The brain comes with a blueprint of what your body should look like. And sometimes that blueprint doesn’t match the anatomy you were born with.
In 2008, neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, from the University of California, San Diego, studied 29 trans men. 60% of them, 18 people, reported feeling a phantom penis they had never biologically possessed. They perceived its size, its shape, even erections and orgasms localized in a nonexistent organ.
It’s different from the phantom sensation felt by people who lose a limb through amputation. In that case, the brain misses something that did exist. In trans men, by contrast, the brain demands something that, according to its own neurological map, should always have been there. For many, it is a silent confirmation of their identity. For others, the contrast between that sensation and the real body becomes another source of dysphoria.
