sssssso! i’m not here to argue with anyone. however, since this is a manga with an ftm main character, i have a pretty good idea of how the comments are going to look. as a result, i’m going to go ahead and explain, in simple terms, the science behind being transgender!
to start, you need to know that there are differences between the “male brain” and the “female brain” such as shape and size of different regions and output of different chemicals.
now, to put it in layman’s terms, what causes people to be transgender is this: while a fetus develops in the womb, the body starts as one gender. this is dictated by chromosomes, and, for the sake of brevity, we’ll just stick with xx and xy (though there are many, many variations). the body usually defaults to male or female, but occasionally ends up as some form of intersex.
next, the brain goes through a process in which it is exposed to hormones to masculinize it. the typical female brain will be masculinized less while the typical male brain will be masculinized more. however, sometimes an error occurs and the brain is exposed to too many or too few hormones. as they develop, the brain and the body don’t “talk” to each other, so if the brain is over- or under-masculinized, the body does not change with it. this results in a “male” brain in a female body, a “female” brain in a male body, or a brain somewhere in between the two types.
moderate to severe psychological distress tends to occur due to the mismatch between the brain and the body, known in medical terms as gender dysphoria. this has a general adverse effect on quality of life (to put it mildly), for which transitioning is the only existing treatment.
it is worth mentioning that there have been studies conducted in which transgender people of all types have had their brains scanned, and were found to have the “brain gender”, so to speak, of the gender they identify as.
here’s a good rule of thumb: the global medical community doesn’t tend to just go along with things for the hell of it. more information is easily accessible via the internet, just be careful where you get your information. hope this helps someone.