Transgender People Social Sciences Term Paper Essay (Term Paper Sample)

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Transgender in High school in the US
History OF Transgender
Gender-variant people had been previously ignored or vilified, thereby making them invisible. But at the start of 1990s these people began to establish a more inclusive community and to use the word transgender as a collective term to define their identity (Shultz311). The development of social and political organization in the last thirty years promoted social identities for transgender people, establishing a distinct community that deserves social justice and civil rights. This movement defied previous opinion of transgender identity and expression as a mental disorder. This movement now reframes the flaws observed in transgender people as the sequelae of discrimination not the symptoms of a mental problem. In addition to that, the acts of resistance staged by drag queens in Los Angeles (Cooper Donuts) in 1959, Compton’s Cafeteria in 1966, and the Stonewall riot of 1969 played a major role in the history of transgender community (Shultz 320).
Until 1950s, transsexualism was not considered distinct from transvestism. Surgical and hormonal treatments remained core to the consolidation of transsexual diagnosis and identity. Harry Benjamin considered that if psychotherapy treatments could not alter the mind of transsexuals to the body, then the transsexual’s body had to be adjusted to fit the mind. Transsexualism played out with Christine Jorgenson’s case, who desired to become a female. Jorgensen visited Christian Hamburger who conducted psychiatric evaluation, hormone therapy and surgery to get rid of Jorgenson’s male genitalia. Jorgenson returned to America as a woman.