ABSTRACT
Fascination with cross-gender states appears to be intrinsic to being human. The "evidence" for the existence of a pope who appeared to be a man but was a fertile woman was recently the subjet of the presidential address for the Endocrine Society (New & Ketzinger, 1933). Current medical understanding says that gender dysphoria or true transsexualism is a neuroendocrine condition of unknown cause, unknown inheritance, and has a prevalence of about 1:18,000 in the male population (Asscheman, 1989). Transsexualism has been shown to be poorly responsive to intense psychotherapy to change the identity disturbance. Therefore, treatment of a biological male with female hormones becomes the primary therapy followed by anatomical reassignment after a period of living as a woman.
