Gender dysphoria and transsexualism

[Jessica]

Gender dysphoria involves a strong, persistent feeling that a persons anatomic sex does not match the persons inner sense of self as masculine, feminine, mixed, neutral, or something else (gender identity). This feeling of mismatch causes the person significant distress or greatly impairs the persons ability to function. Transsexualism is the most extreme form of gender dysphoria.

Children focus on activities typically associated with the other sex and have negative feelings about their genitals.
Doctors base the diagnosis on symptoms indicating a strong preference to be the other sex.
Most people who feel a strong need to live as the other sex seek treatment—hormone therapy and sometimes irreversible genital surgery—that will make their physical appearance like that of the gender they feel they are.
Some people who feel that their anatomic sex does not match their gender identity are satisfied by working, living, and dressing in society as a member of the opposite gender, but many of these people do not have symptoms that meet the criteria for gender dysphoria.

People with gender dysphoria believe that they are victims of a biologic accident and that they are cruelly imprisoned in a body incompatible with their inner sense of self as masculine, feminine, or something else (gender identity). For example, some people who are labeled male at birth feel like women trapped in a man