Last updated: 7/28/2026
Guide to Trans Health Misconceptions:
This guide is to answer the most common misconceptions of transgender health and identity in society. These quotes were taken from various experts and graphics from transgender rights groups.
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CLAIM:
"You are either a boy or a girl. You either have a penis or a vagina. You can't change that."
TRUTH:
"Gender identity develops long before the physical change of puberty. People generally know their gender long before secondary sex characteristics develop, because gender identity has its own strong biological basis rooted in the brain and it exists separately from chromosomes, gonads, and hormones."
- Dr. Meredithe McNamara
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CLAIM:
"I don't believe transgender people even exist."
TRUTH:
"At the end of the day, we don't expect everyone to know exactly what it means to be transgender, but we do expect people to respect each other, even when we are different."
- Shane Diamond
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CLAIM:
"I'm pretty sure being transgender is just a phase"
TRUTH:
"Some people regret all types of medical care, whether it's knee replacement surgery or Accutane. With surgery and hormones, regret rates are less than 1 percent-among the lowest in all of medicine."
- Dr. Meredithe McNamara
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CLAIM:
"Why would someone not want to be the gender they were assigned at birth?"
TRUTH:
"Every day we interact with people of different races, religions, and backgrounds, and we don't need to be an expert in their experience to trust them with their experience and treat them with the same dignity we would want for ourselves."
- Gillian Branstetter, ACLU communications strategist
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CLAIM:
"But I'm quite sure that people are transgender so they can perv in women's restrooms or join women's sports leagues."
TRUTH:
"Despite fear-mongering from anti-transgender voices, the truth is, transgender people are actually most at risk for being attacked in the restroom."
- Shane Diamond, trans rights activist
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CLAIM:
"Thinking you're a different gender is just mental illness, right?
TRUTH:
"The American Psychiatric Association doesn't consider gender dysphoria to be a mental illness —it's classified as a sexual health condition that arises from discordance between one's physical body and sense of self."
- Dr. Meredithe McNamara
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