Gender-affirming surgery
surgical procedures to alter sexual characteristics to match identified gender
Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) is a surgical procedure, or a series of procedures, that alters a person's physical appearance and sexual characteristics to resemble those associated with their gender identity. The phrase is most often associated with transgender health care, though many such treatments are also pursued by cisgender individuals. It is also known as sex reassignment surgery (SRS), gender confirmation surgery (GCS), and several other names.
Professional medical organizations have established Standards of Care, which apply before someone can apply for and receive gender-affirming surgeries, including psychological evaluation, and a period of real-life experience living in the desired gender. Feminizing surgeries are surgeries that result in female-looking anatomy, such as vaginoplasty, vulvoplasty and breast augmentation. Masculinizing surgeries are those that result in male-looking anatomy, such as phalloplasty and mastectomy. In addition to gender-affirming surgery, patients may need to follow a lifelong course of masculinizing or feminizing hormone replacement therapy to support the endocrine system.
Sweden became the first country in the world to allow transgender people to change their legal gender after "reassignment surgery" and provide free hormone treatment, in 1972. Singapore followed soon after in 1973, being the first in Asia.
Terminology
Gender-affirming surgery is known by many other names, including gender-affirmation surgery, sex reassignment surgery, gender reassignment surgery, and gender confirmation surgery.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gender-affirming surgery” is surgical procedures to alter sexual characteristics to match identified gender. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gender-affirming, surgery and surgical, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1053501. The Library of Congress control number is sh2020000651. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gender-affirming surgery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.