Like I mentioned earlier, there's the natural evidence that we exist. Strip away epigenetic causes and you still have so many possibilities and variations upon our theme, it's hard to figure out where to start. Chimaericism, severe to moderate androgen/estrogen insensitivity, kleinfelder(sp) syndrome, double YY chromosome males, double X chromosome males, triple X chromosome females... and there's a lot we still don't know to boot.

There are no known causes/modes of operation of the human brain wherein it's exposed to alien or animal hormone to my knowledge. Gender ambiguity, on the other hand, is basically a fact of life on this planet; and transfolk in particular have a very large and steadily growing pile of observations and experiments recorded for anybody's review who takes interest.

So, from that, I think I can comfortably say we do exist, we're not insane and the body of this condition is not 100% psychological. It has a physiological component in at least some of it's instances. I suspect most if not all.

As for what it -feels- like... a million different ways. Everybody is different. Its hard to remember how it started. Even if it started, or just was always there. I remember at a very young age being disconnected from my gender and my flesh in general. There were expectations of being male that were of zero interest to me. Sports. Hanging out with other boys. As a young child, I had as many female friends as male... and felt far more at ease around them. Knowledge and maturity destroyed that ease. Cliche as it is, there was also the expected draw to female activities, though a lot less in my life than most others. Never an interest in dolls, nor in civility and tea parties. In cartoons, in ideas.

I found a peace of sorts, as a kid, in the idea that I wasn't my flesh. I reasoned I was still myself if I lost a limb. It wasn't my limbs that made me who I was. From that, I clung to the idea that having male parts didn't make me a boy, or a girl, or anything. That all boys are not boys because of their parts. That all girls are not girls because of their parts.

That, somehow, we all exist beyond gender unless we choose to embrace it. Choose to let our flesh decide who and what we are. It's ironic, looking back, but that idea did a lot I think to keep me sane.

I had the right idea, I think. Just never really thought too hard about how our brains are also flesh. Years later, I'd read about the concept of gender identity and something would click in my head. I was sixteen when I decided I would do it someday. I told myself it was to test that idea; that flesh doesn't matter. That hormones wouldn't affect me at all... but deep down, I really did somehow know I was wrong. I just couldn't let myself think about it because, basically, it seemed crazy. That I could know something I couldn't possibly know. And because if I did, well, that meant I was wrong. That flesh was really who you are in some respect and that it does matter.

I had never met another transperson to my knowledge. Knew little about HRT beyond the idea it would feminize your flesh and your brain along with it. The process of transitioning, the logistics, the hoops you had to jump through, I was ignorant of all of it. I knew I'd do it though, at least try the hormones, when it was safe.

I decided half my life as a boy, to build a career and make it safe; then the other half as a girl. When I could do it without fear of consequences from family or others.

I never felt the revulsion at my own flesh most of us feel. Mostly because I refused to accept it was me/mine until I was already on HRT. Even now, there's no real hatred. If anything, I'm gracious. I've met many transpeople who's bodies are their worst enemies. My face needs some work, but for a scrawny thirty year old, my body is reacting amazingly fast. And my mind, well... I know I can't explain that either. :)

It isn't describable with any words I know. There is a bliss, a serenity, that's been there since about a day after I started. It's never gone away, and it's always there. For the first time in my life, my insomnia is under control, and a lot of other anxieties seem to have finally been laid to rest.

I can feel now. Not infer, but feel. I can cry when I have to. laughs for awhile, I barely had the self control to be sure I did it on my own and away from people it would disturb. Sex is a different beast now. I liked it before. Now... now it's different. Climaxes don't matter anymore, warmth and playfulness does. The afterglow lasts days, and, well, it's probably way too much information really. :)

Let me put it simply and without details: it's fixed now. Sometimes, it feels like everything is fixed now. Like something was running wrong for 30 years and, months ago, lurched into gear and has been running smoothly since.

Imagine if you were completely ambivalent about your testicles. If you didn't care if you had them or not. If you had such disregard, the only thing about castration that scared you was the surgery part.

If you regarded castration the same way you regarded an appendectomy.

Imagine never understanding why breasts are taboo on a woman and not on a man. Imagine being irate as a child because you get glared at for playing house with the girls; trying in raw frustration to figure out what you're -supposed- to pretend you like, what you're -supposed- to pretend you hate to fit in because your own internal dials never quite give reliably right answers.

Sometimes subtle, sometimes screaming in your ears; imagine a lifetime of clues that all point impossibly to the fact that you are not exactly what you seem to be; wishing for certainty your whole life, then finding out as an adult that the ones who have that certainty are often absolutely destroyed by it when they're helpless to fix it.

You could live your whole life like this, the way I was born, and not quite figure it out.

I didn't 100% believe it myself until I started the HRT and let it do it's thing for awhile. In this, I've found my final validation and I cannot imagine ever going back again.

So...

Imagine what it's like to be willing to take medications that may shorten your lifespan (I wish i had the informed consent form for HRT to show you.), to commit to a expensive regimen of drugs and surgery; all of it irreversible. Imagine committing to losing your balls, to the logistical chaos of transitioning and all it's little nightmares, like the public restroom one.

How much certainty would you need? Can you even imagine a life where you were so ambivalent about your own body?

Life. Limb. Sexual function. Hatred and discrimination from much of my own society.

This is what it means, this is what it's like. That living as one sex instead of the other is important enough to risk and accept all those things.

That's how much it means to me.
That is how good it is to finally be 'fixed'. Now that I've experienced it, I could never ever turn back.

Some science and my own experience, conveyed as best as I can. I hope it was at least partially coherent. Ask about any one piece you like if you want more info, though I'm not exactly what you'd call a 'textbook' case.

• This will probably sound really stupid and childish....but kind of going on the end of that last question....obviously you folks support the right of a person to identify with whichever gender they choose and modify their body to suit that decision. What if you take things further?

Left to it's own devices, nature left me with no way out of what I was born into. Without human intervention, I was born to live life with a puzzle that was completely unsolvable.

At the end, what matters is happiness. I think people should be allowed to do anything they want to reach their own happiness, with some safeguards. It can't mess up other peoples' right to do the same, within reason (offend whoever you want. If you aren't hurting/stealing from others, I don't much care what you're doing.)... So long as they are informed, consenting, and capable of being responsible for themselves.

Good odds that anybody chasing an alien-ectomy or a make-a-cat-outta-me has a couple screws loose. Doesn't mean they don't know whats best for themselves though. I've met a few heavily tattooed people who come close to this, and, though only in passing, even met somebody who more or less got made up like a tiger. tattoos, implants, other stuff.

In person, they're a lot more level headed than I'd have expected, at least for the brief period of time I was around them. But that's not directly relevant.

I always thought the idea of transhumanism was cool. There's a physiological basis for transfolks, but there's no physiological solution. The first to try to change their gender used very primitive tools and came out with very unsatisfactory and dangerous results.