'Transracial' is a different thing entirely, as you suspected, and it shouldn't be connected with gender studies at all. just as a side note.

Imagine you're, like, 10 years old, and you go visit your grandma, and she does that thing where she pinches your cheek and tells you how handsome you look, little man. For a cis boy they'd probably like that, yeah? Because they generally grew up being instilled with ideas of how good a man they'll be, how they'll grow up big and strong like their dad. But for a trans kid, imagine that at school the day before, you saw your classmate get picked up by her grandma. Grandma told her granddaughter how pretty she'll be, and said something about how nice her hair looks. Now, when your grandma does this to you, saying you're gonna be a big strong boy, it just doesn't feel right, you know to smile and be nice to grandma, but how does a 10 year old explain their feelings of being embarrassed or uncomfortable just being called a strong boy? You grew up being told you're a boy and that you'll be big and strong, you /know/ that you're 'supposed' to like it and every other boy has no problem with it. But inside, your brain just flits back to how happy your classmate looked in the same situation, and you wonder what's wrong with you and why you feel like you'd rather be in her shoes instead. A lot of weird feelings for a kid, and a topic that most people are uneducated on = kid doesn't know how to talk about it, keeps it bottled up, tries to forget about it and just goes with the identity that was assigned at birth. As the kid goes through puberty, getting bigger, voice deeper, he doesn't like what he sees or hears in the mirror. He has no idea what's the cause, but that person in the mirror just doesn't feel like him.

Couple years later, kid has no sense of style, no skills at making yourself look good, just wears baggy clothes to hide his body. There's only a handful of pictures of you throughout your whole childhood because you can't stand how you look in a photo. No videos of you because you hate your deep voice. You spend your free time on the internet, and eventually learn about gender dysphoria and trans people. All you've ever heard before about this is that your family thinks it's a sin, that trans people are drag queens in bars trying to get guys to fuck them. But this info online tells you that other people have felt the same way you have your whole life, and being trans means many things, including feeling disconnected from your own appearance/body.

This turned into a rant, sorry, but I hope it may shed a little light. You're right that it's hard to have any idea what being female is like when you were born 'male'.

Additionally many trans people don't take care of their bodies early in their lives because it just doesn't feel worth it. Like your car is a crappy pickup truck shitbox, you look in the mirror and don't see why you should bother to polish a scrap heap. It drives to where you need to go, and that's it, it doesn't look or sound good like your friend's cars do. They love theirs, they like changing paint jobs and adding decals, working on the engine, it feels good to them to be rewarded with a good looking car to drive. You can't really relate though, every time you go to see what might make it look better, the only thing you see is putting paint on a dumpster. Lipstick on a pig. You feel like you'd like the Porsche that all the girls in class got instead, you see theirs all decked out and feel envious of the looks they get. But you have a shitty truck, just like every other boy, because that's what they assigned you at the start. You've never known what driving anything else is like, but one day you install a Porsche steering wheel and that little modification from the other side makes you really happy. You don't know why but just feeling more in line with the other side's cars feels better. Everyone laughs at you, saying trucks don't get porsche steering wheels, don't be gay. You still have never driven a porsche or anything like one, but that beautiful steering wheel feels more like your personality than any other part of your truck.

Now swap the cars with bodies. Go through life in a male body, nothing really felt good about it. Get your ears pierced one day, makes you look just a little more femme, and that one little detail feels more right to you than anything you've ever worn.