The Increase of Transgender people

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Most people go about their lives without ever giving thought to their gender. They never blink an eye when they chose to go into a bathroom, when the room is divided by genders, when they walk into the store to buy some clothes and go to either the male or female section. However, there are many people who feel like they don’t belong in the section that they are in. These people who are generally referred to as transgender, struggle everyday with feeling out of place - feeling confused about which bathroom that they should be in or which section in the store they should shop in. 1 in 30,000 males and 1 in 100,000 females rank high on the Benjamin scale, the scale that is used for the identification of persons experiencing gender dysphoria or transsexualism.
This number is rapidly increasing. Due to the support offered for transgender individuals , the exposure of transgenderism to the general public as well as the amount of acceptance in today’s society, there has been a significant increase in the amount of people who identify as transgender.
Transgender people suffer from what psychologists call Gender Identity disorder. Gender identity disorder is characterized by strong feeling of gender dysphoria. “Gender dysphoria denotes strong and persistent feelings of discomfort with one's assigned sex, the desire to possess the body of the other sex, and the desire to be regarded by others as a member of the other sex” (Kirk 30). Transgender people usually pursue the feelings of gender dysphoria and work towards living as the opposite sex. “The acting out of cross-dressing; cross-identification; and active pursuit of hormonal, social, and medical approaches to alter their appearance are all conducted by these individuals in order to ...

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Newhouse, Maria R. "Remembering The "T" In LGBT: Recruiting And Supporting Transgender
Students." Journal Of College Admission 220 (2013): 22-27. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

Schnetzler, Greta W., and Gaylynn Kirn Conant. "Changing Genders, Changing Policies."
Chronicle Of Higher Education 56.8 (2009): B30-B32. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.

Sokoll, Talya. "Representations Of Trans* Youth In Young Adult Literature: A Report And A
Suggestion." Young Adult Library Services11.4 (2013): 23-26. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.

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