personally really, I register my gender as belonging in the eyes of others. The thing I pass as for others is what my gender is; when people ask me my gender, I say 'woman' because that's what people largely think I am.
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That's the problem, I think. Your idea and definition of gender is tied up with passing and outward appearances. That is not what gender is.
Gender is a part of who you *feel* you are. It's part of your identity, not your appearance.
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But see, I legitimately cannot understand that. That does not compute for me. I don't understand how anybody could possibly 'feel' like a gender, actually, deep down, away from society and stuff.
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It might be something you'll just have to accept, without fully understanding it. I will likely never understand feeling female because it's not something I will experience, but I can accept that other AMAB people do.
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So.... I am open to this and this is an ongoing discussion I'm down to have. My question here, basically, is "are people just not introspecting hard enough to see there is no felt sense of gender?" I don't now if this is the case or if their brains are actually-
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wildly different from mine. Both have been the case in regards to other ways I've been confused about things - for example I was very doubtful aphantasia was real for a while, but now believe it's a thing, whereas processing of trauma went the "actually yeah people aren't-
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-introspecting hard enough" route.
I don't know which one this is. I suspect people aren't introspecting hard enough, or just that frameworks are kinda weird/unclear/unprecise and ironing them out would end up with all of us agreeing.
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There have been studies done of the brains of transgender people that show that, for example, a trans woman's brain is more similar to a cis woman's brain than a cis man's, and vice-versa. So there's science to back it up.
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Yeah I'm down with that! I do think there's definitely something going on in some people's brains that make them feel like they need to change their body. I believe this is true and believe they should be able to change their body.
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That something is probably what makes them feel like the gender they are.
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but we're back to the thing i don't get. I understand wanting to change your body. I understand wanting people to treat you differently. I understand having nonstandard expression preferences. I'm down with all that. But what does this have to do with gender?
It's not just about wanting people to treat you differently.
It's about wanting to be who *you* are.
A trans woman is a woman whose body is wrong (I apologize to anyone I offend for using inaccurate terminology here, I don't quite know the right words to use). She was always-
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Let me break this down for you.
I was assigned male at birth.
But I am a woman. I know I am a woman because I am.
Being seen for the woman that I am brings me euphoria.
That is being trans. Anyone who most comfortable being seen as a woman is a woman.
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