The prologue explains the meaning of involuntary sterilisation and castration and traces the origins of the practices back to the rise of the eugenics movement. It provides an overview of how involuntary sterilisation and castration have intersectionally targeted marginalised groups in different countries and sketches out how these laws and practices globally have prioritised assumed public interests over individual ones. Doing so, the prologue follows how medico-legal experts and public authorities have defined healthy and unhealthy bodies and behaviours throughout the twentieth century.

Trans people who transition medically are typically hoping to live their lives simply as members of the sex with which their gender corresponds but may wish to make full use of the capabilities of their physical bodies, which may differ from typical male or female bodies. This chapter, co-authored by a trans man who is a transgender health advocate and a trans woman who is a physician, provides an overview of the kind of physical changes that are experienced by trans people, both those who transition from female to or toward male and those from male to or toward female, and alerts gynecologists and other medical healthcare professionals to the trans person’s perspective in clinical encounters.