Are there more men trapped in a woman's body vs women trapped a man's body?

[astro]

Re transgender people do more men or women percentage-wise identify themselves as being transgender?

[Sage_Rat]

Transsexual - Wikipedia Roughtly 3 to 1, with more males.

Note that there’s a technical difference between “transgender” and “transsexual”. I presume you mean the latter. If not, you’ll probably need to look up the statistics of the various other sorts of transgenders.

[Chronos]

Roughtly 3 to 1, with more males.

That is to say, more male bodies. By self-identification, it would be more females.

[Johanna]

A preponderance of MTFs over FTMs has been the conventional wisdom for many years, but I’m skeptical. :dubious: There are too many factors to consider to be able to settle on such a pat figure. When you factor the likely undercounting, observer bias, selectivity of the data, and differential treatment into it, and consider the sources: gender clinics which were originally set up in the 1960s with the purpose of treating mainly, or only, MTF-- and assuming that FTMs either didn’t exist or were too insignificant to deal with. The figures that often get cited are derived from data many years out of date. The linked cite on Wikipedia begins “There are no reliable statistics on the prevalence of transsexualism”-- and that is the essential thing to keep in mind. Also,

Undercounting: Lynn Conway researched this question taking into account data that the clinics tended to overlook-- and she found that the prevalence of transsexualism in the population is likely far higher than the conventional estimates.

Observer bias/confirmation bias and selectivity: The (unfounded) assumption years ago by the clinics used to be that FTMs were so few in number as to be insignificant. So they weren’t looking for them.

Differential treatment: The ratio of 3:1 comes from the data on surgery, not from transsexualism on the whole. The surgery for MTF women is both more effective and less expensive, so of course they get it more.

On the other hand, FTM men blend in with other men more easily, since the effects of testosterone are easy to add, hard to remove. Therefore they can more easily disappear into the woodwork and remain uncounted. And considering the crap that trans people have to suffer in this society, who can blame them?

The best answer I can give to this question is to say read Lynn Conway’s research into it, especially her critique of the methodologies used in counting. And Lynn shows her work.

@Lynn Conway

These figures are from decades-old data in the years when modern SRS had first became available. Some of the earliest published reports of estimates of prevalence originate with Walinder in Sweden in the 1960’s. He calculated prevalences of 1:37,000 for MtF and 1:100,000 for FtM transsexualism. Those numbers were widely cited and disseminated among U.S. researchers at a conference on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome at Stanford in February 1973, during the early years of Stanford’s gender program. Most later prevalence calculations then tended to “confirm” Walinder’s early estimates, which were usually informally quoted as “1:30,000 and 1:100,000”. Those were the prevalence numbers that I heard from Dr. Benjamin in the late 60’s, and those are the numbers that we still see in the DSM today!

However, the number of people seeking and obtaining SRS has increased dramatically since the 1960’s, as more affected people became aware of the possibility of treatment. More importantly, these figures do NOT indicate the prevalence of UNTREATED intense transsexualism. They only include those who bravely stepped forward and asked for SRS at a time when discrimination was incredibly intense. Common sense says there were many more who suffered in silence than came forward openly. But how many?

The sociology of how FTM men fit in with society is very different from that of MTF women, and I think that has a lot to do with how they’ve been undercounted: Current thinking is that the prevalence of FTMs is much closer to the prevalence of MTFs.

[Chronos]

On the other hand, FTM men blend in with other men more easily, since the effects of testosterone are easy to add, hard to remove. Therefore they can more easily disappear into the woodwork and remain uncounted. And considering the crap that trans people have to suffer in this society, who can blame them?

Is testosterone (or an equivalent) available without a prescription? One would think that there would be a number available for the number of physiologically-female patients prescribed testosterone (anonymized for patient privacy, of course).

[Johanna]

Hmm, there’s always black-market hormones for those who don’t go through the medical establishment. Is that what you meant? They’re either black market or prescription-- no OTC HRT that I ever heard of.