Self-identification with one sex by a person who has the external genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics of the other sex.
Early in life, such a person adopts the behaviour characteristic of the opposite sex. Surgery and hormone therapy now allow permanent sex change, a procedure first performed in 1952. The male-to-female operation is more common because the genital reconstruction is more satisfactory. The male transsexual's penis and testes are removed and an artificial vagina created; breasts are created with implants or female sex hormones. Female transsexuals may undergo mastectomy and hormone treatments to produce male secondary sexual characteristics, but attempts to create an artificial penis have not been satisfactory.