Ok, let me address this as someone who was born female and knew at the age of 4 that he was a boy - as sure as he knew anything. I didn't have the language for it then obviously, had no idea WHY I was being told I was a girl. My dysphoria at that time was why no one could see that I was a boy. There was no body dysphoria, sure, I knew other boys had penises and I didn't. But I didn't really give that much thought at that age. Body parts just didn't matter to me - it was all very simple at that point. I wasn't bothered by my physical appearance, I wasn't forced into dresses, or to wear pink. I was a typical boy, I wore jeans and t-shirts and cowboy boots, dressed as Batman for Halloween, wore Six Million Dollar Man pj's and played with Hot Wheels. My Mom was a feminist for her time, and I was very much brought up feeling like I could be anyone I wanted to be - I was never pushed into stereotypical female roles as far as career interests, etc. So the theory that we felt like boys because of a "femalephobic" society, or being forced into sterotypically female behaviors is just nonsense.
The suggestion that a person who was truly born Transsexual would not feel any body dysphoria and would just be proud to be in the body they were born into makes no sense whatsoever. I wasn't dysphoric about my body until puberty - and why wouldn't I be? What boy would be ok with having breast growth, or having a period? I didn't hate those things because breasts are ugly or women having a period is unacceptable. I hated those things BECAUSE I was a boy. Other boys weren't growing breasts and having periods. Had I been female, I would, like most girls I knew, have welcomed those changes. My ex sister-in-law once told me, after I came out as Trans, that she felt sad that I hadn't learned to love my body and embrace being a woman like she did. I told her that I couldn't embrace being a woman, when I had known all my life I was a man. It always seemed so obvious to me, that I was simply born looking at the world through a boy's eyes, and that there really was no big dramatic environmental/social/mysogynistic thing done to me to make me feel the way I did. It also seemed perfectly natural to me, that I would change my physicality to more closely resemble how I felt on the inside, as soon as I knew that was an option. Sure, I had plenty of people at the time, telling me that I would have scars and I wouldn't look like a perfect man (people still love to harp on this with Transmen) but I wasn't out for a supermodel physique - I just wanted to feel comfortable in my skin and not walk though life wishing my breasts would disappear so that my clothes looked like I wanted them to. Yes I have scars on my chest... and I love them. I choose to see them as my medals. Or the road map to my past, if you will. I am not ashamed of them. I love my chest, and love that I no longer have to think twice when I get dressed and worry about hiding a part of me that never felt like mine. I don't worry about looking like a bio-male, because I'm not. But biology really makes no difference to the heart and soul. I don't need to look like Brad Pitt or some Greek God, because I look like me... and I really like me.
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