I just think of myself as an undeveloped man.

To me its being born in wrong body + issues that came with it because of it .

I kind of hate it when cis people parrot back "born in the wrong body" to me. That model seems so reductive and simplistic.

Jumping in here...
I was big into why when I first figured out that the word transgender fit me.  One of my therapists told me about a study about hormone flooding in utero at certain times during development.  She went into a lot more detail that makes total physical sense to me.  No offense, please, but the wrong body theory sounds like a cosmic mistake and I'm not really able to wrap my head around.

but regardless, my working on aligning my inner vision of myself with my outer appearance. That inner vision comes from my brain and my soul.  I'm a guy.  Being able to interact in society as a guy makes me feel authentic and worthy of being alive while having to interact as a woman feels like I'm constantly on guard and faking it for the benefit of everyone around me.
Guy=at peace with myself
Woman-anxious actor

Just my take on things,
Chris

For me, that would imply I had an understanding of what the mismatch was. I've always known I'm "more than a tomboy", actively tried to mirror male mannerisms, and grew up into science and geek culture so there was always a certain expectation to be able to keep up with the guys at least, or even just be "one of the guys". With puberty I guess... I figured it was normal not to be thrilled with the changes, and I didn't have the self-awareness to say that I didn't like them "because I'm a boy". Looking back, I kinda wish I had, but now I know it's something I've always sort of felt, I just didn't understand how to talk about it or what to call it. Getting more seriously into acting has led me to explore a much more binary expression of gender and helped me realise just how much of the female stereotype I not only don't fit, but just plain don't GET.

I'm totally with you on that, PucksWaywardSon.
I have always been all the words that made up transgender, I just didn't know that transgender was a word (okay, that made sense inside my head.  Not sure it makes as much sense written down, though.)  But now that I know, there is no stuffing me back in that societal expectations box. 
Well, not quite true.  Until I get some things fixed on the home front, I'm living a  double life 1)me  vs 2) what I look like     But this in-between place won't last forever. 

Chris -who knows who I am but is still trying to figure out how to live who I am

Makes sense to me, Chris! And totally agreed, once you have the word for it, going back in the box just isn't possible.

I am not "a man in a woman's body". Nobody performed a brain swap between me and a woman. I am a man, and this is my body, there's just some reassembly required.

The "birth defect" model is what makes most sense to me. Another way of describing it is a factory mix-up. They installed the wrong parts and my OS just isn't programmed to deal with this crap.

Quote from: Arch on November 02, 2014, 01:42:44 PM
I kind of hate it when cis people parrot back "born in the wrong body" to me. That model seems so reductive and simplistic.

I think this is the issue, if people want to describe their lived experience in that way it's perfectly fine, many people do have intense physical dysphoria regarding their bodies which is why some trans people go to great lengths to correct it via surgery. The problem is when it gets turned into the totality of trans experiences, usually by cis individuals who mean well but aren't really helping. The born in the wrong body narrative can absolutely erase non-binary trans identities, also non-op identities because the usual assumption is that if you're born in the wrong body then you'll got to every possible lengths to change it, which we know is absolutely not the case.

[quote author=ftmax link=topic=176783.msg1555769#msg1555769 date=1414950686

I think the issue you encounter when you tell someone that your body and brain don't match is that they don't/can't understand why you can't just change the brain. In their minds, certainly it must be easier to go to therapy or take a prescription medication for the rest of your life instead of transitioning, taking hormones, and having surgeries. They haven't had the experience, they can't genuinely understand it.
[/quote]

Agreed. I am encountering a lot of "well, can't you just live with it?" type of responses. The answer is "quite frankly, not anymore."

As for me, I have been trying to explain it to people as I would to a child. My insides and outsides don't match up and I am going to go through a medical process to make them match.

-Bear

I just prefer being the other gender.

I was more than a little surprised to read this.  Evidently it's true:

5) Frydman, R. et. al. (1988) Pregnancy in a 46 XY patient. Fertil. Steril., 50:813-814.

6) Sauer, M.V., et. al. (1989) Successful twin pregnancy after embryo donation to a patient with XY gonadal dysgenesis. Amer. J. Obstet. Gynecol., 161:380-381.

7) Kan, A.K.S., et. al. (1997) Two successful pregnancies in a 46, XY patient. Hum. Reprod.,12(7):1434-1435.

Selvaraj, K., et. al. (2002) Successful pregnancy in a patient with a 46, XY karyotype. Fertil. Steril., Aug.; 78(2):419-420.

Quote from: Cindy on November 01, 2014, 05:26:28 PM
Have to remember as well that there are over 300 natal females who have given birth who are XY. The numbers are small because most people are not karyotyped routinely.

On the whimsical side I say "Tomato syndrome.. Mistaken for a vegetable, but really a fruit.."


In more serious tone I'll say "The abridged explanation is that because I physically looked like a guy, I mistakenly though I was a guy, despite numerous signs that this was an incorrect assumption on my part. So I spent the last 20-25yrs trying to 'Guy the most guy that I could guy' rather than seek treatment to correct some issues"

Either one I'll chase with a quick dictionary explanation of  dysphoria, then a somber statement of  some things that have triggered my dysphoria & the multitudes of feelings/reactions I've had ranging from touching beard stubble and having a panicked "get it off me! get it off me!" feeling, to more intense feelings like the time I got so queasy from just a soapy wash cloth touching down there, that I instantly doubled over in a near dry heave, slamming my head into the shower wall.   "It's a nightmare-ish roll of the dice for what will cause it & how bad it's going to be.. and its slowly getting worse."

I believe I am not a girl born in a boys body. This body is the only one I have.  I am just  a woman with the wrong body part  and that thing between my legs does not define me.

Yeah, I've never been a fan of saying that I was "born in the wrong body" or that I'm a "woman trapped in a man's body."

I had no issues with my body until puberty. And that's the thing... had I known that I really could be female despite my body, and that I had the option to start hormones once I recognized that I was starting to hate the puberty I was going through, I wouldn't have the "wrong body." Society is the one who told me that it was "wrong." Had it not been for that assumption that being female was somehow contrary to my body, I'd have gotten on hormones and just been another woman after that. And I'd love my body, my voice, everything. It's just that I didn't realize what my gender identity was, and that this gender identity was valid, soon enough.

Basically, I personally find it easier to just see myself as a tomboyish gender-nonconforming girl who later grew out of that gender-nonconformity when puberty started, but unfortunately a hormonal imbalance caused it to masculinize against my will. I don't even like calling myself trans, honestly, because it's not like I ever self-identified as male and then arbitrarily decided to switch. I was assigned male at birth based on my genitals, and I went along with it because people kept telling me I was a boy. Granted, my overall behavior was more androgynous, so I probably would have been equally able to accept myself as female had I been assigned female at birth instead, with the exact same body. So much cultural gender BS is involved with the notion of being "a girl trapped in a boy's body." I'm not trapped in anything. My body is mine, and it's just that I'm more comfortable with female hormones and a vagina. That doesn't mean I was a mistake or something. It's just that society assumes that all people born with penises have to be boys and therefore have to be mentally programmed to go through a male puberty, and vise versa.

So yah... In my mind, I'm not a "woman trapped in a man's body," and wasn't "born in the wrong body," I'm just a girl who was born with a penis. That doesn't make anything about me "wrong."

I do not like the brain and body not matching scenario.  I never felt trans as a young person.  This was most likely due to being babies to a very extreme degree.  I see myself as the same person I always have been.  My male self was just an immature version of myself.  The female version of me is the mature more refined version of who I am.  Think about in terms of music.  Would rather listen to a song on a clock radio or on a sound system with a subwoofer?  A sub woofer is a speaker that produces the base.  My male and female versions are the same.  Neither one was fake, but one is a more complete version.  The male version of me would be like listening to a song without any bass, and the female version would be like listening to the song with all the bass intact.  Neither version of the song is wrong, but one version does not sound as good as the other.   

I will also add that I almost felt the other way round - not a boy trapped in a girl's body, but maybe a girl with a boy's brain, because that was the only way I could reconcile the fact that I'm genetically/biologically/physically female but always wanted those "what gender is your brain?" quizzes to come out as male, and they usually do. On the very rare occasions that they didn't, it felt wrong. I just hadn't really thought about the possibility of actually changing the body to fit the mind - I think in a weird way as a kid I was kinda proud of being a bit different like that, but I was also in an all-girls school 11-17 so I didn't have a lot of guys to compare to and go "that's what I should be" just a lot of girls I hated because I couldn't figure them out and didn't want to be like them, and a handful of more tomboyish girls who became pretty much the only friends I had.

Quote from: Arch on November 01, 2014, 04:41:00 PM
. . . then what is it, for you? I've heard a lot of people say that the "born in the wrong body" paradigm distresses them or doesn't work for them or is incomplete or inaccurate. So I'm curious to hear how other people look at and describe their situations.

when I was coming to grips with my gender identity I really didn't relate to the whole being born in the wrong body thing or being a women trapped in a mans body. I never thought about what i could not change( how i was born). It was very distressing because it caused a lot of doubt in whether or not i was trans, even though i was absolutely thrilled by the idea that i could physically transition to a women. so i was going in and out of denial for years. I knew i felt how i felt, and i knew i wanted more then anything to be a women.

If i was asked if i could change the way i was born, i wouldn't have a sure answer. Being born with female parts would have changed how i was raised. it would have changed my whole life. im not sure where i would be, and that sounds terrifying.

I am alive. i am proud of myself for being the person i want to be. I know i will be happier after i transition, and i am comfortable with that. that's all i need.

The initial problem, I believe, was being born "into the wrong body" with the meaning that my brain has the innate and unchangeable opinion, mindset, or whatever that my physical form should be that of a human male while the reality, initially, was that I was born into a typical female form.  This implies that the mind and the body are two separate entities which I don't know if I 100% believe.  Then again I don't know that I don't.....

Unlike some on here, I always felt trans.  I told people when I was younger all the time that I was born into the wrong body... then life happened... I got distracted.  Eventually it was unavoidable to face my feelings on the matter once again.  Something had to change, and here I am.  For me its always been mostly about physical comfort. 

I actually don't think I'd have a problem at this point being recognized, or labeled, as a girl.. Seems odd, I guess.. At this point its literally not even a question in anyone who meets me's mind.  Maybe I don't know what I'm on about.  Really whats important to me is that I want to feel and look how I feel I should.  Having changed names and gender markers is kind of just a convenient way to not stick out.  I wasn't even planning on a name change, but my mother convinced me.  I don't regret it.  I kind of just see myself as just a human... I just want to be a human with a form I can be comfortable in.  I couldn't be comfortable with the form I was born in.  Sometimes it feels weird.  I feel like is this all cosmetic? I know it runs so much deeper... I know I couldn't have kept on keepin on without having undergone the changes I've made... I don't know if I've just rambled to oblivion or if any of that was pertinent. 

I guess as my form becomes more like I feel it should be, slowly step by step, the more connected my mind and body feel.  At this point its hard for me to visualize myself being born into the wrong body because as scarred and punctured as by body may be its mine.  I connect with the experiences I've had within it.  I'm me in a great part because of these issues I've experienced.  So I guess thats why I say I believe the initial problem was being born into the wrong body... but at this point I feel its gotten a little bit more complicated than that.... to say the least.

That post echoes my sentiments exactly, gnome kid. The physical discrepancy is the painful part.