"Transgender" is a nearly meaningless umbrella term that means whatever you want it to mean. That's why I stopped using it and think that it coming into popular use was a very bad move. Your criticism does apply to some aspects of the transgender movement, but not transsexualism. It's transsexualism that's the medical condition and I think that's what the OP is referring to.
Transsexualism has nothing to do with social roles or culture. It's a biological condition where the brain in utero gets hit with cross sex hormones (i.e. the wrong hormones relative to the chromosomal sex). So a female fetus' brain gets hit with testosterone, which causes their brain to masculinize (i.e. to become a male brain, since male and female brains are objectively different in size and structure). (A simple test of this is the digit ratio. A male has a shorter index finger relative to his ring finger due to the effects of high testosterone exposure in the womb, and the same is true for me.) This is the cause of sex dysphoria (a more accurate term than "gender" dysphoria) because the brain expects the body to be a certain way (brain map) and it's the opposite of what it expects (similar to phantom limb syndrome; some transsexual men are known to have phantom penis syndrome, for example). For example, for female to male transsexuals (since that's what I am), having breasts, female genitals, menses, being pregnant, lack of male primary and secondary characteristics are all sources of deep distress (dyphoria). So that's why we undergo hormone therapy and surgeries, to relieve our sex dysphoria. The social transition is really secondary because the primary problem is with our bodies. Sure, it's nice to be socially recognized as a male because that's what I am and it helps to be seen as you are, but testosterone therapy tends to take care of that by itself. Lol.
To sum it up, transsexualism is a sex differentiation disorder. It's similar to intersex conditions in some ways except that it doesn't seem to be a chromosomal abnormality. It's a problem that only medical science can solve since there's really no way to change a person's brain sex but the rest of the body can be changed in drastic ways.
It has nothing to do with "feeling" masculine or feminine. That's abstract nonsense. A butch woman is not a man and a fem man is not a woman. Many trans men try to live as butch lesbians for a time but it doesn't work out because it's not the same as being a man (vice versa with trans women, many of whom live as fem gay men before transitioning to female). Chaz Bono is an example of the former and Carmen Carrera is an example of the latter.
Transsexualism has nothing to do with social roles or culture. It's a biological condition where the brain in utero gets hit with cross sex hormones (i.e. the wrong hormones relative to the chromosomal sex). So a female fetus' brain gets hit with testosterone, which causes their brain to masculinize (i.e. to become a male brain, since male and female brains are objectively different in size and structure). (A simple test of this is the digit ratio. A male has a shorter index finger relative to his ring finger due to the effects of high testosterone exposure in the womb, and the same is true for me.) This is the cause of sex dysphoria (a more accurate term than "gender" dysphoria) because the brain expects the body to be a certain way (brain map) and it's the opposite of what it expects (similar to phantom limb syndrome; some transsexual men are known to have phantom penis syndrome, for example). For example, for female to male transsexuals (since that's what I am), having breasts, female genitals, menses, being pregnant, lack of male primary and secondary characteristics are all sources of deep distress (dyphoria). So that's why we undergo hormone therapy and surgeries, to relieve our sex dysphoria. The social transition is really secondary because the primary problem is with our bodies. Sure, it's nice to be socially recognized as a male because that's what I am and it helps to be seen as you are, but testosterone therapy tends to take care of that by itself. Lol.
To sum it up, transsexualism is a sex differentiation disorder. It's similar to intersex conditions in some ways except that it doesn't seem to be a chromosomal abnormality. It's a problem that only medical science can solve since there's really no way to change a person's brain sex but the rest of the body can be changed in drastic ways.
It has nothing to do with "feeling" masculine or feminine. That's abstract nonsense. A butch woman is not a man and a fem man is not a woman. Many trans men try to live as butch lesbians for a time but it doesn't work out because it's not the same as being a man (vice versa with trans women, many of whom live as fem gay men before transitioning to female). Chaz Bono is an example of the former and Carmen Carrera is an example of the latter.
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