AKA: gender identity disorder, being transsexual, being transgender
What is it?
• It's when someone feels they belong to the wrong gender. So a boy would feel that he was a girl trapped in a boy's body, and a girl would feel she was a boy trapped in a girl's body.
• Someone who has a lifelong conviction that they're trapped in the wrong body is called a transsexual.
• This is totally different from being a transvestite, where a person likes dressing up in clothes of the opposite sex but doesn't feel that they're in the wrong body.
How will I know if I have it?
• To be 'officially' diagnosed as having gender identity disorder, a person must strongly want to be, or believe they already belong to the opposite sex.
• A famous example of this is Nadia from Big Brother, who was born a boy.
• Some children and teens who experience gender dysphoria find that their feelings change as they reach adulthood and they no longer have feelings of belonging to the wrong gender.
Is it the same as being gay?
No. People with gender dysphoria can be gay, straight or bisexual, just like anyone else.
How common is it?
The Gender Identity Research & Education Society (GIRES) estimates that about 1 in 4000 of the British population is receiving medical help for gender dysphoria. Boys with gender dysphoria outnumber girls by about 5 to 1.
Are people with gender dysphoria freaks?
'Course not. It may be rare, but so is having one blue eye and one brown eye (like Hollywood actress Kate Bosworth: no one calls her a freak).
What is the treatment for it?
Transsexual people can have 'gender reassignment', but until they're 18 they'd be unlikely to go further than step 1.
However, transsexual teens can be prescribed drugs to 'block' puberty.
1. First the person must live as a member of the opposite sex, full time, for at least a year.
2. After this, they would take either male or female hormones (depending on whether they wanted to become male or female) for at least a year - sometimes longer. These would soften body hair and cause breast development in men, and cause beard growth, a deeper voice and muscle development in women.
3. After this, they could have surgery to become a man or a woman permanently: a 'sex change operation'.
Further help and advice
• mermaids.freeuk.com
(support group for people up to age 19 trying to cope with gender identity
issues)
• mind.org.uk
• gires.org.uk (Gender Identity
Research & Education Society)
• gender.org.uk
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Pictures posed by models.
