“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 9): Judith says that before sex-reassignment surgery, she had been “like a ghost or sentient mist”

According to the conventional view, the transsexual woman, prior to sex-reassignment surgery, already has a solid female consciousness.

But Judith says that prior to sex-reassignment surgery, she “had been more like a ghost, or some kind of sentient mist”:

“It occurred to me that after a while, the present trumps the past—that I had been a woman almost exactly as long as I had been a man, that I had been a mother for all but two of my son’s seventeen years, that whatever I had been, I had been something else for far longer. Plus, I had been solid, unlike my younger self, who had been more like a ghost, or some kind of sentient mist” (1, p. 147).

Is the conventional view wrong, or is Judith unconventional?

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.