transsexual

Etymology

Trans- + sexual. Introduced to English along with transsexualism by David Oliver Cauldwell in 1949, based on the German word Transsexualismus coined by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1923. Popularized in the mid 1960s, around the same time that transgender was coined; transgender had become an umbrella term and largely but not entirely displaced transsexual by the 1990s.

adj

1. (of a person) Having changed, or being in the process of changing, physical sex (because it does not match desired sex) by undergoing medical treatment such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and optionally sex reassignment surgery (SRS), or rarely only SRS.

noun

1. A transsexual person.
   When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body, and has a little operation, he is a transsexual. 1995, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar
   He claimed that they had this wonderful and loving relationship in which the transsexual-to-be had felt that his suitor truly loved him the way he was and didn’t want him to have the surgery, […] a. 1998, Myra Love, Reality’s Friends, excerpted in Gertrude M. James Gonzalez and Anne J. M. Mamary (editors), Cultural Activisms: Poetic Voices, Political Voices, SUNY Press (1999), page 107
   Hundreds of women every year are taken completely by surprise when their husbands announce they want to undergo sex-change surgery — and the news is even more shocking when comes, as it often does, from a burly he-man who’d given no clue to his inner girl. ¶ But the signs are definitely there if your husband is dreaming of becoming a transsexual, says a new study by a top sexologist. 2003 December 9, Kitty Fine, “How to Tell If Your Fella Wants to Be a Woman!”, in Weekly World News, ISSN 0199-574X, page 14
   He was wearing women’s clothes before he had the surgery; then, he actually became a transsexual, and they (amazingly) stayed together. a. 2006, anonymous, “My Husband’s Secret”, in Grandma Joy, Grandma Joy's Hope for Hurting Women: Healing the Wounds of the Past and Gaining Hope for the Future, Destiny Image Publishers (2006), page 133
   Being a transsexual is not something that can be ignored or suppressed forever. Unlike the fascinations of the cross dresser or the partially altered transgenderist, the absolute compulsion of classical transsexualism is a matter of life and death. 2012, Patrick Slattery, Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era