Transsexualism is now known as HBS or Harry Benjamin Syndrome, after one of the doctors who pioneered hormone and surgical treatment of this condition. HBS is accepted by many medical and psychiatric authorities worldwide. It is a birth defect, in which the brain has developed to be one gender and the body the opposite gender. It is not a sexual fetish, it is not a lifestyle choice. There are those who deny this diagnosis, just as there are teachers who refuse to believe that dyslexia exists.
This new diagnosis title is based on studies carried out involving dissection of human brains showing that there differences in the size of hypothalamus between male and female. In the brain of an HBS woman, a person with a female identity yet a male body, the hypothalamus has the characteristics of a woman. In an HBS man it has the characteristics of a man.
This discovery means that people who consider themselves to have been born into the wrong body, actually do have brains that are at odds with their bodies, therefore the condition is physical not psychiatric, though the strain of having this often causes mental problems and psychosomatic illnesess. The causes of this defect are thought to be hormonal: a rush of the wrong hormone at a critical time in the embryo's early development, or perhaps a genetic fault.
With any birth defect the obvious choice is correct it with appropriate treatment. A baby born with a cleft palate will usually, in the first world countries, have this defect surgically repaired. One might say this operation would be a necessity but not so long ago there was no such treatment and people with this condition had to live in constant fear of ridicule, or worse. Children with this condition can live without surgery, so far as society will allow, but what parent would refuse their child medical help, if they had to make a choice?
Historically it has been acceptable to make fun of blindness, club feet, hunchbacks, Down's Syndrome, any birth defect or illness. In fact anything that is seen as out of the ordinary has been used as an excuse for mockery and persecution. We just don't torture or burn them as bewitched people anymore. HBS people are not an abomination, these are not the Middle Ages.
There is much ignorance of HBS as the concept is so uncomfortable to contemplate. It is unpleasant to imagine how it must be to have this syndrome but try it, try and hold that thought for a minute. Now try it for a lifetime. Ridicule, aggression, disgust, are everyday routine for HBS people, when all we want is to be our true selves. Untreated HBS people have the highest suicide rate of any group, at approximately 31%. After hormone and surgical treatment the suicide rate is the same as with the general population. The success rate of the treatment is over 97%. If you were HBS would you consider treatment a necessity?