So body dysmorphia is when you think your body is other than it really is whereas sex dysmorphia is when you think your body should be other than it really is. — Michael

With more time to think on it. It really isn't any different. They both believe that something is wrong with their body, which falls under the umbrella of a somatic delusion.

There is also enough evidence to suggest they are "born with it". — yatagarasu

People are born with mental disorders. I also mentioned that it has to do with how they were raised. Is there a study on trans people and how they were raised, like how their parents treated them as they developed (cross-dressing them, etc.). And at what point does a child actually choose his gender as opposed to it being chosen for them by their parents in how they treat them and interact with them?

With more time to think on it. It really isn't any different. They both believe that something is wrong with their body, which falls under the umbrella of a somatic delusion. — Harry Hindu

A somatic delusion is where you think that your body has certain (abnormal) characteristics that it doesn't actually have. This isn't the case for the transgender person (unless they also have a somatic delusion). The transgender person (where they believe that they were born in the "wrong" body) believes in something like (for the male-to-female transexuals) the feminine essence concept of transsexuality. They believe that they have a female mind, spirit, soul, or personality, and that this kind of mind, spirit, soul, or personality "belongs" in a female body.

This view on "essence" might be false, but it isn't a somatic delusion.

Believing that you belong to another body is saying that your body is wrong.

Believing that you belong to another body is saying that your body is wrong. — Harry Hindu

But it's not to have a somatic delusion. You're stretching the psychiatric definition, given the ambiguous language in saying that one's body is wrong.

Do transgenders have a problem with their hair color, eye color, skin color, etc.? Is it only their sex organs? It's not that they want to belong to a different body. It's that they want to have different sex organs.

It's not that they want to belong to a different body. It's that they want to have different sex organs. — Harry Hindu

I know. But that's not a somatic delusion. A somatic delusion is where you wrongly think that your body is infested with parasites, or that you're overweight when you're actually underweight.

It would be a somatic delusion if someone with male genitalia actually believes that they have female genitalia, and so wrongly considers themselves a cisgender woman. But that's not how it is for the transgender person.

Then they are confusing their mental state and/or behavior and their sex. Again, how do they know what it feels like to be the opposite sex?

Then they are confusing their mental state and/or behavior and their sex. — Harry Hindu

Nobody confuses their mental state and/or behaviour with their genitals.

Nobody confuses their mental state and/or behaviour with their genitals. — Michael

I don't know, I can think of a few footballers who do.

Isn't saying a body is deceased saying something is wrong with body? or the body not being as it should? — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Yes, but the reverse isn't true. The illness is specifically in believing that you have a disease you don't have, which isn't the case for the transgender person.

Only because it seems you have arbitrarily decided that if someone thinks they are something other than their body is, that means they are correct in saying so. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

No I'm not. I'm saying that the psychiatric definition of somatic delusions doesn't cover cases like transgenderism. It covers cases of thinking that one has some disease or abnormality that one doesn't, or exaggerating some flaw that one does have.

Can a man really know what it feels like to be a woman?

If the feminine essence concept of transsexuality is correct then they can, because being a woman does not depend on having female genitalia. So the fact that they don't know what it feels like to have female genitalia doesn't entail that they don't know what it feels like to be a woman. They do know what it feels like to be a woman because they are women (albeit with male genitalia).

The issue is that you seem to equate gender with sex despite the fact that there is a distinction.

People are born with mental disorders. I also mentioned that it has to do with how they were raised. Is there a study on trans people and how they were raised, like how their parents treated them as they developed (cross-dressing them, etc.). And at what point does a child actually choose his gender as opposed to it being chosen for them by their parents in how they treat them and interact with them? — Harry Hindu

I believe I already addressed this. Gender is a social construct so it is the interplay of "being born" with the tendency towards being confused about your gender and the environment influencing them. It's a choice because they could choose let it bother them or not. I don't think most people consciously choose it anyways. Most just "go with it" based on the influences of their parents and those around them. So I'm not sure if there is a real distinction to be made. When you feel like a "women" but you are sexually a man that is when you see an issue. That feeling comes from looking at the gender expectations and feeling like you "fit" into to that better.

What evidence is this if you don't mind me asking? It would be interesting to have a look over that. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

This is a twin study about trans twins that are dizygotic vs monozygotic twins.
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2013-transsexuality.html

A study that compared human stria terminalis neuron count in trans individuals vs cis individuals. Chung, WC; De Vries, GJ; Swaab, DF (2002). "Sexual differentiation of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in humans may extend into adulthood". Journal of Neuroscience. 22 (3): 1027–33.

Follow up study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X06001462?via%3Dihub

Another follow up study to the first https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09513590400018231

There are a bunch more. Interesting stuff. Pretty dense though. And that is from someone that is actually in the field. : / Which leads me to think that this makes conversation impossible because most can't be bothered to actual look through the material. Thankfully most of it isn't put behind a paywall... Let me know what you think. All I know is that hormones are a POWERFUL thing.

This view on "essence" might be false, but it isn't a somatic delusion. — Michael

Somatic: An individual believes that he or she is experiencing physical sensations or bodily dysfunctions, such as foul odors or insects crawling on or under the skin, or is suffering from a general medical condition or defect.
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/delusional-disorder

Somatic type: delusions that the person has some physical defect or general medical condition
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder

Does the transgender find themselves suffering from a physical defect? If not, then why do they attempt to change themselves physically, by going to a physician, to feel "better"?

A better example would be believing that you are Elvis reincarnated and you dress and behave like him. You even go have a sex change (if you were a woman) and plastic surgery to look like him. When people try to tell you that you might be taking this to far, you berate them for being trans-Elvis-phobes.

Does the transgender find themselves suffering from a physical defect? — Harry Hindu

No. The issue is one of incongruence between their gender identity and their biological sex, not in believing that they have some illness or physical defect. You're just taking advantage of ambiguous language. Transgenderism isn't the sort of condition that psychiatrists are talking about when they talk about somatic delusions.

the sources which you have mentioned don’t seem to link to each other and each has a considerable amount of personal bias towards the “CIS gender” side.

Biological sex is the physical body, and if they say they have the wrong body, then that is a defect, as it ‘should’ be otherwise. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

That's where you're stretching the definition. That's not what psychiatrists mean by "defect". By "defect" they mean something like a mole being a harbinger of cancer, or parasites infecting the body, or being overweight. No amount of equivocating on the word "wrong" is going to change that.

It seems as though you are playing around with the ambiguity of words more than anyone else here. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

I'm really not.

Is the cis gendered experience equivalent to be the trans gendered experience? — Mr Phil O'Sophy

I have no idea what this question means.

You really are. You’re limiting a words use to fit your argument when the word has more use than you are allowing it to have. By defect they do mean the specific things you have mentioned, but they also mean a number of other things, like I mentioned, neural defects, behavioral defects, defective beliefs etc etc etc. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

In the context of the medical diagnosis of somatic delusion, by "defect" they aren't referring to the sort of thing where someone believes that they were born in the "wrong" body. They're referring to the sort of thing where someone (unresonably) believes that the normal functioning of the body they actually have is impaired in some way.

Are there differences which give rise to the distinction between someone being cis gendered or being trans gendered? — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Presumably brain structure, as shown in this study.

Is there something that trans people, being trans can relate to in terms of their experience of being trans? are they united in their experience of being 'trapped in another body?

No. I believe there are transgender people who have no desire to undergo a sex change. They're happy with their body. As has been pointed out before, there is a distinction between gender and sex, and although a lot of people want for their sex to be congruent with their gender (those who transition), it isn't necessary.

or can the two experiences, (that is the experience of being a cis and trans person) equivalent?

I still don't know what this means.

How am I the one that was not making sense? What was "I did" supposed to be a sensible thing to respond to in that context?

Can a man really know what it feels like to be a woman? — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Well, can a woman? How can a man know what it feels like for the other men to feel like a man?

↪yatagarasu the sources which you have mentioned don’t seem to link to each other and each has a considerable amount of personal bias towards the “CIS gender” side. — Count Radetzky von Radetz

Don't link to each other? Biased towards the "cis" gender side? What does any of that mean? The last two studies are just reaffirmations of the first one and are not available. The comprehensive ones are the other ones. Personal bias? How do you get that from any of those studies? I'm serious. Please explain. : )-

Presumably brain structure, as shown in this study. — Michael

Exactly. The same is true of homosexual individuals brain structure.

↪yatagarasu if it’s dense i doubt i’ll Have the time to read through it till after my exams but I will certainly come back to them. Can you summarize them? What field do you work in if you don’t mind me asking? — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Yes. Whenever you have the time. : ) Good luck with your exams! : D

Unfortunately, I cannot. Mainly because it would we a long-winded summation by any account. And that I risk the chance of distorting the original studies by my personal "bias". So I usually let people just read it and see if they agree with me. I am currently working at Thermo Fisher as a researcher, but I specialize in neurobiology.

No. The issue is one of incongruence between their gender identity and their biological sex, not in believing that they have some illness or physical defect. You're just taking advantage of ambiguous language. Transgenderism isn't the sort of condition that psychiatrists are talking about when they talk about somatic delusions. — Michael

Like I said in the post you just cherry-picked. If they claim that they are woman in a man's body - that is claiming that you have a physical defect - that you are the wrong sex. To say that the issue is one of incongruence is to say that their feeling is true and their body is wrong - or defective. How do we know that it is the body that is defective and not the mind?

Psychiatrists are simply being inconsistent in order to not be labeled by society as being transgender phobes. Science is heavily influenced by culture - unfotunately.

"What makes a man a male and a woman a female?"

Why must we have two classes of people? Don't all of us have qualities of masculine and feminine? All of us have testosterone and estrogen coursing through our bodies - though our sexual organs tend to favor one or the other. There are men who grow breasts. There are aggressive and unnurturing women. How much cocoa do you have to add to the food before it becomes chocolate flavored? Perhaps we are all a blending of both genders.

That said, I do think there are people who seek contentment in their lives by living as the gender opposite to what society identified them to be. I don't see that as wrong or right, normal or aberrant. A person has certain natural freedoms to decide their behavior, enabling all of us to create our identities, our understanding of ourselves. To impose our own understanding of gender is to suppress that freedom of others, is it not?

I think what really bothers people is when they are deceived or surprised in the discovery of another person's nature against their representation of identity. We don't like to be lied to by "honest" salesmen. If the city council places a stop sign at a safe corner for our "safety", we wonder why it should be imposed upon our attention and behavior. If one perceives himself to be heterosexual, he doesn't want to discover that another person with whom he has been intimate is homosexual, and vice-versa.

When you ask what makes a person male or female, I would retort: why are you confused? All words carry meaning. That meaning differs from person to person, between contexts, and changes over time. Words are just vehicles of meaning in the transportation system of communication. If you like Fords, does that preclude others from driving Hondas?

Consider this: if you lived a few thousand years ago, you would have seen no "men" or "women" signs on the bathrooms, because the side of the trail or the pit out 'round the back of your hut would have been where you relieved yourself. People had more critical things to worry about than privacy or gender identity. May I submit that your question and corresponding confusion are artifacts of the society you live in, arising from something other than the nature of humankind.

Correct me if i’m Wrong (and that’s perfectly possible) but I think the US is like one of the leading places in terms of making it a comfortable place for people identifying as transgender and they have around 0.6% of their population that fall into this category. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Will you provide a source for that datum?

I don't know what the proportion is in the US today, or in any other place at any other time. Who cares? What point are you trying to make by focusing on the proportion with such determination?

I don't see what relevance such facts would have for the claims I've made thus far.

I think you mean sex. As under transgender idea gender is what you feel vs sex is what you are.

Regarding gender being whatever you feel it to be, if I feel 27 years old, but am actually 52, am I 27?

you could be health wise 27, but physically be 57.