Transvestism

Transvestism Diosdrers Overview, Cause, Symptoms, Treatment, Medication

Cross-dressing by heterosexual males is called transvestic fetishism or transvestitism. The male with this fetish usually has a variety of female clothes that he uses to cross-dress. While some males will wear only one special piece of female apparel, others fully dress as a female and use full facial make-up to achieve a total female appearance. Often this disorder begins in childhood. It tends to be chronic in nature.

Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term transvestism around 1915 in Berlin (from Latin trans- across, over and vestere to dress or to wear). He used it to describe a group of people who habitually and voluntarily wore clothes of the opposite sex.

Diagnostic criteria for Transvestism

• Over a period of 6 months, heterosexual male patients have recurrent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving cross-dressing.
• The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
• Typically, patients derive sexual gratification from wearing clothes usually worn by the opposite sex, and patients typically are heterosexual married males (not a DSM-IV criterion).

There are many different usages and meanings of the term transvestism. Some of them clearly contradict each other, the only thing they have in common is

• They describe a behavior of people dressing in clothes of a gender that is different from the gender they were assigned (usually at birth) or the gender they are living in. It does imply some inner motive for cross-dressing, but does not specify this motive.
• They (usually) exclude transvestic fetishism and they do not include transsexualism.

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Site last updated: March 4, 2008

Transvestitism