54% of trans women and 50% of trans men report having been harassed in the workplace. Transgender people who have been fired due to bias are more than 34 times likely than members of the general population to attempt suicide. Stealth
Many transsexual men and women choose to live completely as members of their gender without disclosing details of their birth-assigned sex. This approach is sometimes called stealth. Stealth transsexuals choose not to disclose their past for numerous reasons, including fear of discrimination and fear of physical violence. : 63  There are examples of people having been denied medical treatment upon discovery of their trans status, whether it was revealed by the patient or inadvertently discovered by the doctors. In the media
Before transsexual people were depicted in popular movies and television shows, Aleshia Brevard—a transsexual woman whose surgery took place in 1962: 3 —was actively working as an actress: 141  and model: 200  in Hollywood and New York throughout the 1960s and 70s. Aleshia never portrayed a transsexual person, though she appeared in eight Hollywood-produced films, on most of the popular variety shows of the day, including The Dean Martin Show, and was a regular on The Red Skelton Show and One Life to Live before returning to university to teach drama and acting. In pageantry
Since 2004, with the goal of crowning the top transsexual of the world, a beauty pageant by the name of The Worlds Most Beautiful Transsexual Contest was held in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Other self-identified transsexual people state that those who do not seek sex reassignment surgery (SRS) are fundamentally different from those who do, and that the two have different concerns, but this view is controversial, and others argue that merely having some medical procedures does not have such far-reaching consequences as to put those who have them and those who have not (e.g. because they cannot afford them) into such distinctive categories. Some have objected to the term transsexual on the basis that it describes a condition related to gender identity rather than sexuality. For example, Christine Jorgensen, the first person widely known to have sex reassignment surgery (in this case, male-to-female), rejected transsexual and instead identified herself in newsprint as trans-gender, on this basis.The trans community has generally taken issue with the term transsexual because it over-medicalizes the trans experience, and focuses too much on diagnosis. : 743  The term transgender emerged in part in an attempt to break the "medical monopoly" on transitioning that transsexual implied. GLAADs media reference guide offers the following distinction on the use of transsexual:An older term that originated in the medical and psychological communities. As the gay and lesbian community rejected homosexual and replaced it with gay and lesbian, the transgender community rejected transsexual and replaced it with transgender. Some people within the trans community may still call themselves transsexual. Do not use transsexual to describe a person unless it is a word they use to describe themself.