What is a Transgender?

I'll come back to "gender dysphoria" on another day, because it is more complicated than one or two days of research. However, understanding the implication that my boy-born child wants to live their life as a girl, I later looked up "transgender". 

The biggest reason was because there is a strong *causal* connection between "transgender" and "gender dysphoria". I have learned that gender dysphoria must happen to transgenders (trans) and not to cisgenders (people feeling they were assigned the correct gender at birth), but, not all trans have gender dysphoria. Sometimes, gender dysphoria goes away on its own, sometimes, after hormone therapy (for gender-affirming) and/or full transition (I'll come back to this), and sometimes, it never truly goes away.

So, for both the root and the solution of the problem, I started with basic conceptions.

- Transgender refers to one who feel like they were assigned the wrong gender at birth, for example, born and raised as a boy but feeling like a girl inside, or, hating female genital and wanting to have male body instead.

- Transgenders are not cisgenders, but it does not mean they have to be romantically interested in the same gender as they were assigned to, trans could be straight man, gay man, straight woman, lesbian woman, non-conforming, or agender...

- Cisgenders might also have body dysmorphia (hating their body image), which is one of the major symptoms of gender dysphoria, but they do not have an issue with their assigned gender, meaning the root of body dysmorphia is not the genetic gender.

- Transgender cannot be cured, and it is quite unhealthy to suppress or ignore or accept to just live by with it. There are about 0.3% of US populations that are trans, out of which, some choose to do continue living with their assigned gender, some choose to live with their genetic gender but without medical intervention, and some choose to transition to have their genetic gender, both psychologically, emotionally, and physically. 

For most of us, seeing a trans just means "another one" on earth and at best, we accept their freedom. Only until you are trans or have someone really close to you coming out as trans, you start to do more research and get better understanding.