Transgender

Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth: trans women (assigned male, identify as women), trans men (assigned female, identify as men), and nonbinary people whose identity sits outside the male/female binary.

What makes someone trans is identity, not medical steps. Some trans people need hormones or surgery to ease the distress of incongruence; others don’t, or can’t access them yet — none of which makes anyone’s identity less real. The WHO’s ICD-11, adopted in 2019 and in effect since 2022, moved “gender incongruence” out of the mental and behavioural disorders chapter: being transgender is not a mental illness (see the myth debunked). For a grounded introduction, read Trans 101.

Register note: standard in both formal and community contexts. In Chinese, 跨性别 (kua xingbie, “crossing gender”) is the standard term, and 跨儿 (kuar) is a warmer in-community diminutive. Use it as an adjective — “a transgender woman,” “trans people” — not “a transgender.”

Common misuse: treating it as a sexual orientation — trans people may be straight, gay, bi, or asexual (see Does trans mean gay?); and the dated label “transsexual” (Chinese 变性人, “sex-changed person”), which reduces an identity to surgery and reads as offensive today.