Gender Transformation

Gender transitioning is the process of changing one’s gender presentation or sex characteristics to accord with one’s internal sense of gender identity – the idea of what it means to be a man or a woman, or to be non-binary or genderqueer. (Non-binary people’s internal sense of gender identity is neither solely female nor male.) For transgender and transsexual people, this process commonly involves reassignment therapy (which may include hormone replacement therapy and sex reassignment surgery), with their gender identity being opposite that of their birth-assigned sex and gender. Transitioning might involve medical treatment, but it does not always involve it. Cross-dressers, drag queens, and drag kings tend not to transition, since their variant gender presentations are (usually) only adopted temporarily.
Sex reassignment surgery (SRS), also known as gender reassignment surgery (GRS) and several other names, is a surgical procedure (or procedures) by which a transgender person’s physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble those socially associated with their identified gender. It is part of a treatment for gender dysphoria in transgender people. The term is also sometimes used to describe surgical intervention for intersex people.

Professional medical organizations have established Standards of Care that apply before someone can apply for and receive reassignment surgery, including psychological evaluation, and a period of real-life experience living in the desired gender.

Feminization surgeries are surgeries that result in anatomy that is typically gendered female. These surgeries include vaginoplasty, feminizing augmentation mammoplasty, orchiectomy, facial feminization surgery, reduction thyrochondroplasty (tracheal shave), and voice feminization surgery among others.

Masculinization surgeries are surgeries that result in anatomy that is typically gendered male. These surgeries include chest masculinization surgery (top surgery), metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, scrotoplasty, and hysterectomy.