Transsexual and transgender as defined and distinguished by Lucy of Catspaw:
Sex is biological, gender is social. Obvious, but it is very important in the difference between transsexual and transgender. Basically, transsexuality is the need to change the body, while transgender is changing the way one is viewed socially.
Note there is overlap: because gender arises from sex, those of us who change our bodies almost inevitably need to change the way we’re viewed socially.
Trans is a catch-all term that includes both transsexual and transgender; you will see it on this blog (such as in my tags) for the discussion of all variations of transsexual and/or transgender. It is also an adjective for the nouns woman, man, or person: someone might be a trans woman, much like they might be a latina woman, or a short woman.
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