Not a choice

It’s not a choice to be transsexual: it is thought to arise from the brain structure determined at the foetal stage of development, which is influenced by hormone development.

Parts of the brains of transsexual people have been found to have more in common with their identified sex than with the sex they have been born into.  The central region of the bed nucleus of the stria terininalis, (BSTc) is normally larger in a man than in a woman.  In a transsexual male, therefore, the size of the BSTc tends to correspond to the size of a biological female’s BSTc.  Regardless of their genetic sex and their genitalia, children born with a ‘female brain’ typically prefer female play and activities, and vice versa for children born with ‘male brains’.  These preferences  extend into adult life, and are generally so strong that the person will seek to undergo hormone therapy and surgery.

This knowledge about the brain is consistent with the fact that many transsexuals say they have always known they were born into the wrong body.  In cases where someone only ‘comes out’ as transsexual quite late on in life, it is typically as a result of repressing the identity for many, many years.