A Note About Terminology

Benjamin's Syndrome is named after Dr Harry Benjamin, a pioneer in research into this condition. His name is also used by the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), who produce the widely followed Standards of Care for people with Benjamin's Syndrome. The syndrome is know by a number of different names, "Benjamin's Syndrome" being an increasingly popular alternative to others currently in widespread usage. "Benjamin's Syndrome" is greatly preferable to the others because it lacks the misleading connotations and outright inaccurate meanings they possess.

The most well-known term for Benjamin's Syndrome is Transsexuality, or Transsexualism (coined by Dr Benjamin in the 1950s). Unfortunately there are several problems with it. Simply including "sex" in the name attracts undesirable attention, and the word strongly implies a connection with sexual orientation that does not exist. It's too similar to "transvestism", a completely unrelated phenomenon (men who enjoy wearing women's clothing don't have much in common with men who were born with female anatomy and are very unhappy about it) that bears enough of a superficial similarity to cause much confusion. Also, labelling people with Benjamin's Syndrome with the term "transsexual" is a bad thing. Saying that people are transsexuals is dehumanising, and makes it easier to think of them as being "other". People with Benjamin's Syndrome are people, who happen to have a particular medical problem; it is not their identity, and they are not specimens of the condition. Use as an adjective is not much better; with "transsexual man" or "transsexual woman", it's too easy for "transsexual" to be interpreted as "pretend", and for some reason many people seem to be confused about whether the appropriate noun for any particular individual is "man" or "woman".

The other common terms "Gender Identity Disorder" (GID) and "Gender Dysphoria", although sounding suitably clinical, identify Benjamin's Syndrome as being a psychiatric condition. This is not the case at all; Benjamin's Syndrome is purely a physical problem (leaving aside the social problems and pyschological effects resulting from having such a physical deformity, of course), and can only be treated by fixing the body. While psychiatric evaluation is useful in diagnosing the syndrome, attempts to alter the sufferers' genders to match their bodies have been spectacularly unsuccessful. Falsely implying that people with Benjamin's Syndrome are mentally ill or deluded is not a good way to promote understanding and acceptance of the condition.

"Transgender" has become popular recently as an all-inclusive term for a wide variety of extremely disparate groups, especially amongst the queer community. This is not a positive development, as it is far too broad a category to say anything useful, and implies similarities that do not exist. It's like having a word that means "plays chess, is asian, or has cancer" - using it to descibe someone tells you nothing about them.

Similarly, the term "Genital Reconstruction Surgery" (GRS) is preferable to the alternatives of "Sex Reassigment Surgery" (SRS) or "Gender Reassignment Surgery" for describing the operation used to help correct the anatomies of people with Benjamin's Syndrome. There is certainly no reassignment of gender involved, and it only involves one aspect of physical sex, which is not a binary, either-or characteristic. The sex of the brain is already as it should be, and HRT corrects other sexual characteristics. For men, HRT can even go a little way towards correcting the genitalia, though nowhere near the complete development that occurs in the womb.

Other terms for Benjamin's Syndrome are also used, but are mostly pejoratives or sleazy references that aren't worth dealing with here.