First a word about the title. Those of you familiar with the history of this subject will be
quick to notice that the subtitle refers to Dr. Harry Benjamin’s ground breaking work,
The Transsexual Phenomenon1, published in 1966. Prior to its publication, very little
had been entered into the medical literature about the subject2,3,4,5,6. The few works
that were published tended to be about cross dressing (transvestism) in men and gave
the impression that the “disorder” was one of perverse sexuality. Benjamin, on the other
hand, was one of the first to think in terms of “sex” being the physical manifestation of
the body while “gender” and gender expression as being a totally different aspect of what
it means to be human. Further more, he writes that he believed that gender was
indelibly imprinted on the brain either in utero or shortly after birth. Instead of seeing
his patients as being delusional and suffering from a sexual perversion, he saw his
patients as suffering from a form of intersexuality7; having the body of one sex but the
gender of the other. It is this paradigm shift in thinking that makes his work so
important.

More @  http://www.thegenderedself.com/TGSintroduction.pdf