These studies are tough, Tutelary. Very tough. Brains are complicated things. Gender is complicated. If an individual waits 20 years to transition and is depressed and miserable throughout that time frame, can we reasonably expect that the act of transitioning is going to erase the incredible damage 20 years of deep depression can wreak on a brain? NO!
Also, if the fully transitioned individual faces marginalization and discrimination after having fantasized about how great things will be once he or she transitions, this might affect his or her level of happiness.
The bottom line is, for some individuals, one's physical sex and one's gender do not match, and this is a problem for them, a problem that an individual deserves to explore and address in ways he or she deems appropriate. It is not for you to decide how an individual whose physical sex and gender are misaligned should respond to this misalignment.
FOR NOW, the physical sex is a lot easier to address (change) than one's gender, which resides in the brain and is influenced by a combination of genetics and environment (and thus, VERY COMPLEX).
So, to be simple...let's break this down. Would you not agree that a person has a right to match their physical sex and their gender?
Now, let's use an analogy. Let's say you love the color blue, but your entire life, you parents have made you wear green clothes. You begged for blue clothes but you were told you had to wear green green green green. You fantasized about how good you would look in blue. Blue was the color of your favorite football team, and you really wanted to wear blue from head to toe! In fact, you even secretly put on a blue shirt one time at a friend's house on a sleepover and saw yourself in the mirror. WOW, you looked great! Blue is awesome!!! Blue blue blue!!
Now you are an adult on your own and you are faced with 2 choices:
A) Donate all those green clothes to Goodwill and buy all the blue clothes you want.
B) Attempt to convince yourself that you really, really DO in fact like the color green after all...in fact, you really prefer it to blue and you have been kidding yourself this whole time. Green is awesome.... you know if you keep telling yourself how much you love green, you will eventually convince yourself that green is awesome and it makes you look great and well, you don't want to upset your family, right?
I hope you would understand why some individuals would choose option A.
And just so we are clear... in the above example:
The actual color of the shirt (the exterior thing easy for all of us to identify and categorize) = one's physical sex.
The color you PREFER (for who knows what reason, you just simply LIKE the color blue but not the color green...you identify with the color blue and you always have...you can't explain it, you can't justify it...you just simply like the color blue and that's that) = one's gender.
Yes, my analogy above is ridiculously oversimplified, but I hope you will agree it would be ridiculously silly for someone to demand that you simply convince yourself that you like the color green from this day forward or enter "color preference conversion therapy." The latter does not work, is counter-productive, and wastes a lot of time and money.
