| hershel_layton said: Just curious, but why do people feel as if their biological gender does not describe their actual "gender"? is there any science that can explain the mindset behind a transgender person?
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I don't pretend to be an expert, but I'll offer my experience.
One Monday morning, one of my female colleagues shocked everyone by announcing that she'd changed her name legally, and that her name was "not the only thing that would be changing".
While we were all initially gobsmacked by this news, after thinking about it, none of us were surprised. She always wore a skirt to work to 'fit in', but her femininity pretty much ended there. I remember she would never go to our Christmas parties because you were expected to wear eveningwear, and she said she felt too uncomfortable wearing an evening dress. She talked and acted like a man. Her partner was female, but she didn't consider herself to be gay.
She had gender dysphoria - a medically recognised condition where there is a mismatch between biological gender and gender identity. There's no conclusive proof as to how gender dysphoria comes about, but in her case, it was something to do with her chromasomes.
Over the next 24 months, she dressed and lived like a man. She was prescribed hormone therapy. Her voice broke; she grew facial hair. A year into this therapy, she had a series of operations to remove her female organs and construct male ones. After 2 years, she was a man.
As someone who knew the person from beforehand and witnessed the transition from start to finish, I can honestly say that he had not changed one bit as a person. While all the physical change was going on, the personality was always the constant. As a female, he always seemed to be a bit of an oddball, a bit out of place. As a male, everything about who he was as a person seemed to make sense.
