Background
The early history of the study of transsexualism is sparse; however, the concept of a categorization of transsexual people can be seen as early as 1923 with the work of Magnus Hirschfeld. In 1966, Harry Benjamin wrote that researchers of his day thought that attraction to men, as a woman was the factor that distinguished a transvestite from a transsexual. In 1980 in the DSM III, a new diagnosis was introduced, that of "302.5 Transsexualism" under "Other Psychosexual Disorders". This was an attempt to provide a diagnostic category for a gender identity disorders. The diagnostic category, "Transsexualism", was for gender dysphoric individuals who demonstrated at least two years of continuous interest in transforming their physical and social gender status. The subtypes were 1. asexual, 2. homosexual (same anatomic sex), 3. heterosexual (other anatomic sex) and 0. unspecified. This was removed in the DSM IV, in which Gender Identity Disorder replaced transsexualism. Previous taxonomies, or systems of categorization, used the terms "classic transsexual" or "true transsexual," terms once used in differential diagnoses.
Read more about this topic: Blanchard's Transsexualism Typology
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