If you're a man, whatever you feel is what it feels like to be a man

I just don't understand how a man knows what it feels like to be a woman. At best, he feels like his interpretation of a woman, which could be completely incorrect (you've just got to listen to the song Dylan Mulvaney has just released!)

I've listened to it once and I am never ever listening to it again.

Well quite. I think I’d probably just get on with it, though it might be fascinating to have (probably, depending on the male body in question) a much higher sex drive and more confidence, which I believe are common effects of testosterone.

Equally, to the occasional transactivists who suggest that if I was offered a million dollars to transition, I still wouldn’t. It’s absolute nonsense. Admittedly if I still wanted to have a family, I probably wouldn’t, but as a menopausal woman who already has deteriorating health and a long time until pension age, I would almost certainly just go for it.

My guess is that the intensity of those feelings of revulsion some men who want to transition feel for actual women gives them quite a skewed idea about how most people feel about their sexed body.

Heh. You'll get people tell you that you can't even imagine the pain of being
in the wrong-sex body because you're in the right-sex body.

I've even seen people ask, how would you feel if (horror of horrors!) you woke
up tomorrow in a male body? Wouldn't you feel all wrong and terrible?

Actually no. If someone offered me the chance to wake up tomorrow in an average-ish mid-20s male body rather than my current average-ish mid-60s female one I'd bite their arm off. And even if it wasn't perfect I'm sure I'd learn to adapt to any weird maleness same as I learned to adapt to a female body.

I just don't understand how a man knows what it feels like to be a woman. At best, he feels like his interpretation of a woman, which could be completely incorrect (you've just got to listen to the song Dylan Mulvaney has just released!)

Why can't they just be a feminine man? I don't have a problem with that. It's the whole sports, changing rooms, compelled speech etc etc.

I'm not including men who parade their fetishism in public though. I don't need to see any grown men babies thank you very much!

Of course you are correct, OP. 'Woman' is not a feeling.

Time for those who believe in the fallacy to accept that the 'male experience' is not universal and just because they don't fit into a male stereotype, that doesn't mean that they are a woman or non-man which is what we appear to be now.

Exactly. This is what I first thought when I heard about "born in the wrong body" many years ago, and it's why I've never bought into the ideology, though I saw it as mostly harmless at first.

I find the whole thing bewildering. The only thing I've ever felt like is myself as a person - there's no "gender" involved.

I've experienced the physical effects of being in a female body, eg. giving birth but, like stubbing my toe or having toothache or eating candy floss, it was just a sensation - it didn't make me feel "female".

I can understand disliking your appearance - I've got short fat legs and if I could have an operation to turn them into long slender ones I'd seriously consider it 😁. And as I age I look into the mirror and think "That's not me. That's my mother... "

So I think that men who want to be women are interpreting dislike of their physical appearance as some metaphysical mistake when they were born. No harm in changing your appearance, but don't expect others to treat you as the person you are mimicing, any more than a woman of my age would be treated by you as a genuine 18 year old if I had extensive cosmetic surgery.

I'm really sorry, but we need a little chat about the Easter Bunny too. You may need wine.

At best I suppose a man who feels like a woman is in fact a man who think he feels like a woman. But he is still and will always be a man.

They feel like a man who mistakenly believes he knows what it’s like to feel like a woman?

Hang on, are you telling me there is no 'womanly essence' that makes a biological male in fact a woman?

Exactly. In the words of Dr Julia Long (I think), if a person has a penis he’s a man. That’s all there is to it, and whether he’s altered or removed it is irrelevant.