theorizing

Model: For some significant fraction of trans people the following thing holds: gendered self-socialization is impeded and flawed because mismatch between assigned gender and innate gender identity potential. From this stems a lot of the comorbidities and components including anxiety, depression and dissociation. Transition helps in part by allowing successful gendered self-socialization absent this mismatch.

Predictions:

– Success of transition in reducing discomfort would be helped by doing this second socialization in a supportive community, less efficient otherwise. Transitioning body and brain would not solve all things immediately. Long-time gender anchoring might.

– A sex-transitioned cis adult would often not gain severe dysphoria overnight, and might not as often have it as bad as someone growing up and maladapting under a gender mismatch.

– I long thought trans comorbidity with autism was due to autism making such self-socialization harder. But perhaps it is reverse? That is, trans might be an autism risk factor, not the reverse. Then one might expect that there would exist autism gene markers _less_ common among trans autists than other autists. Also, just learned (more work from Melissa Hines) CAH, who are usually cis but unusually often trans, are not more often autistic.

I think some of these may bear out.