Frankly, I don’t understand most of what you said, I must be lacking some context. But I do want to clarify one point, which will help me understand a lot of things better. You said:
Saying I “was a woman” would imply that I chose to do so freely, which I did not.
How does one actually identify if they are a “man” or a “woman”? What list of criteria makes one of a certain gender?
I don’t think I follow that logic. If I was shown a photo of a baby (that eventually grows up to become a pilot) and asked if it was a photo of a pilot, I would say “no, it’s a photo of a baby, babies can’t be pilots”. Sure, it’s a photo of a baby that will become a pilot, but at that point, it’s just a baby, even though they are the same person.
“Back when they identified as a woman” is the same thing as “back when they were a woman”, because being a woman is merely an act of identifying as one, consciously or otherwise. There’s no universal truth for “being a woman”, gender is a human construct and therefore subjective, which means identifying as a woman is being a woman and vice-versa.
The photo is of a woman because at the time of taking it the character (and the actor) was a woman. Transition shouldn’t retroactively change reality.
Ok, I definitely didn’t see it that way. But the way you describe it, I was just constantly drawing a parallel with something like anorexia; you have an uncontrollable urge to change the way you look (and behave?). I know that gender dysphoria isn’t classified as a disorder and only a condition, but it certainly sounds like something that causes a lot of distress that one wouldn’t want to experience.
But now I understand that a person experiencing gender dysphoria should be treated as somebody with a disorder, in the sense that it’s something beyond their control and you can’t just logic your way out of it. Like, they just feel that way, even if it doesn’t make sense, and for their benefit, we just have to accept it.
I also suspect it’s not as bad as you described for everybody, but I need to be prepared for the worst case scenario, too.
Thank you for this massive write-up!