from politics, it can only be embraced in one form or another.
 * Alas, whether it is merged or not, it will be a political choice. Bart Terpstra (talk) 23:21, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * As an emergency-trained first responder, I did not stop to question anyone's politics before rendering aid. I might have been helping people whose politics I did not endorse, or whose politics I did. I chose not to care about such issues in that situation. Likewise, whatever any political cause promotes or opposes, we can stick with cold facts and our encyclopedia's goals. If the result is more to any side's liking than another's, so be it — but that shouldn't be our reason. –  . Raven  .talk 23:31, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It is a political choice to belief aid should be rendered without checking details, though a choice considered apolitical because it is uncontroversial.
 * Rendering aid regardless of creed, race, age, class or other has (sadly) not been a universal truth.
 * Facts are sadly also constructed through the contested belief (political) in the validity of empiricism, the authority of medical scientific consensus, and that the combined opinion of Wikipedians should count for something.
 * Better to be aware of politics and the ideology you have, then to pretend there is none and you have none :p Bart Terpstra (talk) 23:51, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, I think ascertainable facts (verified via RSs, in the case of article edits) and this encyclopedia's goals (as indicated by policies, guidelines, etc.) should be our only "politics and ideology" as editors, whatever we follow elsewhere — just as rendering emergency aid should be done without reference to politics, religion, race, etc., no matter how we vote in elections.If Wikipedia becomes politicized by unreverted editing, why should anyone take it seriously? –  . Raven  .talk 00:11, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * To put it in Wikipedia terms:
 * Transsexual is a WP:POVFORK from a, in part, trans medicalist POV.
 * This can also be seen in how there is a great amount of duplicate content. Bart Terpstra (talk) 22:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The POV fork argument seems amusing to me, as what is being attempted here is a POV Merge. A group of editors feel strongly that we should erase transsexual in favour of transgender, and I respect that. Hence this discussion. But they clearly lack a preponderance of sources and seem to have a hefty surplus of rhetoric. To again misquote Mr Cuba Gooding Jr, "Show me the sources." Cheers, Last1in (talk) 01:34, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Merging ensures all points of view about the same subject (trans people) are within the same article. Keeping two copies of the same article in transgender and transsexual is a horrible idea as transgender was coined in opposition to transsexual. This is both a POV fork and a redundant content fork. Your neologism "POV Merge" has no backing in policy, since merging obviously leads to unifying the POV.
 * But they clearly lack a preponderance of sources
 * The sources talking about "transgender vs. transsexual" are all advocates arguing semantics during an interview, or relaying the words of the former. And they all disagree on definitions to the point that for every trans person, they can find a source saying they are "transgender" and another saying they are "transsexual". The rest quite clearly make little distinction between the two terms, going with one or the other depending on how recently they have been published.
 * Kate the mochii (talk) 02:15, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * As Lisa has suggested below, some of the content in Transgender specifically discussing transsexualism should be removed from there, and I'll add probably vice versa. The two articles can certainly refer to each other for interested readers to learn more.  –  . Raven  .talk 23:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Which part of the transsexual article is pushing the transmedicalist POV that "individuals who identify as transgender without experiencing gender dysphoria or desiring to undergo a medical transition through methods such as hormone replacement therapy or sex reassignment surgery are not genuinely transgender"? This article just makes the point that transsexuals exist, it says nothing about any other type of trans person being, or not being, "truly transgender".
 * Transsexuals' personal identity is being characterized here as exclusionary, despite not being intrinsically so. Itself an exclusionary argument. Imagine if this same argument was made about lesbians, gay men, and homosexuality. Some gay men and lesbians may be exclusionary towards each other, that doesn't make their identities inherently exclusionary. VintageVernacular (talk) 01:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Support merging, though Somewhat Oppose merging* transsexual historically was used as an outdated form of transgender, but recently as it's fallen out of use as a synonym for transgender, and recently it's been used more as a distinct term from transgender, defined as "Identifying as or having undergone medical treatment to become a member of the opposite sex." [Source]. Additionally, with the newer definition of the term, not all transsexual people are transgender (for example HRT femboys), and is categorically distinct. As the article stands with the current subject, it should be merged, however I believe that we should have a Wikipedia article for this new definition of the term, and re-write the article to be according to it, as the new definition is quite useful. I think we should make it so that typing "transsexual" into the search bar goes to a disambiguation page which has redirect to transgender and saying it's an archaic term for it, and then another article of the term for itself.

I support merging the article in it's current state and topic, as it really has no place being a separate article, however I think we should re-write the article to be by the term distinct from transgender of definition of "Identifying as or having undergone medical treatment to become a member of the opposite sex.", but as it stands, support merge.

Though, what we could also do is merge the current article, but then like 2-4 years later re-create the article with the distinct new term/definition, as by then there will (probably) be enough citations to write a separate article on the new (better) definition. Germany FranceUK Australia Russia Latvia (talk) 10:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Merge the two articles we're discussing (i.e. these which are both about the topic / people, rather than the term); these cover the same topic, to the extent that part of one is transcluded into the other(!), and we don't POVFORK topics because of terminological differences. (For example, different groups of people in America identify as African Americans vs Black Americans or even [older] Negro Americans, but we have one article on the topic/people—Negro is about the word.) As I noted above, some people taking a small-c-conservative approach have in prior discussions wanted to wait even longer, but I think it's clear already that sources don't bear out these being separate topics. Having said that: just like the deletion of an article on one non-notable Sergei Yakuvne is done without prejudice to someone else later creating an article at the same title but about a different, notable Sergei Yakuvne, such a merger would/should IMO be without prejudice to someone making a substantially different, italicized-title article at this title purely about the term "transsexual" (its etymology, who uses the term, how the term is perceived, etc), while the topic (medical assistance that people get, etc) is covered in one article. -sche (talk) 05:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @-sche While "transsexual" is used as an outdated term for transgender, which reliable sources (correctly) don't don't differentiate with that meaning, the newer meaning is gaining traction, so we should merge it now, and then when there are sources for the new definition, we could create a page for that. A Socialist   Trans Girl  05:10, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * A Socialist Trans Girl, "the newer meaning is gaining traction, so we should merge it now" is quite literally the definition of WP:CRYSTAL. We follow sources, we do not lead sources. The sources today, now, acknowledge a clear distinction between the terms. There is a huge amount of overlap, just as there is between Lesbian and Homosexuality. That does not make the former an irrelevant article. When a preponderance of sources support a unified definition, then it will be time to merge. Based on the paucity of suggested evidence on this Talk, now is not that time. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 01:36, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Last1in Yes, so we should follow the current sources, and if what the sources change (which I predicted will happen), then we should change as well. This is why I said we should merge the two articles now, and if the newer meaning of the word becomes predominant and backed by reliable sources (which I hypothesize will happen), then we should change accordingly. A Socialist   Trans Girl  05:37, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @A Socialist Trans Girl, I might have misunderstood your meaning, and we might be saying the same thing. The sources we have now support the article structure we have now: Two terms with overlapping but distinct meanings and relevance. Merging now predicts that, at some point in the future, transsexual will be obsolete. That may happen but has not done so at this time. IMO, a merge (or other significant change to a longstanding article) requires a showing that something significant has changed in the preponderance of sources. I just don't see that here. Even if it was close-run (which I think it is not since most sources still use the terms separately), there is simply no need to change it now, no urgency. The current structure doesn't mislead or misinform, so WP:NOTPAPER needs to be the policy that rules for now. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 11:59, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Last1in I'd just say we should merge the article as the current article isn't really distinct enough. A Socialist   Trans Girl  13:09, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Though, if there are reliable sources that make the distinction between having a sexual identity differing from AGAB and having a GI differing from AGAB, then I would support that (cis transsexual people included in the article and definition), as making the distinction is really helpful, because there are 4 categories yet only 3 are covered; those categories being; 1. Cisgender people who want sexual characteristics of the assigned sex. 2. Cisgender people who want sexual characteristics of the sex opposite to that they were assigned (such as HRT femboys). 3. Trangender people who wish to medically transition to the opposite sex to that assigned at birth. And 4. Trangender people who do not wish to medically transition. The second category is not covedered, which it should be, and people in the 2nd category are transsexual but not transgender, yet this transsexual article requires being transgender in the lede definition. However, as it stands, unless we decide to re-write the article, we should merge, as the page is not really distinct enough from transgender. A Socialist   Trans Girl  13:25, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I do believe that the two words are interchangeable and that transsexual is the older and less used term. The majority of the trans population across the western English speaking world more commonly relate to transgender. In fact many find the term transsexual to be offensive as it is associated with the older psychiatric diagnosis. MistressB (talk) 04:26, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Merge. While the view that "The two terms mean different things. Some transsexual people refuse to identify with the term transgender for various reasons" isn't nuts, there is no reason at all that two articles with substantially duplicated content cannot be combined, with the disused term covered in a section, to which the term redirects. We do this all the time in all sorts of topics, and this one should not be any different. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:56, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Support merge, w/ notes. As a queer person myself, this merge just makes sense. As others have said, the information on both articles seems to be relatively similar. I agree that a "transsexual" subsection would be better than a whole article. Perhaps one could say that "transsexual" has become unnotable. On a brief glance of the page, it seems that most of the studies and sources (especially when talking about gender incongruence) seem to be referring more to transgender as the main concept rather than transsexual, which renders it unnotable to me (pending consensus of course).

It has been brought up by another editor (Pauliexcluded) that certain pages should serve to exist to explain a term rather than a concept. I think a good use of this merge would be to discuss transsexual as a CONCEPT on the transgender page, BUT to keep the transsexual page as an explanation for the term. We use pages like gay to describe the concept of male homosexuality, but we use pages like fag to describe a related/relevant term, even if it's referring to the same object or thing. Jmaxx37 (talk) 00:35, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * regarding articles about concepts vs. articles about words, you might be interested in the discussion at WT:Article titles. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:01, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Oppose merge. The articles says with multiple sources: "The term transsexual is a subset of transgender, but some transsexual people reject the label of transgender." Why has that been ignored? At this rate you'd have non-binary gender merged into the page for transgender as well, no? Same deal, after all: "Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella [...] though some non-binary people do not consider themselves transgender." Just keep transsexual as a child page, with transgender as a parent page (if I'm not mistaken, cross-over content can be cut down on this way as well). Obvious direction the sources point to. Also, arguments towards article descriptions of someone's identity being "offensive" would appear to fall under WP:NOTCENSORED. VintageVernacular (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I have been trying to make that point and it has fallen on deaf... eyeballs. Combining these articles is possible, but it is a bad idea. Just because a subject is a subset of another is not a valid reason to remove the dependent article. IMO, that is deletionist nonsense. I would suggest that, before you make this change, you delete the article on Lesbians and lump it into Homosexuality "where is clearly belongs" according to the above argument. In fact, the case is stronger; there are transexuals who do not identify as transgender (they think of it as simply correcting a body-flaw, not changing gender) whilst there is no such thing as a straight lesbian. If after making that change you survive the flames, I'll withdraw my objection to this ill-advised merge.
 * I'll add one last attempt toward reason here. This will be unpopular and, if taken out of this context, would be openly offensive. The greatest battle fought to date in genderqueer liberation was separating the endocrinological/physiological concept of sex from the social/expressive construct of gender. Deleting transsexual in favour of a single article on transgender literally and specifically equates the two . One term deals with people who change their body's sex to align with their gender whilst the broader term refers to all phases of the gender spectrum beyond cis-*. I know that is not the intent of this merge, but it is the effect. Please don't do this. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 21:50, 1 July 2023 (UTC)


 * "Transsexual" is now definitely outdated in 2023 as others keep saying. The word "lesbian" doesn't have "sex" nestled within it. Opponents of equal civil rights for LGBT people love terms like "transsexual" to demonize people seeking gender-affirming care because "transsexual" as a word helps bigots to tether it to "sexualization" (see Gays Against Groomers website).--2601:C4:C300:3460:B0A3:AAE2:3378:F16B (talk) 00:05, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The "sexual" in transsexual is used in a similar sense to intersexual rather than homosexual. Why should we erase documentation of some people's identity group because there are other people willing to linguistically misrepresent them — as people are always going to find new ways to do with our flexible language? (Some alternative terms such as transsex exist but are rarer, though having much the same meaning.)
 * Sources that characterize the term transsexual as being considered "antiquated" or "outdated" often qualify that with terms like "usually" or "often", for good reason. There are people who disagree and continue to identify with it. It's also less of an umbrella term than "transgender" is. These are people with an identity relating more to sex-changing than gender-changing. VintageVernacular (talk) 05:11, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Oppose merge per VintageVernacular, Last1in and others. The arguments for both sides have merit to them. However, reading through all of them, it's obvious to me that opposing the merge is the only path forward.

Proponents of the merge, while stating points logically, have largely avoided sourcing their claims. I find the arguments opposed to merging to be more coherent, and better-cited in general. There is a lot of overlap, but there is a lot of stuff that doesn't overlap. I don't really have an underlying opinion as to the actual salient argument.

Also, I re-notified WikiProject LGBT Studies. Given how relevant the merge is to LBGT. Cessaune  [ talk ]   18:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Strongly oppose merging They are distinctly different terms. Whilst some may consider it outdated, it is both a label that is still used today, and in gender theory. I really think that this is a bad idea and it would be a travesty if it went ahead.

Also, as an aside, whilst wikipedia welcomes new editors I note that many of these comments are from new or IP accounts. It would be good to have some experienced editors commenting here before any decision is made. Nauseous Man (talk) 21:16, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Support merging. This is the same topic and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Transgender and transsexual are used interchangeably both in popular media and in academia. In all but specific debates, affinity towards one or the other is just a manual of style directive.

Medical sources using the string "transgender/transsexual":        

Pop culture sources pointing to transgender serving as a euphemism for the antiquated term transsexual:.

The semantic difference between the two (op vs. pre-op) is absolutly not enough to justify split articles, let alone a separate section. I would even argue that the distinction in use between the two is not notable either. Barring fringe transmedicalism debates, one is only a euphemism of the other. Kate the mochii (talk) 03:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I believe they should be merged. JoeBo82 (talk) 05:41, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Taking a look at your sources, they don't support the argument. The string "transgender/transsexual" is used here to mean something more like "transgender and/or transsexual".
 * From the first one: "Some people, including minors, have a gender identity that does not correspond to the sex assigned at birth. They are known as trans* people, which is an umbrella term that encompasses transgender, transsexual, and other identities not conforming to the assigned gender."
 * Why would you use an "umbrella term" encompassing multiple identities? If there was some distinction between them.
 * From the second one: "However, gender is still used by many researchers as a synonym for sex and conceptualized as a single dichotomous variable that conflates biology with social and psychological factors (Knaak, 2004; Laner, 2000). The use of sex and gender interchangeably has contributed to the confusion of how gender variant people are seen by others. Many people do not see much difference between transvestite, transgender, or transsexual and will use each interchangeably (Rizzo, 2006). Boles and Elifson (1994) referred to their study participants as male transvestites and made reference to their “commitment to transvestism”, which conflated transvestism with transsexualism; see also Elifson et al., 1993). Recent quantitative studies utilized a list of identities for people to choose from in order to identify different subgroups of transgender/transsexual people."
 * From this, it's clear they disagree with a conflation between transgender and transsexual, and even suggest *that* is the really antiquated position.
 * Third source: same deal as first source. Also uses the string "queer/questioning" which are not the same thing either.
 * Sixth: confirms the distinction: "Transgender has been described as an umbrella term. It encompasses transsexual, which is a medical term used to describe an individual who lives as a member of the opposite gender and who seeks physical transformation, either hormonal or surgical, to live in that gender (Adler et al., 2006; Freidenberg, 2002)."
 * Tenth: is an old mirror of the Wikipedia page causes of gender incongruence. Doesn't actually say anything about the terminology, in fact doesn't even say "transgender/transsexual" anywhere.
 * Eleventh: exact source I used in an earlier comment for the opposing argument. Distinguishes between transgender and transsexual, especially with one being an umbrella term and the other not.
 * Twelfth: actually gives a perfect definition of transsexual for the opposing argument: "Transsexual: This term is sometimes used by people who change, or intend to change, aspects of their bodily sex. Whilst 'transsexual' has somewhat fallen out of popular usage in the UK, this term is still an important means for many people to articulate their experience. 'Transsexual' is not a derogatory term when used as self-identification, yet the term is not necessarily favoured or used by everyone."
 * Thirteenth: closest I see to actually supporting your argument, but even then only in the sense that *some* people use the terms interchangeably: "As for the words "transgender" and "transsexual," some people in the community use them interchangeably, while others prefer "transsexual" to mean only those have either undergone or are intending to have gender-affirming surgery. Transgender is typically a more broad, "umbrella" term used to describe anyone whose gender assignment at birth does not match their gender identity."
 * The ones I've left unmentioned have little to say on the terminology, and just happened to use the phrase "transgender/transsexual" somewhere, which clearly can mean something like "transgender and/or transsexual". VintageVernacular (talk) 06:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * only in the sense that *some* people use the terms interchangeably
 * I have not come across significant coverage of people that are "transgender and not transsexual" or vice-versa.
 * The distinction between the two belongs in a terminology section, not as two different WP:FORK articles. Kate the mochii (talk) 22:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * An example of each, and a pair of search links for your convenience:
 * "[Leslie] Feinberg understands hirself as transgender and not transsexual" — Stephanie D. Clare (2023), Nonbinary, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-009-27867-6.
 * "India Willoughby... [said on ITV]: 'I'd just like to say to all the people who are trans[gender], love you to bits, but I'm actually trans[s]exual. There's a slight difference there, it's a medical condition and I had to transition. — Cydney Yeates (2018), "Big Brother's India in new storm after Lorraine interview flops", Daily Star.
 * https://www.google.com/search?q=%22transgender+and+not+transsexual%22
 * https://www.google.com/search?q=%22transsexual+and+not+transgender%22
 * – . Raven  .talk 23:20, 6 July 2023 (UTC)


 * An example of each, and a pair of search links for your convenience:
 * Those are primary sources. Kate the mochii (talk) 00:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * A book, and a newspaper article, each reporting someone else's self-identification, thus "at least one step removed from an event", are not WP:PRIMARY. –  . Raven  .talk 03:59, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I meant that there are no independent and verifiable sources talking about this difference in depth. Those were just random interviews of people who make the passing statement "I am transgender but not transsexual". There are no sources beyond "just trust me bro" relaying of others' self-identification that those are two different things. And even if it is, then it just should be sections in transgender called: "transgender people who can't transition". And even then, the sources conflict on what the definition of transgender vs. transsexual is (great for verifiability). Kate the mochii (talk) 23:51, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hm. My household just watched the PBS show "Out in Rural America", in which one person explains having had hormone (testosterone) therapy and "top surgery" (double mastectomy), but not having had — and not intending ever to have — "bottom surgery". He did not, that I heard, use either of the words "transgender" or "transsexual" in saying so... but by their definitions he is the first and not the second.That's not "can't." It's "didn't" and "won't". (But he did "transition" in gender role, and name.)The terms would be swapped for someone who had "bottom surgery" but didn't and won't change gender roles. In effect, without ever having changed the way they dressed, now they too would technically be cross-dressing, a.k.a. transvestites. But who, just looking at them, need ever know?Again, the distinction is based on the difference between gender and sex. –  . Raven  .talk 06:42, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There is an article already for gender incongruence which is spins off the gender aspect of transgender/transsexual.
 * Transgender and transsexual are identical articles since they both talk about physical and social transition. Both even have a section on detransition. Kate the mochii (talk) 16:18, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * "Transgender" doesn't require physical transition. It's a gender (social role) change.Gender and Sex are not the same, and don't always go together, just most often. –  . Raven  .talk 19:30, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hm. My household just watched the PBS show "Out in Rural America", in which one person explains having had hormone (testosterone) therapy and "top surgery" (double mastectomy), but not having had — and not intending ever to have
 * You arguing that this person is not transgender? Kate the mochii (talk) 16:44, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Please re-read "... he did 'transition' in gender role...."That's how we define "transgender", right? –  . Raven  .talk 19:25, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * One could have come across it by reading key parts of the very article this one is proposed to merge into:
 * "They may pursue gender affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy and various gender-affirming surgeries. Not all transgender people desire these treatments [...] Those who do desire to medically transition to another sex may identify as transsexual."
 * "Distinctions between the terms transgender and transsexual are commonly based on distinctions between gender and sex. Transsexuality may be said to deal more with physical aspects of one's sex, while transgender considerations deal more with one's psychological gender disposition or predisposition, as well as the related social expectations that may accompany a given gender role. Many transgender people reject the term transsexual."
 * (All decently well-cited over on that page, of course).
 * I assume you meant to link WP:CFORK. Since a significant portion of transgender people have no desire to physically transition, this isn't a redundant fork of the same topic (although it may duplicate some content especially in the "Society and culture" section, which can be dealt with later either by deleting that section, changing it to a series of transclusions from other articles, or perhaps recreating it altogether). The pages are related, and this could be a kind of child article to that one, but they aren't the same subject. Because that article itself distinguishes between transgender and transsexual, I also can't view this as a POV fork established to evade consensus somehow. VintageVernacular (talk) 23:39, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Since a significant portion of transgender people have no desire to physically transition, this isn't a redundant fork of the same topic
 * Talking about transgender people who don't want to transition takes two or three sentences. Otherwise, the articles are identical. Kate the mochii (talk) 23:56, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Transgender people DO transition in gender role, and very often name.Transsexual people DO transition in physical (at least genital) sex.Some do both. Some do only one or the other. These are not the same thing. –  . Raven  .talk 06:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * People never do 2) but not 1).
 * People do 1) but not 2) often, but they will disagree if you say "they are transgender but not transsexual" since that is only one of many possible definitions for the two words (others consider them synonymous, for instance). The transsexual article as it stands does not support your distinction at all. Kate the mochii (talk) 16:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * > "... they will disagree if you say 'they are transgender but not transsexual'..."Again, from Nonbinary: "[Leslie] Feinberg understands hirself as transgender and not transsexual"Cf. "Alexya Salvador... declares her gender identity to be transgender and not transsexual."Also: "Many of you loyal readers to Cyrsti's Condo know I identify transgender and not transsexual because I don't feel the pressing need for SRS."Also: "... another identified in the closed ended questions as male (sex), woman (gender), and for sexual orientation selected ‘because I am transgender (and not transsexual) sexual orientation categories do not make sense for me.’"And on the flip side, "But many of us do not identify as transgender. We identify as transsexual." ... (more by the same person.)Cf. "Sorry, but as someone who identifies as a transsexual, I am not antiquated and nor are the many others who prefer to identify as transsexual and not transgender."This may be a helpful discussion:
 * https://www.medicaldaily.com/what-difference-between-transsexual-and-transgender-facebooks-new-version-its-complicated-271389
 * As to "people never do [transsexual] but not [transgender]", I admit that's complicated: what do you call someone who physically transitions but still dresses as the old gender? It turns out there ARE terms to fit that, including "transwoman [or MtF] butch" and "transman [or FtM] femme". Heartily complained about here: "One transwoman butch lesbian in the 90′s / Says she prefers he/him pronouns and suddenly all lesbians in the 90′s supported it." But supported here: "Yes, there is r/MTFButch I'm actually one of them MtF who is still present masculine. I'm actually 💯 lesbian with zero interest in men, so I do see femme presentation in my case totally pointless 😃 plus I don't need any attention from men." –  . Raven  .talk 19:49, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I do agree on all the differences you mentioned, but in terms of Wikipedia articles, I still believe merging both articles is the way to go as it is a clear example of content fork (redundant and POV). For example, there is a top-level section called "Scientific studies of transsexuality" in the article Transgender. This shows the absolute lack of consensus on the meaning of both words: some say they are synonymous, others like you pointed out they are not. It's impossible to make both follow WP:NPOV since choosing such meanings amounts to choosing a POV. Yet NPOV is one of Wikipedia's core policies.
 * Also, since there is so much overlap and transgender is an umbrella term, no encyclopedic content is lost after this merge. For the edge case you pointed out, one can put not wanting to do bottom surgery and being transgender in the transitioning spinoff article or in the proposed merge target. And it's probably there already. Kate the mochii (talk) 00:37, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * > "I still believe merging both articles is the way to go..." — And I'll certainly support and defend your right to your opinion, on this and any other matter. Agree to disagree? –  . Raven  .talk 00:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * > "I still believe merging both articles is the way to go..." — And I'll certainly support and defend your right to your opinion, on this and any other matter. Agree to disagree? –  . Raven  .talk 00:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Strongly oppose merge and a suggestion - The article Transsexual should be about the medical condition, and the article Transgender should be about the social phenomenon, including rapid onset gender dysphoria, non-binary, genderqueer, agender, transvestism, female impersonation, "non-op transsexuals", and the rest of the genderbending phenomena that have been grouped together into the transgender umbrella category. They are about gender, not sex. The "Scientific studies of transsexuality" in the article Transgender should be removed. One of the arguments for a merge has been the presumption that transsexuals exist under the transgender umbrella term. But transsexuals themselves refute that, and have demonstrably been fighting against it for over a quarter of a century, since "transgender" (then "transgenderism" was first proposed as an umbrella term. Merging the two would be like merging Judaism and Christianity because the two have multiple areas of overlap.  Christians might welcome that, but Jews would be horrified.  - Lisa (talk - contribs) 13:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Having already !voted Oppose on the merge, I support that suggestion on content division/moves. –  . Raven  .talk 14:02, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The article Transsexual should be about the medical condition, and the article Transgender should be about the social phenomenon
 * Sources talk about "transgender healthcare" plentifully though. Kate the mochii (talk) 23:55, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * And even worse, your suggestion would manufacture a WP:POVFORK. Kate the mochii (talk) 23:56, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Mm. On Talk:Cisgender there's discussion of separate articles for that same term as a word, and as describing a concept — parallel to LGBT being about the term (initialism) rather than the concept. Distinguishing between two similar... or even identical... terms by the actual (differing) topics so represented is not new on Wikipedia, hence disambiguation pages. –  . Raven  .talk 00:26, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Transgender and transsexual is the same topic. The topic is trans people. Kate the mochii (talk) 00:48, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The "trans-" prefix is in common, yes, but two distinct (though overlapping) groups share that prefix. –  . Raven  .talk 03:12, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Trans is not a prefix it's a word Kate the mochii (talk) 03:25, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I see I have to explain this more carefully. "Transgender and transsexual" are the two words which share the same first five letters; "trans-" forms a prefix before the terms "-gender" and "-sexual". The disambiguation article Trans says: "Trans- is a Latin prefix meaning 'across', 'beyond', or 'on the other side of'." The next line: "Used alone, trans may refer to:" [notice the absence of a hyphen there]; and further down the list:
 * Sociology
 * Trans, a sociological term which may refer to:
 * Transgender, people who identify themselves with a gender that differs from their biological sex
 * Transsexual, people who seek to transition from their birth-assigned sex to another via therapy and/or surgery
 * So they also share the unhyphenated term, which the linked articles will tell you is an abbreviation. This does not make them "the same topic" as each other, nor as the other terms on that dab page. –  . Raven  .talk 05:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This comment seems mean spirited and purposefully misreading/reading things into what was intended here, which is that trans is also a word in itself to refer to all trans people. Bart Terpstra (talk) 11:13, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The latter page contains nearly the same text as the section of Trans I quoted above. If citing one is not mean spirited, then how is citing and quoting the other mean spirited?May I point out that both are disambiguation pages, which exist to distinguish between/among different topics that may be indicated by the same term? –  . Raven  .talk 12:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * But that is the very fact that is under contention, which makes it a pointless circular argument just meant to lord over someone else. Bart Terpstra (talk) 13:29, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * To the extent that, for instance, transgender people may be on hormone therapy without bottom surgery — and may also be transsexual i.e. have had ""bottom surgery" — it is entirely fitting to speak of "transgender healthcare". To the extent that there are transsexual people who declare (for either of the two logically-opposite reasons) that they are not "transgender", the term should probably be "transgender/transsexual healthcare"... but we have no control over off-wiki terminology, and should not expect or try to right great wrongs using Wikipedia as a platform. –  . Raven  .talk 00:19, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * not applicable and poisoning the well :/ Bart Terpstra (talk) 00:58, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You're responding to a six-line paragraph. What's "not applicable"? Where's "poisoning the well"?"Poisoning the well" is a type of ad hominem attack, "where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say." Whom am I attacking? Who's my target? Transgender or transsexual people? Who else was referred to? But how did I attack them? –  . Raven  .talk 03:10, 12 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Wow, that's a lot of back and forth with a dash of invective. User:.Raven & User:Bart Terpstra, maybe take a step back and relax a bit, please? Bart, you asked for my sources, but they were already linked into the post. I chose to link terms that you would obviously already recognise so that you could get to those sources. You also state that "transsexuals are a strict subset of transgender people and are a subset created for political reasons." Those are two very charged and controversial statements (the subset one and the 'political reasons' one), neither of which seem supported by the sources you linked. I'm also confused as to how you think pressure of any kind applies in this discussion. Who is pushing whom in which direction(s)?


 * "Fully" trans is an amazingly offensive spin on the terms in question. Both of you, please refrain from marginalising any group or assigning them only partial membership in the trans community. Also for both of you, who calls whom what is not relevant to the articles in question. The sources make it clear that transsexual is highly intersectional to transgender, and some sources suggest that TS is entirely covered by TG. Neither position makes any difference on whether these should be one article. As I mentioned above, please notify the editors of the Lesbian and Leather subculture articles that you are committed to merging them into Homosexuality (ditto Pentecostalism and Anglicanism into Protestantism). If you survive, please return and tell us how that went for you.


 * No one assuming good faith could think that .Raven's repeating linguistic arguments against this move could be mean-spirited or inappropriate. However, I feel that it strains WP:AGF to the limits when you presume that another editor is "lord[ing] over someone else" or "poisoning the well". Lording what over whom? As for 'poisoning the well', what makes a refutation of your arguments -- which I think .Raven has done a pretty good job of, imho -- a circular argument or a personal attack? Again, I still don't understand your political arguments. Who is politicising this, against whom, and with what motive? I'd really like to better understand your arguments, but it's hard to do with all the invective. Cheers both, Last1in (talk) 01:31, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I have not asked you for sources, so i have no idea what you are referring to.
 * And yes, it is pedantic and redundant to use a disambiguation page of 2 pages to argue those 2 pages currently under consideration to be merged should be separate.
 * But saying those who disagree with you are trying to WP:RGW is an example of an ad hominem, implying they have an ulterior motives and their case is less reliable/trustworthy.
 * And accusing someone of poisoning the well is also an ad hominem, saying the other person is no longer available for reasonable discussion, not acting in good faith.
 * Therefore, since i no longer belief in their good faith, and they don't seem to belief in mine, I'm removing myself from this discussion. Bart Terpstra (talk) 11:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Support merge, per User:Kate the mochii. Similar to the recent move debate at Talk:LGBT, the primary issue here is that terminology evolves, especially when we are only a few decades since queer identities were illegal across the "the west". While the terms are sometimes used to mean different things, those differences are not clear-set and have also changed over time.When I came out in the 1990s, one of my best friends described herself as transsexual because that was the term we used then; she also used her deadname and he/him pronouns to talk about the time before her gender-affirming surgery, which we used to call "sex change surgery". Those were all relatively normal then but would be considered offensive now, where transsexual became transgender became trans. In the 1960s and 1970s we might have called her a cross-dresser or transvestite (as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera did, hence the name of STAR), words we would now consider to mean something very different, because the language had already evolved; see the Transgender Studies Quarterly essay "Cross-Dresser" at for more examples.Essentially, I would suggest these 2 terms are covering the same broad space and a single article should provide examples of the different ways each term is now — and has previously been — used. —  OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 15:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose per,  and others, a merge would be misrepresentative, transsexuals are not synonymous with transgender. Transsexuals undergo a sex change or "reassignment", transgender are people with gender dysphoria, which can include transvestites and cross-dressers who have not undergone a sex change. GhulamIslam (talk) 08:40, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Removal of ICD-11
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 ' that is ' with their assigned sex, and desire to permanently '... [by] seeking ' assistance (including sex reassignment therapies, such as ' therapy and sex reassignment ') to help them ' with '."
 * (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, "' between an individual´s ' and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to ', in order to live and be accepted as a person of the experienced gender, through ', ' or other ' to make the individual´s ', as much as desired and to the extent possible, with the '." (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)

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)