DISCUSSION PAPER: Toward a Commission Policy on Gender Identity
Definitions[16]
Transgendered people have clearly identified that they should be addressed based on the gender they present. Male to female transsexuals, transgenderists, and cross-dressers who present as women should be addressed as women. Female to male transsexuals, transgenderists and cross-dressers who present as men should be addressed as men.
- Cross-Dresser refers to people who dress in the clothes of
the opposite sex for emotional satisfaction and psychological well being.
Because of its association with medical identity, the diagnostic term
‘transvestite’ is not used favourably within the transgendered
community.
- Gender identity refers to those characteristics that are
linked to an individual's intrinsic sense of self that is based on attributes
reflected in the person's psychological, behavioural and/or cognitive state.
Gender identity may also refer to one’s intrinsic sense of manhood or
womanhood. It is fundamentally different from, and not determinative of, sexual
orientation.
- Gender reorientation occurs when an individual moves from
birth assigned sex to the felt gender. The process includes the adoption of the
felt gender role, ‘passing’ as the opposite sex among strangers,
using an opposite sex name, obtaining new personal identity documents that
reflect the person's felt gender and/or new name, working in the opposite sex
role and undergoing hormone treatment or surgery. Persons who have completed a
gender identity clinic program and undergo sex reassignment surgery are
considered members of their felt gender (and are sometimes referred to as
transsexual).
- Intersexed means being born with the (full or partial) sex
organs of both genders, or with underdeveloped or ambiguous sex organs. About 4
per cent of all births are intersexed to some degree. This word replaces the
term ‘hermaphrodite’.
- Sex refers to a person's genetic or anatomical sex; there
are also associated psychological and behavioural norms related to a
person’s sex.
- Sexual orientation refers to the choice of sexual partners
and is distinct from gender identity. The ground of sexual orientation would
likely not protect transgendered persons from discrimination based on gender
identity.
- Transsexuals are those people who have a strong and
persistent feeling that they are living in the wrong sex. A male transsexual
has a need to live as a woman and a female transsexual has a need to live as a
man.
- Transgendered describes individuals who are not comfortable
with, or who reject, in whole or in part, their birth assigned gender
identities. The term “transgendered” unifies people who identify as
transsexuals, transvestites or "cross-dressers", drag queens, etc.
- Transgenderists identify as the opposite gender but have decided not to undergo sex reassignment surgery.
[16] See Appendix 2.
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