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Notes -
Yes.
I'm actually mostly ok with saying that transsexuality is a mental illness. On the one hand, from a certain perspective that's literally what it is: it's an abnormal neurological development that causes adverse health effects, most notably to the reproductive system. On the other hand, I want to stress that it's not merely a mental illness. An individual's reasons for wanting to transition, or wanting to be the opposite gender, can be very complex and multifaceted, and they can go beyond a simple "my body just doesn't feel right". The "wrong body map" theory is a convenient and digestible PR narrative that the trans community can use to explain the phenomenon to normies and make it more medically legitimate, but it only covers a small portion of people's actual experiences.
I do think that the neuroscience underlying transsexuality differs in crucial ways from the neuroscience underlying other types of body dysmorphia, but I don't know the current state of research in this area and I have no way of directly proving it, and at any rate it's a largely academic question.
Regarding the references to amputation, I feel compelled to note, contra Freud, that a vagina is not the mere absence of a penis; it is its own organ, it's just as much of a positive presence as a penis is. The ideal for MTFs is not to engage in a simple act of self-destruction, but to trade one functioning sexual organ for another (current surgical techniques, of course, cannot actually achieve this, but can only provide a facsimile of it).
I mean even if the neuroscience underlying transexuality differed in a crucial way from other things, is 'something being a naturally occurring pattern in the brain' enough to legitimize it as a way of life? If there was a particular brain configuration that made you attracted to infants, which occurred naturally and spontaneously, it doesn't really seem sensible for society to say 'oh that's natural get out of his way'
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