ABSTRACT
Transgender people have been the focus of extensive curiosity and detailed scrutiny by sexologists and researchers since the eighteenth century. Trans people, once marginalised and invisible, have become a major focus of attention within the popular press, as well as the emerging clinical literature. Trans people have been seen through the lens of sexual perversion and simultaneously as a people without sexuality, as if their cross-gender status has severed them from the world of sexual intimacy. The process of transitioning gender and the body dysphoria that often accompanies trans experience can negatively affect intimate relationships, creating a social and sexual isolation that has an impact on dating and sexual exploration. Homosexuality and transsexuality were historically conflated into one category, viewed as a “third” sex. Transsexual sexual desire is often dissected with a sharp psychic scalpel that is rarely used when addressing the sexual desires of gender-normative people.
