Here's the thing - as a kid, I was never told "I was born in the wrong body", nor was I punished for not being "girly" enough. I liked playing with barbies and wearing lipstick just as much as I liked cutting my hair short and playing in the mud. Nothing was off limits because my parents are awesome and my childhood home was basically Narnia. I learned about penises and vaginas early on, like you. It was just another thing to know, not a big deal. I never had a reason to dislike my female bits. Despite that, I still had gender dysphoria. I didn't tell anyone (because I didn't even realize it was a thing, I just thought I was a freak) and I thought it would go away on its own. Why shouldn't it? Kids grow out of stuff all the time, right? Twenty-plus years of misery later and nothing has changed. Literally decades of feeling wrong on so many levels that I can barely function as a human being. It tortures me to think that maybe, had I spoken up earlier, some of that misery could have been assuaged. It's all well and good to say that someone can't be born in the wrong body, and I don't like to be that person who says "you don't understand!" but really, you don't understand. Unless you've literally experienced gender dysphoria, you have no idea how uniquely awful and real it is. I also think it's ironic how you gradually realized you were gay, because it's very similar to how I realized I was transgender. I thought I was just a defective female, maybe I just didn't have enough confidence in my own body. I'm not saying that being gay is the same as being trans, and I'm not saying every situation is the same. I'm totally with you on some points; kids should NOT be nurtured into gender dysphoria, of course they shouldn't. Even though I didn't grow out of it, a lot of kids do. There should be safety measures in place to ensure that kids who are not trans don't wind up getting hormones or surgery they'll regret later. I do think that there should be more awareness, however. I know the statistics are low but have you considered that they're that low because many trans people are like me? Trying (successfully or unsuccessfully) to live with the shitty hand they were dealt? *Just wanted to mention that, no, I'm not a lesbian with internalized homophobia. I like guys.