I'll admit, this is the kind of thing I don't fully understand.
Here's my take:
A person is born. Their gender (based on their genitalia) is registered on the birth certificate. Okay, so they are a boy or a girl. At some point down the road that person says, "Oh, no, I identify with the other gender and I want to be officially that other gender." Okay.
I can see some problems about making the change official, and I can see an issue with some sort of reconciling a person's gender registration at birth and how that person identifies now. The only thing I think that is a problem is conforming a person's gender identification with the official records. Which I understand is a problem, because official record keeping isn't at all happy with change. Someone originally registered as male now wants to be registered as female, or the other way around. And another issue is those that prefer to be categorized as "other". Earlier today on the internet I was filling out some sort of personal information and was astounded to see that choice. I must say that I'm a (not sure if this is the correct term but I'll use it anyway because I think everyone reading this will understand) normative female, by which I mean I was born in a female body, and while I'm willing to complain about male privilege, I am quite happy with my body, have no desire whatsoever to be a male, and will proceed from there.
Which means on one level I don't understand transgender, only because I'm content with the body/gender I was born with. But I'm sufficiently imaginative that I can more or less get dissatisfaction with one's birth gender assignment. I do happen to know a transgender woman. I have no idea who she was before she became (and I'm making this up) Sally Smith, and I'm not a good enough friend to consider asking. I know her as "Sally Smith" and she's a wonderful person. I realize that her personal life is none of my business. Which is how it should be.
But the essential issue is, how do we deal with those who cross over? Who were born female and now are male, or the other way around. We need a simple institutional way to accommodate them. As well as those who identify as neither, which I'll admit leaves me very confused, but that is MY problem, not theirs. I'm the one that needs to change and understand, and their only thing is to give me the information I need to understand.
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