[The social background of male to female transsexuals]

Gender alignment surgery was introduced into German law in 1981. Judicial guidelines for the change of first names and gender were established and transsexuality was labelled as a psychosomatic and somatopsychic syndrome and disorder, thus opening the way for treatment to the social health-care under well-defined conditions requesting cross-dressing and hormone therapy as well as psychological counselling by 2 independent psychologists or psychiatrists. In a retrospective, chart-related survey of questionnaires on male to female transsexuals it was found that patients start to suspect being born into the wrong gender at the onset of puberty, it takes them however approximately 20 years to have gender alignment surgery. More than half the patients are single at this time, while the remaining group is married or divorced with equal rates. 68% regard themselves as heterosexual, 21% lesbian and 11% were undecided. About half the patients experienced support by their families for their decision. Despite numerous secondary corrections of the surgical alignment, patients were content with the result, although emotional acceptance of the desired result took about one year. In general plastic surgical gender alignment treatment was perceived as the major contribution to harmonise their phenotype with their identity.