Sincerely wondering about something. Maybe I shouldn't even ask, but it's a constant question in the back of my mind when I'm reading threads about transgenderism. Here it is. How can someone born male know what it even really means to be female and vice versa? How do they know that the thoughts and feelings they're having is just the exact same as a bio male/female? Is it just about the clothes, make up (or lack of it), and maybe not liking what your body has to offer as much as you like the "opposite sex"? I keep hearing that "gender" is much more complex than that. So how do we know with certainty that someone really is "a woman trapped in a man's body" or a "man trapped in a woman's body." How can trans people themselves be so sure?
Well, let's tease apart a couple things here.
Gender expression versus being transgender.
Yes, these are different. We all have gender expressions -- clothes, makeup, etc. The majority of us express somewhere in the half of spectrum that aligns with our sex. Some of us -- even people who aren't necessarily non-binary or trans -- express somewhere in the gray area. Some people express opposite their sex.
This expression is about our relationship to society, and where we fit within it. That's why tomboys are still girls, and effeminate men are still men. They're saying something about how their mind interacts with the world around them. That's important -- we are social creatures, and our relation to each other is individual and deserves respect.
However, being trans is a whole different ball game.
What is it like? I don't know. I'm not trans.
But their neurology, including things like distribution of gray matter and neurological processing of hormones, function more like the opposite sex. The sexual dimorphism of various parts of our bodies develop at different times in gestation; genital differentiation, neurological differentiation, and chromosomal differentiation all happen separately.
Because of this, there are cases where one of these factors just goes down on a different path. Why is complex: it's a combination of genes, the mother's hormones, and the hard wiring in the brain that is caused by those things.
Most trans people have phantom body sensations, mimicking the body parts their brain thinks they're supposed to have. Trans people tend to have neural hormone receptors that function like the opposite sex, so that for example the brain of an MTF is under-responding to the androgens their body makes, because that's not what their brain is built to be processing. Many young trans children believe they will go through the puberty of the opposite sex -- their neurology is telling them they will. And when it doesn't, they often quickly destabilize.
None of these are likely to be true of people who are simply non-normative.
It isn't about the clothes or make-up at all. Some people who are trans are also non-conforming to their gender. You can be a trans woman tomboy. Their tomboyishness is a statement of who they are socially. Their transsexuality is a statement of how their brain functions.
How can they be sure? Well, look. I've spent a lot of time in my life learning about and working on all sort of gender issues, and because of what I spend my time doing, I've mused on that a little. What's it mean to be a woman? I mean, I'm not a normative woman, and I wasn't a normative young girl either. And yet, when I look down, everything seems fine. I haven't been "confused," by the fact that I spend a lot of time on this subject. It hasn't changed my concrete perception of myself.
How do you know you're straight? You just do.
People who are somewhere around the center of the gender expression spectrum aren't an uncommon occurrence, even in social circles that aren't very accepting of gender variance. We all knew a "tomboy" in school. Some of them stayed that way. No one cares.
A rare few of those kids become distressed as they entered puberty, and wound up with GDD because their brain is trans. Some of them get help right away; some spend decades trying to hide or deny it because they maybe didn't grow up knowing about it so they don't know what's wrong with them, or they live in a community that isn't accepting. It doesn't change who they are. They stay trans, despite the denial, or even despite not knowing there's a name for it.
Whatever trans people are feeling is definitely not what I feel. I don't know what it would feel like to have a brain that refuses to process estrogen like a woman. I don't know what it would feel like to have a phantom penis. But I just know I'm a woman, and I've never felt those things, despite being the perfect candidate for "confusion," if this was actually a learned behavior. I mean, I've known LGBT people since I was a kid, and was non-normative even earlier.
It isn't really about what trans people think, so much as it is about what their brain tells them is there.
