[bryony]

The point is, our bodies aren't wrong, our brains are. We didn't get enough androgen in the womb so our brains feel female, and can't deal with the level that we produce - testosterone toxicity.

Wow, maybe I read that wrong, but it seems like exactly the opposite of anything I expected to see here. The body is a geneticly programmed vessel we use to get around and express our individuality. The brain (the mind) is who we are. So how can the brain be wrong?

Well, I do label myself heretic for a reason!

Search the forum for "vitale" and you'll find links to Dr Ann Vitale's papers and faqs.

"Who we are" very much depends on a complex balance of chemicals.

Before I took PM I suffered from anxiety about almost everything and mild depression for at least 10 years. The conditions in my life to produce those feelings externally have not changed, but my endocrine balance has - thanks to PM. So if "who I am" used to be a bag of worries agonising because he wasn't a female and could never be, how is it that "who I am" now does not?

Simply that the brain does go wrong - in this case, congenitally.

It is an almost universal cry from "real" transsexuals that "I was born in the wrong body", to the extent that only a heretic says "I was born with a mangled brain!". Which is why there is a whole industry making megabucks out of re-engineering the plumbing from one gender to another, instead of trying to fix the root cause, which is fixing the balance of chemicals in the brain so that it no longer causes the pain.

It's a controversial point, but I think the weight of evidence is with me on this.

B.