[chc]

What you're describing is the traditional view of gender dysphoria, and the thing is that treating it that way has been a massive failure in much the same way as gay conversion therapy. The data presented above suggest an explanation for why it's that way — because being transgender is not a mental illness like depression, but is instead a mismatch between your mental gender and your outward birth sex. It's true that SRS is pretty drastic, but at the moment it seems to be the best approach we've found to minimize transgender people's dysphoria.