If you asked the man the same question today, I suspect you would get the same answer. He would rather live without a penis than be a woman. However, the observation is not necessarily as misogynistic as you and many of the commentators seem to believe. Most of us have our identities wrapped up in our gender identity and comfort with our physical sex characteristics. They are both integral to who we are.

Being a trans woman, I had a disconnect between my physical characteristics and my internal gender. I was a woman that looked like a man. Unlike the unfortunate individual you describe who was forced into a transition contrary to his innate sense of gender, I gladly gave up my penis for a vagina. I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect and have never regretted it.

Many men are confused that I would surrender male privilege and have my penis voluntarily removed and replaced with a vagina. They could not imagine such a thing. It does not surprise me at all that they would rather live without a penis than be a woman. They are men and they desire male equipment and bodies. That is to be expected. A male body is part of who they are, even if partially incomplete.

I suspect you as a woman are happy identifying as such and are satisfied with your female physiology and anatomy. You cannot imagine being a man. Most of us are like that. Gender identity is not a choice and cannot be changed, learned or imposed upon anyone. (Just consider your tragic story of the boy raised as a girl because of a botched circumcision.) It is simply who we are. Whatever our identity may be, we are only happy when we have the physical characteristics and bodies to match whatever it may be.

I am a woman and have always been a woman, though much of my life the world perceived me as a man. If gender were a choice, and the primary consideration was privilege, I would never have voluntarily become a woman physically in both functionality and appearance. I would’ve stayed a man even without a penis if that is how I identified. Now that I am authentically to outward appearances and function the person I was always meant to be, I could not be happier. I regret nothing. I do not miss my privilege, but like any other woman, I push back against the double standards and patriarchal attitude of the male oriented society. It is unfair, regardless of whether I had stayed a man versus evolving into the woman I am now.

I read nothing into the fact that your male colleague said he would rather be a man without a penis than a woman. He is merely stating an obvious fact. Males want to have male bodies in the same way that women like having their female bodies. It is a fundamental part of who each of them are. Male privilege and misogyny are real, but preferring to stay male without a penis rather than becoming a woman is not necessarily driven by this fact. We are men or women because we think we are and that is the only way we are comfortable in our bodies. Nothing more, nothing less.