It sounds like for you personally, the “body dysphoria” is less of an issue than the “social expectations of a man” dysphoria? I wonder how common that is. Maybe a lot of people’s gender dysphoria would be lessened if society can decouple behavioral expectations from physical appearance.
Decoupling behavioral expectations from physical appearance would be great! But that would be a titanic task, and shouldn't fall solely onto trans people, whose mental health often depends on seeing oneself as and being seen as the gender they identify as.
In addition, there is an undercurrent here that suggests "changing your body is bad," or perhaps some appeal to nature. If you hold these ideas, I would like to ask why, and perhaps reexamine why you believe so.
I'm non-binary. Some days the body dysphoria hits hard. Some days it's not a big deal at all. I am mostly unhappy I can't just float between them day by day. The body dysphoria I feel is mostly a dissatisfaction with how permanent bodies are. (There's a reason so many trans folks are also transhumanists. Gimme that cyber body please.)
> Is it biological in basis, spiritual/metaphysical, or cultural?
Personally, I view it as cultural leading to physiological -- what does it mean to be a man? What is "manly"? I think everyone can agree that "manliness" is different globally. Is Bill Gates manly? He's very successful, but is that something that's manly? Is Tom Cruise manly? Or Kid Rock? What about George Takei? Manliness has some multi-axis definition that exists in each culture around the world.
We call that set of vectors "being a man", and we push people who are born with penises into it because it seems to fit most people who are born with XY chromosomes. Personally, I think it's useful to decouple the two ideas -- what my body is, and what the cultural expectations are in how I should behave because I have that body. This is what people mean when they say gender is a social construct -- they are saying, "The piece we call 'manliness' is a separate concept from the piece we define by bodies."
Now, say I experience anxiety, fear, and revulsion about the set of vectors that define "manliness". I have a penis, but absolutely all the vectors for "womanliness" line up with my understanding of how the world works. Clothing, presentation, speech patterns, interests, activities, etc. etc. etc. What do I do in such a case?
I could just live my life in pursuit of the 'wrong' set of vectors -- but socially that's quite dangerous. When people who are "supposed" to maximize one set of vectors try to live with another set, they tend to get bullied (if not violently attacked.) This puts me in a bind -- either live a miserable life pretending to be manly OR push my body to try and match the set of vectors associated with womanliness. (Or, change society to stop caring so much about people who fall outside of the traditional vector space, but that's a lot harder than either of the two other approaches.)
> is being transgender also just a social construct that can and maybe should be addressed by loosening up our tight expectations for gender roles?
For me, absolutely! That's the exactly the sort of ideal world I'd love to be in -- let people just... pursue what makes them feel happy. If someone with a penis wants to get way into makeup and the color pink, stop beating the shit out of them for it.