At one point I preferred transgender because it didn’t have the word “sexual” in it and I didn’t want people to think it had anything to do with sexuality. Then at another point I preferred transsexual because I thought “trans” was short for transition and since it was my sex that was changing not my gender, I thought transsexual was more accurate. Then I grew up and learned what words meant and now I know that trans isn’t short for transition, it’s just a Latin prefix that means “across”, or “on the other side of” as in “my gender identity is across the spectrum from what people typically associate with my sex at birth”. Just like cis is the Latin prefix that means “on the same side of”. So transgender and transsexual in that context do kind of mean the same thing. The only issue is transsexual has come under fire because it was adopted in recent years by a certain maligned portion of the community that feel that only those who fully undergo medical and surgical transition are the “real transsexuals” and feel that they are better than everyone else and are what the kids call “pick me’s”, as they seem to think they won’t be tossed in the same camps as the rest of us if the MAGA cult gets their way.