ABSTRACT
As recently as five years ago, the word "transgender" began to emerge as an accepted term to describe the wide variety of individuals with gender-identity and cross-dressing concerns and the community they created. A new category was created to describe those whose identities lay "somewhere in-between" the already-defined categories of cross-dresser and transsexual. In this newly designated category, many individuals identify themselves as "transgenderists"—that is, bigendered, androgynous, or two-spirited. Some transgenderists live equally comfortably as female or male, some live androgynously, some cross-live full-time, some have feminizing or masculinizing procedures for personal enrichment, and many take hormones. None have genital surgery. The literature has only just begun to address this expanded definition of gender identity. What has been written has been primarily in the community's own newsletters and other publications.
