What exactly does it mean to say that you are/were a woman in a man’s body? In other words, how did you know? How did you know you weren’t just a man with an above-average number of feminine characteristics? And if I’m using the wrong vocabulary in asking these questions, I apologize.
It doesn’t quite feel like, “a woman in the body of a man,” per se. Dysphoria is more of this nagging feeling that something’s not quite right, like if you wore you shirt backwards, except in my case it’s, “why are you growing facial hair? That doesn’t look right.”
Now the level of distress this causes varies from person to person. Myself, I get mildly annoyed. My friend? She has vivid dreams of being a mother and wakes up crying because that can’t happen. There are other still that would fall somewhere between.
As for, “why not just a feminine man?” Well, Gender expression versus Gender Identity is a long subject. Suffice to say, though, I’ve tried being a “feminine man,” and it falls flat for me. Heck, I’m not even especially feminine now, but the changes from HRT make me feel more comfortable in my skin than anything I could do relating to my presentation.