How Sex Changed A History of Transsexuality in the United States(50)

New Book!

Summary:
The first section of this new book about the history of transsexuality, I come to realize that there is an actual definition of transsexuality. The word transsexual did not exist in the mid twentieth century. That is because people did not actually know there was difference between a transsexual and transvestite. People simply combined the two into one: transvestite. While being a transvestite has to with cross gender identification and cross dressing, transsexualism has to do with the actual change in gender . This means that if I was a transvestite I would refer to myself as the opposite sex, and choose to dress like the opposite sex. On the other hand if I was a transsexual i would MAKE myself the opposite sex. That is, the person request surgical sex change. This type of surgery did not even appear as an option as a medical category till the lat 1940s and early 1950s. Although this difference was still unknown, the idea existed, primarily in Europe. European scientist decided to run sex change experiments with animals before humans. When in Germany (1920s-1930s) they began doing the experiments on Human, the patients were called "transvestites".  Without even thinking of this idea of gender swapping surgery, in 1915 the testicles of healthy men were surgically removed and given to men born without the or no longer have them because of an injury or disease.

This new idea came to the United States through the media and news during the 1930s and on. The original body parts removed where that of the Testicles, Uteri, and Breast. With its beginning there, most of the sex change surgeries continued to occur in Germany, rather that immediately being practiced in the United States. The surgeries reached their peak in the earl 1930s. So much that in Germany there was a vocal campaign for sexual emancipation. That is because, with all of the buzz about this new surgical transformation that made a new group of people(transsexuals), the difference between a male and a feminine male, a female and a masculine female, and a transsexual was highly noticeable. In a more physiological way, it was also noticed that men had women traits, just as women had male traits. What makes then that particular gender is that those opposing gender traits are undeveloped, thus the actual gender traits outshines them.

Quote:
 "In the min-twentieth century, sex was already high on the American cultural agenda. For decades Americans of all sorts had found themselves inundated with news, research, stories, opinions, and imperatives about the multiple meaning of 'sex'(Meyerowitz 2).

Reaction:
Upon reading this, I immediately thought the times truly haven't changed. Although the definition of sex may be a bit more clearer nowadays, there is still a constant talk about it. Whether it is on the news because of a sexual offence, or a discrimination because of gender, or  its constantly addressed in school because of the derogatory terms used against people with a different sexual orientation and pejorative terms used towards friends or enemies in the hallways, it is always around. This also made me think that there must have been many people confused about who they were since there was a constant talk about sex in the mid-20th century. I sometimes wonder how would the world be if speaking of sex, and gender in general was prohibited by the law.