In addition, the repeated surgeries, secrecy and psychotherapy needed to maintain gender identities often have disastrous consequences. Recently, intersex adults have formed support groups, notably the Intersex Society of North America, to advocate for themselves and intersex children. Those who seek medical and legal sex reassignment feel alienated from their gender and may hate their bodies. A common claim is that of being a woman in a man's body, or a man in a woman's body. The medical establishment has responded to gender dysphoria by developing drastic surgical and hormonal treatments that attempt to make a person resemble the desired sex.
Treatment consists of repeated, painful, expensive surgery.
Men have electrolysis on their beards. Lifelong ingestion of hormones, which may cause cancer, helps to maintain the illusion of sex change. No one undergoes sex reassignment without powerful motivation. Unfortunately, regardless of how much treatment they have endured, transpeople rarely look just like the other gender. Some transfolk find that they are no more acceptable to society at large or to themselves, even after all the effort of sex reassignment.