Seorang dapat dianggap orang transgender apabila identitas gender mereka tidak sama atau tidak berhubungan dengan jenis kelamin yang ditunjukkan saat lahir, dan berakibat pada peran gender dan status sosial yang biasanya terkait dengan jenis kelamin tersebut. Mereka dapat, atau ingin memiliki, status gender baru yang sesuai dengan identitas gender mereka. Transseksual biasanya dianggap bagian dari transgender,[1][2][3] tetapi beberapa orang transseksual menolak dicap transgender.[4][5][6][7]
^Transgender Rights (2006, ISBN0816643121), edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, Shannon Minter
^Thomas E. Bevan, The Psychobiology of Transsexualism and Transgenderism (2014, ISBN1440831270), page 42: "The term transsexual was introduced by Cauldwell (1949) and popularized by Harry Benjamin (1966) [...]. The term transgender was coined by John Oliven (1965) and popularized by various transgender people who pioneered the concept and practice of transgenderism. It is sometimes said that Virginia Prince (1976) popularized the term, but history shows that many transgender people adovcated the use of this term much more than Prince. The adjective transgendered should not be used [...]. Transsexuals constitute a subset of transgender people."
^A. C. Alegria, Transgender identity and health care: Implications for psychosocial and physical evaluation, in the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, volume 23, issue 4 (2011), pages 175–182: "Transgender, Umbrella term for persons who do not conform to gender norms in their identity and/or behavior (Meyerowitz, 2002). Transsexual, Subset of transgenderism; persons who feel discordance between natal sex and identity (Meyerowitz, 2002)."
^Valentine, David. Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category, Duke University, 2007
^Stryker, Susan. Introduction. In Stryker and S. Whittle (Eds.), The Transgender Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, 2006. 1–17
^Kelley Winters, "Gender Madness in American Psychiatry, essays from the struggle for dignity, 2008, p. 198. "Some Transsexual individuals also identify with the broader transgender community; others do not."