Such an interesting article about the psychological burden of performing “gender”

Are you suggesting your own individuality is just 'feels'? There's no biological reality behind it? Or that you were a 'blank slate' when you were born & all that you are is just 'learned performance'?

It’s good though to see ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ packaged in with all the other aspects of personality such as creativity and spirituality. I mean that’s always been the argument. These are just personality traits. Not some privileged aspect of a person that needs special accommodations.

What @BackToLurk said. And yes, blank slate, with a physical body that i inhabit that is clearly female. The rest is learned experience, reactions to that, personality, whatever you want to call it but not quantifiable or measurable to either myself or others.

Feelz are not real other than to the person experiencing them, and no male person can feel like a woman, any more than I can, I just feel like me. And accommodations that negatively affect others shouldn't be made for that.

How do you think a man who wants to become a woman feels?

Delusional? Frustrated? Disappointed?

I know a TiM who is completely open about their surgery & hormone supplementation not curing their dysphoria, they refer to themselves as a trans woman, not as a woman, they don’t perform hyper-femininity, but have no regrets about having surgery etc as the aesthetic change brings them a level of peace day to day. But they still have mental health/dysphoria issues and know they always will.

Lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_neuroscience

Ah, when your source is Wikipedia, we see you.

Assuming you are a new poster, please do explain to me what feeling like a woman is, and also what living as a woman is, without reference to long hair, make up and skirts/dresses, all of which are available to men.

Do tell as I've never figured it out. As I'm just me. And none of you have ever answered the question. Maybe it's our lucky day and you'll be the first!!

You’d think they’d at least read it so they could explain the relevance

Lots of 'gender' is attitudes in time, isnt it? And different in different countries.

Given its easier for women to reject lots of gender stereotypes, wouldn't we expect fewer women to be trans, not more?

Women can reject the stereotypes all they like - society still treats them like “women “ and mistreats them as a result

or a penchant for ritual blood magick or for paedophilia or for kleptomania or for torturing animals or for breaking plates in public or anything else that "demands expression", obviously. You can't push back the tide of who you really are without there being damaging consequences so learning to manage the stress of non acceptance is required. You have to curb the need you feel to slaughter bats on hilltop altars at full moon, or fornicate with toddlers, or steal small but valuable objects for which you have no particular use from Harrods or from the houses of your friends, or whatever other socially iffy thing is part of your personality, or people will undoubtedly look at you funny. Which of course would be literally killing you as well as causing you stress.

And I would be obliged to anyone with those personality traits if he or she damn' well did learn not to express their desires. Bats are most of them endangered species, apart from anything else.

You need to take this sort of guff to its extreme to see just what guff it is. We all just do have to learn not to "express" ourselves in unacceptable ways; it is something parents teach their children, and society in general teaches its members. No, darling, using our excrement to draw on the walls isn't something we do....

I suspect that actually, Descartes was right when he said "I think, therefore I am." It is the act of thinking that shapes people, really, as far as I can tell.

(But we can choose what we think about.)

But transitioning doesn't stop that either.

Exactly, I rember the awful case of a transman who was raped by a taxi driver and couldn't understand why they hadn't been safe as they were a man. The rapist knew exactly what they were.

Except it may shape you mentally, and how you interact with the world, but not physically, which can influence how the world interacts with you. I think he just meant I'm a sentient being therefore i see I exist, and no more than that.

You might as well ask what if feels like to be English. We know from all the fuss about Rishi Sunak saying he was English that people have very different ideas, and most of the time it doesn't matter. When it does matter (off hand I can only think of not paying the Scottish rate of income tax), your feelings are completely irrelevant.

.

There are vast tracts on this, and I absolutely am not going to get into it! But I did like the (apocryphal) text from the lavatory wall:
“The way to do is to be.—Lao-tse, Chinese philosopher.”
“The way to be is to do.—Dale Carnegie.”
“Do be do be do.—Frank Sinatra.”

The real burden is being forced to perform the gender they aren't.

There is a difference between being gender non-conforming and trying to hide your sex.

If you are just being yourself you are not 'performing gender'.

If every day you have to adjust your behaviour so that you pass as something that you are not, that is not being yourself.

You seem very invested in the idea that people who identify as trans are hated, and I don't think that is helpful to you.

Exactly

@TransParentlyAnnoyed “Trans people know who they are”

Do they?? They are pretending to be the opposite sex.

Absolutely this. Only getting older has made me feel less (excruciatingly, when I was younger) self-conscious about my appearance. I’ve actually made peace with my looks, over the years, and now think I’m passably ok. I’m sure I had some sort of body dysmorphia, because when I look back at photos of my teenage/young adult self, I’m quite taken aback to see that I wasn’t actually as hideous as I sometimes felt.

That’s what worries me, I think - that the awkwardness, dissatisfaction with appearance and uncertainty about identity that is commonplace when younger, given time and increased maturity, resolves naturally for most people. Where gender identity is concerned, however, it seems to be jumped on as something that should be ‘fixed’ immediately, and in some cases irrevocably, with no time to work through other issues which might be contributing to any feelings of discomfort and unhappiness.

No answer to your question yet, as far as I can see! It's a shame, as I thought perhaps today would be the day...

(cue rebuttal, something like "the premise of the question is flawed, which you would understand if...")

Anyway, at least you tried 😀

They may know who they are but they seem to have a massive problem accepting what they are