Answered on Quora:
Transsexuals do indeed have a shortened life expectancy.
Fully 42% of transsexuals attempt suicide. That is by far the highest attempted suicide rate of any group. It is higher than even any mental disorder, including Depression and Bipolar Disorder.
Fully 18% of transsexuals die of suicide even after transition. This is as high or higher than the most fatal mental disorders such as Major Depression.
If transgenderism were a mental disorder (it’s been removed from the latest manual), it would be one of the most troubled, dangerous, and lethal disorders of them all.
There are extreme differences between early onset and late onset transgenderism in males. The late onset variety is usually related to a fetish called autogynephylia, and it is not organic at all. I have known some late onset types, and I did not feel that they were women in men’s bodies at all. Their style of thinking, their interests, and their way of writing were still very male and even masculine. They had a very “male” way of viewing the world.
The early onset type seems to be an extreme form of homosexuality and may well be more organic or at the very least is organic in the sense that it is related to the homosexuality. The early onset types are much more feminine.
In conclusion, in my opinion, transsexuals are simply people who have a lot of problems. These problems often continue though at a lower rate after transition.
There is also a high rate of reverse transition. Fully 13% of transsexuals transition back to their original sex. Fully 70% of transsexual minors are no longer transsexuals if followed to age 18. That is, in 70% of cases of transgender children, the transgenderism vanishes by adulthood. Their transgenderism was a temporary condition or state of mind that they grew out of. The fact that they do this shows that transgenderism in many cases is not an organic condition.
The rate of transgenderism has gone up fully 600 times since the 1960’s. We should not be seeing an increase like that if this were truly an organic condition in most cases.