Definition of "transsexual"

When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body, and has a little operation, he is a transsexual.

1995, To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar

He claimed that they had this wonderful and loving relationship in which the transsexual-to-be had felt that his suitor truly loved him the way he was and didn’t want him to have the surgery, […]

a. 1998, Myra Love, Reality’s Friends, excerpted in Gertrude M. James Gonzalez and Anne J. M. Mamary (editors), Cultural Activisms: Poetic Voices, Political Voices, SUNY Press (1999), page 107

Hundreds of women every year are taken completely by surprise when their husbands announce they want to undergo sex-change surgery — and the news is even more shocking when comes, as it often does, from a burly he-man who’d given no clue to his inner girl. ¶ But the signs are definitely there if your husband is dreaming of becoming a transsexual, says a new study by a top sexologist.

2003 December 9, Kitty Fine, “How to Tell If Your Fella Wants to Be a Woman!”, in Weekly World News, ISSN 0199-574X, page 14

He was wearing women’s clothes before he had the surgery; then, he actually became a transsexual, and they (amazingly) stayed together.

a. 2006, anonymous, “My Husband’s Secret”, in Grandma Joy, Grandma Joy's Hope for Hurting Women: Healing the Wounds of the Past and Gaining Hope for the Future, Destiny Image Publishers (2006), page 133

Being a transsexual is not something that can be ignored or suppressed forever. Unlike the fascinations of the cross dresser or the partially altered transgenderist, the absolute compulsion of classical transsexualism is a matter of life and death.

2012, Patrick Slattery, Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era