Yeah no this is pure speculation. There have been no studies on this. Females can get varying levels of testosterone in the womb (higher levels are usually seen when a female is developing with a male twin),but it has not been linked to trans identity. We need more science literacy…

Oh boy I'm gonna yap here. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and my view has been and is changing. It started with me realizing how "unquestionnable" the concept on an inherent trans identity is, and that set off red flags in my brain as someone who grew up religious and had to learn the very idea of critical thinking and evidence-based knowledge on my own. I will focus on the FTM perspective since it's what I'm most familiar with.

I don't think there are inherently trans people; there are people with a real and strong desire to transition to living as the opposite sex. This is observable.

I think it's easy to go into the extreme here. It's true that there's no hard biological evidence for a "trans brain". As in, you can't go in and get a brain scan to be diagnosed with "trans". The studies that have been done (which I will try to link to after this comment) do find some average differences between trans and cis people's brains, but that can be due to many other factors, including attraction, mental issues, etc.

So: is the answer that all people who transition are desperately fooling themselves and those around them? I don't think it's that simple. There are cases of people who live long lives as the opposite gender and don't seem to complain, including historically. The current medical advances have made it possible to "pass" much more convincingly, but there have been people cross-dressing their entire lives and actively keeping their sex a secret, which I would say amounts to them "transitioning". The way I see it, the existence of transitioning people is inherently tied to the existence of gender roles. Men and women occupy different roles in society, and that will not change any time soon. They can become more equal, but they will always be different. If there was absolutely zero difference, this concept would be mute. From this, it's reasonable that there would exist a subset of the population that will abnormally have the desire to take on opposite role from the one that matches their sex, and this will extend to wanting to be perceived that way, which will extend to discomfort with a body that doesn't help with that, so you get the observable phenomenon of "gender dysphoria".

The question is: why do people have this desire? I think it's a combination of environmental factors, inherent disposition, trauma, mental issues, sexuality, you name it. That does not mean the desire is a choice or necessarily controllable. So the next question is: what do you do with this desire? Common practice should be that you look as deep as possible for where it's coming from; this is not a normal desire. It will vary from person to person. I think for most, the answer is not transition. There are so many reasons why you might feel uncomfortable with your birth gender role. There is a huge amount of young women who reasonably want to escape womanhood, and so they think transition is the answer, when they can be happy living as women if they analyze where their dysphoria is coming from. Some are simply butch or straight and masculine. Some want to emulate gay men they like to see, not even always for sexual reasons, but for the "equal" dynamic in gay relationships. Some have had trauma: bad mothers, sexual abuse, etc. The list never ends. Same goes for men who find femininity appealing.

Here is the kicker: after this introspection is done, preferably with the help of a non "affirming" professional, for some, the answer might still be: they will feel more comfortable in themselves assuming the role of the opposite gender. Why is this? We don't fully know, and at this point it becomes a non-harmful issue but more of an issue of personal freedom. We do not know, biologically, why homosexuality really occurs, and it may very well be influenced by the environment, but that does not make the desire of homosexuals any less real. I think there are some where this desire is so ingrained that it seems inherent, even when there is no proof that it is, but you simply cannot pinpoint its cause.

If they want to be perceived as, and play the role of, the opposite gender, because that it's how they want to live their life, so be it. I think for a lot of people, especially those born female, it is possible for them to achieve this in most (non-intimate) contexts. They can "pass" and be treated socially as men, (usually short "fruity" men with comes with it its own challenges), with the knowledge they can never fully be male and will always be a trans man, if that's how they want to go about life. If it's the role they want to occupy in society and they feel is better suited to their self-realization. I think calling them men and using male pronouns, is not "denying reality or "confirming their delusion", (most are under no delusion that they aren't biologically female), it is using the appropriate term given the social role they now assume in society.

(Think of the case of someone who becomes a strong parental figures to a child without ever formally adopting them. At a certain point, it's appropriate to call them the child's parent, without denying reality, because that is the societal role they play.)

As a final addition, I find the physical risks of hormones and "top surgery" to be, while very real, similar to other harmful substances we use to live our life. We should absolutely talk about how permanent, addictive, and dangerous they can be, but without jumping into exaggeration.

Happy to hear anyone's thoughts.

It is binary in terms of gametes. Sometimes things go wrong with chromosomes and so we get intersex conditions. If it is only not binary when something goes wrong, I think the label is fair.

Yes, people tried cruel ways to change gay people's sexuality, and they failed. That only tells us that those ways don't work. There's accounts of people feeling like sexuality changed over time, and that their attraction to the same/opposite sex only developed later (as in by their own account they were not actively suppressing those desires before). The whole point here is that it's irrelevant whether it's immutable. Consenting adults getting in a romantic relationship is harmless, and there's no secular reason they should have less protections or rights than heterosexual couples.

For dysphoria...yeah that might be your experience, but it's not as simple as clothes for many many people. You can't have one clear approach to solving it because there is no one cause for it. That doesn't tell us it's impossible.

(But yes, I did say there's probably some genetic predisposition to both; as with most things, it's not purely nurture.)

Yes I'm not blaming you; we expect therapists to be trustworthy. Just the fact that they got away with passing it off as "science" is concerning.

+The distress with your sex and/or sex atypical behavior could very well be an "abnormality" in the brain the way other mental abnormalities (anorexia, etc.) are.

I think something worth pointing out here is that you can feel disconnected from your sex for reasons other than outright misogyny or oppression. You can be genuinely different in behavior from other girls your age, and kids as young as toddlers. (Girls and boys behave differently on average, even as young as three. if you fall outside that average, and closer to the opposite sex, you may notice it and feel estranged.) You don't need to dress feminine to be a woman. You can have a shaved head your whole life. You can have an all male friend group. You don't need to do anything at all. My one pointer would be just really, genuinely asking: what exactly do you mean by "felt in my heart I was trans"? What does it mean to feel like a boy or girl? What does "living as a man" mean? How does it relate to your "true self"? I can't answer these for you, but don't stop until you have some answer. Like you said, if you're making a very consequential decision, it should be based on clearly defined ideas, right? Feel free to dm if needed.

Thanks for sharing! Yeah, they are definitely idealized. I used to get upset that it's impossible to find an equal (equal enough, no relationship is perfectly equal) hetero relationship, but it's not. It is just rare and hard to find, as are these idealized gay male ones, and the realization helped.

Added note: in retrospect some alarm bell should have gone off when 80% of the profile in my online circles went from she/her to he/they overnight.

No need to apologize, I am just trying to provide clarity on this as I know it can get muddled real quick.

"male software running on female hardware" implies the mind is separate from the body. This is dualism, a metaphysical position that is not, by virtue of being beyond-physical, scientific or medical. There are "male and female brains" as in the brains of males and females exhibit average differences in certain physical aspects. If you are a female and an aspect of your brain is closer to the average male, that simply means you are a not-average female. if you are female, you cannot, by definition, have a male brain.

Yes, there can be more people "prone" to developing this identity based on atypical brain development. However, no exact phenotype is identified etc. It remains in line with how we think of other self-perception or dissociation problems (which can start at a young age because of a combination of nature and nurture.)
I would say this aligns with the surge in young women and girls identifying as trans. Those some girls are "prone" in the sense that they might've developed some other self perception problem (if they don't already have one).

I know what you mean. I don't think it's something permanent or fixed though. I would encourage you to be as specific as possible about the feelings. What exactly are you envious of? Physical strength? Societal treatment? Male attitudes/relationships? All of it? When you can separate and *name* what's bothering you, you can pinpoint what is and isn't in your power to control. For one, you can get stronger. You can learn to be more confident. You can get healthier hair or a healthier body. BUT, you can't change how people generally view women vs men. You can't change biology (but you'e learned that one). You can't become as strong as the strongest man. You can't change beauty standards. Learning to accept both of these is what helped me most. None of them are normative statements, just because beauty standard Y exists doesn't mean I have to conform to it, but it's also useless to be upset about it (longterm, I was upset for a good second - that's ok, let yourself be) because it's outside of your control. Knowing what I can control helped me set goals that I was proud of myself to meet, and that envy has been decreasing ever since.

Sure, I think we agree here. There's no moral judgement attached, maybe abnormality would've been a better term. (I will say if the abnormality causes physical or mental issues, as in the case of genetic diseases, I would say something went wrong in the colloquial sense.)

Humans do produce two and only two types of gametes though, so that's where the binary comes from. As for chromosomes, I would agree that it's an "enough" label.