Topic on Talk:Transgender

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It's very possible to medicalize this (endrocrinologists, psychiatrists, surgeons and all the rest) without necessarily invoking the one surgery (genital reconstructive surgery, aka "sexual reassignment surgery") which you may be thinking of as the conventionally "last step" in a transition. That said, a "non-op TS" (who pursues various physical and permanent changes which stop just short of that one procedure) and a "TV" or transvestite (who changes their dress or gender presentation, but would not go to the same lengths as a transsexual) are both somewhere within the larger umbrella designation TG (or "transgendered"). It's not that one's just an "old term", they actually do have differences in meaning.

Depending on which jurisdiction, it may be less necessary today to obtain SRS before getting legal identity papers changed... which is a good thing, because the WPATH standards of care require the patient to live in their chosen gender for at least a year before even considering some of these surgeries, but the underlying concepts of TS being one specific sub-segment of the TG community really haven't changed.