Ape_Togetha_Strong t1_je2kky0 wrote on March 28, 2023 at 11:11 PM

Mostly it has to do with how other people treat you.

If we treated everyone as if their biological sex didn't determine anything about them other than who they are capable of reproducing with, the idea of "not feeling like the sex you were born with" would seem a lot stranger. Most of what people describe when talking about what it feels like to identify as an gender has to do with the expectations, prejudgement, and treatment from others.

It's really a way of navigating and managing other people's expectations for you in a world where many, many people still use sex as a way of categorizing people for things OTHER than procreation, and use gender presentation as a proxy for sex.

Fakeid7 OP t1_je2mznh wrote on March 28, 2023 at 11:29 PM

This actually makes a lot of sense. So basically when a man (biologically) says "I identify as a woman" he means "I'd like to be treated like society treats woman". And if we treated people equally without any discrimination or stereotypes based on gender, there would be no need for people to identify as another gender than their biological sex?

Ape_Togetha_Strong t1_je2psqr wrote on March 28, 2023 at 11:49 PM

Keep in mind, this is not necessarily what is consciously going through people's minds when they think about gender identity. Cis women certainly don't have to think "I am happy with the way society treats me" to identify as a woman. They don't even have to feel "comfortable" with the way they are treated as a woman. It's hard to separate the "experience of being a woman" from "being a woman" when we are the sum of our experiences.

But that is also relevant to what it means to be trans, because it's not just about identifying as something else, it's also about not identifying as something, too. And again having to navigate a world where most other people are using gender as a proxy for sex and sex as a way to determine part of how they treat you means that there are advantages to having an outward expression of gender that fits with the expectations of others.