[Female-to-male transsexual's stereotype among university men and women on the basis of semantic differential].

AIM: The aim of this study is to determine female-to-male transsexual's (FtM) stereotypes created in female and male university students and comparing them in the analysed groups.

METHOD: 300 university students (from the Technical University of Łódź, University of Łódź, Medical University of Łódź) received a questionnaire with 10 pairs of the opposite meaning adjectives (good-bad, weak-strong, fast-slow, ugly-pretty, fat-thin, suppressed-loud, clever-stupid, light-heavy, active-passive, kind-cruel) related to a notion 'female -to-male transsexual' and placed on the extremes of the 7-point scales. The respondents also described each adjective as positive, negative or neutral.

RESULTS

For most of the adjectives' pairs (fast-slow, ugly-pretty, fat-thin, suppressed-loud, clever-stupid, light-heavy and, in men's answers also good-bad and kind-cruel) the students placed FtM transsexual in the middle of the scales (the median was 4). Women significantly more often than men placed FtM transsexual closer to the adjectives "good", "pretty" and "kind", also they assessed the FtM transsexual more often as being "clever".

CONCLUSIONS

1. The Female-to-male transsexual is not perceived stereotypically among university students. 2. Men created more negative female-to-male transsexuals' image than women.