Cheese alert: I want to thank you for your post. This type of post is what I look for on here in discussions.
I think you, or at least your wife, have a unique perspective on this issue that most do not. I understand the difficulties created in this discussion from transitioning (taking hormones and unnaturally altering your makeup). However, the broader issue deals with how society sees this issue and the process. The passionate fight against accepting transsexuals is concerning to me. Mostly because I see an overwealming desire to resist change, and to define life and living by a religious standard. When science is brought into the discussion, it is usually done without a broad knowledge on the subject. For example, scientifically gender is defined in binary terms, but we see examples that clearly reject this definition in terms of sex. And so we should also, imo, see gender as sometimes rejecting the binary definition as well.
Cross dressing, true mental disorders, men or women being raised or molded into an opposite gender identification can all contribute to the lack of understanding about gender as a spectrum.
It just goes back to the same argument over and over......spectrum versus a binary state. It’s not as absolute as people want it to be, and not as arbitrary as others want it to be either.