May We See Some Gender ID?

I remember watching an Oprah show many moons ago - back when I watched TV, or even had one in my home - during which she featured adult guests who had transitioned into the opposite gender. As they recalled their journey, they described their childhood and shared how they'd felt this deep unease about being the gender they were born into, refusing to wear clothes that had been assigned to them when they were still in kindergarden. They opened up about the suffering they'd endured as they suppressed these feelings, sensing that they would not be received in their reality, quietly and desperately forcing themselves to accept their biological fate.
 
It had moved me quite a bit. It was, quite frankly, a reality I couldn't even conceive of. I'd joked many times that I had to have been a male in a previous life because I didn't fit so many typically female stereotypes, but it had never occurred to me I may have been born into the wrong gender. If they felt it this strongly, I could understand their need to make the eventual transition in order to sync up their inner and outer identities. Not being able to live authentically seemed like a cruel fate.
 
Until then, I'd spent most of my life leaning left. So far left on the political-compass spectrum, in fact, that I almost fell off the graph. Pro-choice, anti-gun, in favour of every possible human right, no matter how insignificant, on board the save-the-environment train, fully behind medicare for all - you name it, I backed it. I railed against conservatives whom I perceived as just that - conservative, stuffy, selfish, narrow-minded and stuck in the past. And so I steadfastly supported anyone who felt that transitioning was their path to fulfilment for years.
 
Fast-forward to today.

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