Hi Serah,

I definitely don’t mean to patronize; so if you sense that, it is my clumsiness and not my intention.

You wrote, “what if you woke up tomorrow, feeling like yourself and secure in the knowledge that you’re a man named Cliff, but in a female body? What if your self-conception of your male body was still there enough that body didn’t feel right or comfortable to you?”

The answer, I believe, is that I would not feel uncomfortable: I believe that I would get used to it pretty quickly. I don’t identify with being male — I am just me. I identify with science and mathematics and physical fitness, but not with being male, per se. Of course, I am 62, and so such a change might be late in my life to adjust completely, but I feel pretty certain that if it happened when I was young, it would have been a non-event — a surprise, but of little consequence.

However, I would still be attracted to women, so I would have to live as a lesbian. But that would be fine. In fact, the prospect is somewhat appealing — I can’t say why. One thing I know, is that there is and would not be anxiety about it, nor do I feel any anxiety about who I am today.

You also wrote, “what about people who feel like girls but are treated as boys by their families and all of society?”

I think that you are making an assumption: that others, if they were in the “wrong” body, would feel anxiety. I believe that is not so, and that is the heart of our disagreement. I think if I had been born with the same brain but a woman’s body, I would have not known the difference, and would feel no anxiety about it, just as I have felt no anxiety about the body that I have.

It is the anxiety about the mismatch that is the question. You claim that such anxiety is a result of the mismatch; I claim that the anxiety is not the result of the mismatch — that a mismatch does not by itself produce anxiety — but rather the anxiety is the product of a compulsion.

Unfortunately, there is no experiment I know of to resolve the issue, so perhaps we will just have to consider it unresolved. I know of no way to prove your theory over mine. Do you?

Does it matter? Certainly it does not matter in terms of how someone trans is treated by others: they should be treated as anyone. Compulsion or not, they should not be persecuted as they have been. They deserve the freedom to live in the manner that works for them — as anyone should be. Thus, it is really a theoretical question.