Gender reassignment surgery, sometimes called sex reassignment surgery, is performed to transition individuals with gender dysphoria to their desired gender. People with gender dysphoria often feel that they were born in the wrong gender.
For example, a biological male may identify more like a female and vice versa. There are about 9000 transgender surgeries being performed annually across the US.
The latest statistics indicate that 0.6% of the US population identifies as transgender. The U.S. sex reassignment surgery market size was valued at USD 267.0 million in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 14.4% from 2020 to 2027.
The number of sex-change surgeries conducted each year has been steadily increasing, from 8304 in 2017 to 9576 in 2018, with 2885 male to female surgeries and 6691 female to male surgeries. This is a life-changing transformation.
It requires great courage and support from family, friends, and loved ones. But it`s so much more difficult when you’re a celebrity when journalists and paparazzi are stalking every little detail of your life, and when there’s always hundreds or thousands of people judging you.
These nine transgender celebrities deserve a round of applause for overcoming difficulties and shining ever brighter than before.
1. Balian Buschbaum
Balian Buschbaum, formerly Yvonne Buschbaum, is a former German pole vaulter who won the German pole vault championship and set the record in 1999. Buschbaum revealed in November 2007 that he was retiring from the sport due to a recurring injury and that he wanted to undertake the gender transformation treatment.
Formerly Yvonne Buschbaum
2. Geena Rocero
Geena Rocero is a transgender advocate and the founder of Gender Proud, a video production firm that advocates for justice, equality, and trans rights. Geena Rocero was only known as a successful model before she came out. She is now a spokesperson for the LGBTQIA community’s rights fight.
She is known for her 2014 TED talk in which she publicly revealed, for the first time, that she had been born a boy.
3. Laura Jane Grace
Laura Jane Grace (born Thomas James Gabel) is a member of the American punk rock band Against Me! She is a singer and guitarist. Laura declared her plans to live openly as a transsexual woman in a Rolling Stone interview in 2012. “Transgender Dysphoria Blues,” the band’s sixth studio album, was released in 2014 after a protracted period of line-up changes and transformations.
born Thomas James Gabel
4. Jazz Jennings
Jazz Jennings is a teenage LGBT rights activist, a Youtuber, and a spokesmodel. After being taken out of the girl’s bathroom at school when she was nine, she began to raise the issue of transgender individuals being misunderstood and disliked.
Jennings and her parents founded TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation
5. Aydian Dowling
Aydian Dowling is a popular YouTuber, bodybuilder, transgender activist, co-founder of a volunteer organization called PointofPride.org, a transgender rights campaigner, and a loving husband and parent. Aydian was the first transgender guy to appear on the cover of Men’s Health magazine’s collector’s edition, as well as the first transgender male to appear on the cover of Gay Times magazine.
On his channel, Dowling shares fitness tips and the specifics around sports for transgender people
6. Alexandra Billings
Alexandra Billings is an award-winning stage and movie actor, a respected theater educator, and an AIDS and LGBT activist from the United States. Billings is also one of the few actors who have portrayed a transgender character on television, having been in “Grey’s Anatomy,” “How To Get Away With Murder,” and “Transparent.”
Alexandra earned the Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award in 2016 for her contributions to the LGBTQ community.
7. Lea T
Leandra Medeiros Cerezo, better known as Lea T, is a transgender fashion model, a pop culture phenomenon, and a transgender campaigner. She is the star of Givenchy’s most talked-about ad campaign. Toninho Cerezo, a well-known Brazilian football player, is her father.
She is the first openly transgender person to openly appear in an Olympic Games opening ceremony.
8. Lana Wachowski
Lana Wachowski is the first prominent Hollywood director to come out as transgender. Lana Wachowski’s brother, Lilly Wachowski, came out as a transgender woman a few years later, in 2016.
In October 2012, she received the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award.
9. Conchita Wurst
Because Conchita Wurst (also known as Thomas Neuwirth) is more of a stage persona, there is no before and after sex reassignment surgery. She became a major influencer and media celebrity after winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014, bringing crucial LGBT and transgender-related issues to the international stage.
She won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014
One of the many benefits of technological and medical breakthroughs we are witnessing in the last 50 years is that they can enable so many people to live their best lives. Of course, the whole process is lengthy and hard.
But judging by these people’s smiling faces, it’s totally worth it.
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