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Notes -
Transsexuality isn't about delusion - it's about desire.
And no one escapes desire, no matter how smart you are.
It's reasonable to take Mark's assertion that "X is true" to be strong prima facie evidence of X, if you generally trust his judgement. But surely you recognize that Mark's beliefs are still defeasible, correct? Mark can still be wrong.
If he were to say, for example, that God is real - and that, more specifically, Islam is the one true religion - I doubt you'd be running out to convert to Islam tomorrow. Islam doesn't become true just because Mark says so. That claim still has to be evaluated against the totality of available evidence and argumentation, even though the source is trustworthy.
Or suppose that he told you that a person can be both 18 years old and 36 years old at the exact same time. That's something that you know to be false, just based on an analysis of the structure of the sentence. Mark's statement to the contrary wouldn't be (or shouldn't be) enough to change your mind.
So why not treat Mark's claim that he is actually a woman named Mary the same as those other two examples? At worst, obviously false nonsense, and at best, a highly contentious claim that should only be accepted after a careful examination of the supporting arguments?
This. I think most Mottizens' model of the situation would be much improved my thinking of trans as primarily an unusual set of desires/preferences rather than as delusion or attention-seeking (or even, directly, an attempt to get one's rocks off). The thing that most transitioners (and a whole lot of others who don't go down that path) have in common is that they want, very badly, to be the opposite sex. The delusion, if it's there, is probably a consequence of that desire. Is that desire is born of a fetish or fetish-like sexual thing (AGP), or some emotional thing, or some complicated combination of these, or even of some external source like trauma? Probably each of these for different people (my money's on the complicated combination for most, though). But I strongly suspect that things almost never start with delusion.
Somewhat of a side note, but I find it relevant that quite a few philosophies and religions teach that mastering or overcoming your desires is a key to living well. Stoicism, Buddhism, and Christianity don't have too much in common philosophically, but they are all in agreement on that point. (Even then there are major differences -- Christianity teaches that some desires must be expunged and the others rightly ordered, while my understanding is that Buddhism thinks that they all have to go. But the common point is that if you can't rule your desires, they will rule you, to your detriment.)
I think this accurately describes pretty much all trans women who are making even a token effort to medically transition. For a lot of trans men (the canonical example being Ellen/Elliot Page), to me it looks less like wanting to be a man and more like wanting not to be a woman (including not being able to have children, not being someone who is the object of sexual desire etc.). For trans women, medical transition tends to scan as an attempt to fulfil a fantasy; for trans men, an elaborate form of self-harm and self-obliteration. The difference in the tone of trans memoirs is striking: trans women's tend to read like "coming out was the most joyous and uplifting moment of my life, I finally truly understand who I am and now I'm free to be my best self", while trans men's tend to read like "it was after my third suicide attempt during my second hospitalisation for anorexia (prompted by getting raped) that I finally realised I'm actually a trans man, and I am exactly as miserable and dysphoric since my mastectomy as I was beforehand".
You are probably right about that. The dynamics in the modal cases do seem different.
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