Can you put into words what feeling 'female' or 'male' means?

[gutrotweins]

Just that really.

Recently, I've read articles and watched TV programmes about children who feel they are a different gender at a really young age. I wonder if you find that their situations are trivialised by the fact that the media persist in identifying a trans-girl's 'femininity' with, say, pink and wearing makeup, and a trans-boy's 'masculinity' with, say, being competitive and brash.

Surely there is a deeper emotion?/feeling?/knowledge? of being born in the wrong body: a deep enough feeling to give an individual the strength to endure years of therapy, medication and surgery.

I write this as a cis woman (hope that phrase is correct), who has no interest in make-up, clothes, shopping, hair styles, pinkness, clothes... I've been wondering what makes me a 'woman', because I really don't think I'm much different to a man?

I would really like to understand this, and thank you to anyone who takes the time to try to explain.

Nope. I have a uterus that grew babies and breasts that fed them. Oh and have spent my life knowing that I am at high risk of sexual assault, rape and domestic abuse than a man.

My very young child used to be pretty convinced that he was a train. Thomas the Tank Engine to be exact. I would say “right - all the little engines need to put their shoes on now ready to see the Fat Controller at nursery”.

He is now back to being a little boy again.

I'm a mid-40s lesbian who isn't interested in kids or domesticity, wears trousers most of the time & has a techy job involving a lot of coding & maths.

I feel "like a woman" when I'm having a period, checking my breasts or discussing menopause with slightly older friends.

We're women because that's our sex. Please don't feel you have to use the term "cis" - it's an insult to you & to women in general. We don't need a prefix, we're just women. White, black, disabled, straight, lesbian, whatever, we're the sex with XX chromosomes & clitorises. And vaginas.

This article might explain a bit more:
fairplayforwomen.com/whomever-may-concern-re-gender-identity/

I have same thoughts as you OP. Haven't got a clue what it means. My friend attempted to explain it along the lines of "when you're straight you don't overthink being straight, you just are, and go about life without it being an issue"...but when you aren't straight you know you aren't, and it wouldn't feel right to live your life that way. So too is knowing you're not male/female - only aware when it's an issue.

It sort of made sense at the time although I'd had a couple of glasses of booze.

children who feel they are a different gender from a really young age don't exist.
If you're referring to, like, 3 years olds, 5 year olds. They're being children doing what normal children have always done. Exploring themselves in relationship to the world around them.
Immense parental failures are causing these children to be labelled as "Transgender" instead of being loved and nurtured just the way they are with no need for pronoun or bodily changes.

Teenagers are the most likely to announce they are Transgender and make a lot of demands. A whole back body dismorphia (thinking you're fat when you're thin) and anorexia/bulimia were the go-to mental health disorders of troubled teens. Now it's gender dysphoria. Being trans offers a whole load of attractive solutions.
Hate your body? You must be trans.
Non conformist? You must be trans.
Want an alter ego? Trans.
Want applause and attention? Trans

Surely there is a deeper emotion?/feeling?/knowledge? of being born in the wrong body: a deep enough feeling to give an individual the strength to endure years of therapy, medication and surgery.

Sorry to post again so quickly but the truth is, 80% of "trans" kids who aren't put on puberty blockers (chemo drugs) desist during puberty & grow up gay or lesbian.

But the ones put on blockers don't get the body & brain development that would have come with puberty so they don't grow out of it. They invariably go on to cross-sex hormones & end up as young adults with the genitals of children, facing a life of infertility, surgery, medication & - if you take reality TV star Jazz Jennings as a potential example - a life which might never include sexual satisfaction because Jazz's penis is simply not big enough to be inverted into a neovagina.

How can it be fair to put a primary school child on that path when they have no real concept of what it means?

*while not whole

OP. I do not identify with all those 'girly things' but you mention either. Yet I know I am female.

Just remember sex is biology. Gender is a social construct.

You don’t FEEL female or male.

You ARE born female or male.

I don't have any personal experience but have a friend who is 'old school trans'.

He is very open about what he felt when younger, he said it started around puberty and manifested as an intense hatred of his own body. Nothing about feeling 'like a woman' or any of that.

He isn't really under any delusions that he is actually a woman in his brain, just that he hated his body and feels more comfortable in his surgically altered one.

He is quite baffled by the current trend and is quite forceful in his belief that if you don't have dysmorphia and just feel like wearing something different then you are not 'trans'.

He is the one who actually directed me to this site after I received abuse online for standing up for him (he was being called truscum)

Empress I get that we can say we know we're 'women' because of XX chromosomes, our biology, etc, etc.

This is my dilemma - my body is the only proof I have of my 'woman-ness', as I don't match society's definition of 'feminine'. I can't really see a difference between me and dh, apart from our gonads . We are complete equals (with fairly similar interests).

How, therefore, does a young boy know that he's in the wrong body and is really a girl, despite having a boy's sex organs and XY chromosomes?
How does a girl know she's a boy, when she has a vagina and XX chromosomes?

What is driving this knowledge?

A heavily gendered society that puts girls in pink box A and boys in blue box B is driving it.
If you don't fit neatly into box A or B you're trans and you need change.

Young girls and boys don't know.
They're being told they don't fit in the way they are and are being told to change.

what you do (football) or what you wear (blue, pink, glitter) what you are interested in ( maths, cooking), how male/female you think you feel, and infinite combinations thereof does not define you as male or female.

It can’t. You just ARE.

I hope that's not true Patodp. I would like to think it's something more profound.

It really, really isn't.

There are a lot of parallels between religious cults and trans ideology.
It is wholly dependent on a belief system that can't be proven and followers are told they will find inner peace by becoming trans.
Underlying the ideology is deep homophobia, misogyny and conservatism.

Trans protagonists will have you believe that they hold special inner knowledge that gives them a more profound understanding of what it is to be a woman (or man) but somehow are never able to articulate it. It's wholly dependent on faith and blind belief.

Who actually knows how it feels to be a woman? A Transwoman does not know because they've never been one. A woman doesn't know because they've never been anything else.

Young children are being swept up in the trend mostly backed by wealthy middle aged autogynephiles and supported by TRAs who heavily promote the medicalisation and sterilisation of young children who can't consent, while heavily promoting de-medicalisation in adults, see self-ID.

Most the observations here re homophobia and autogynephiles emerged from within the LGB community particularly lesbians.

Trans ideologists target troubled teens and vulnerable parents struggling to understand a gender non-conforming child.
Mermaids has a lot to answer for, set up by a woman who castrated her son because he liked pink dresses, in a procedure so extreme it is now illegal where she went to do it, Thailand. She runs this "charity" basically insisting to parents that all children should be forced into the Transgender box, medicalised and modified, using emotionally manipulative techniques and even advises schools.

Troubled teens migrate to transgenderism for reasons outlined in my post above, hence the high attempted or threatened suicide rates. These children were depressed and troubled in the first place. That's why they are so prone to self harm and Transgenderism. These stats are manipulated by protagonists and usually used in this way.

"Transgender people suffer more depression and higher rates of attempted suicide because people are misgendering us and saying transwomen are not women so stfu and give us everything we want" and it's these manipulative techniques that result in worried parents paying for puberty blockers and cross sex hormones with no thought given to the long term consequences or health issues for the child.

It would be more productive to celebrate gender non conformity in a way that allows boys and girls to fit into whichever box they want without changing the definitions of woman / man and without demanding that everyone else believes in something that is not true and expecting us all to join the religious cult that we don't believe in.

*all children should be forced into the Transgender box
Should read
All gender non-conforming children

Patodp has just said it all for me, gutrot.

I don't think you can feel like a woman or a man, but you can be happy with the sex you have. I am not at all "girly" - I never wear make up, dresses or skirts, do the bare minimum to my hair and don't generally like the things society has decided are for women. But, I don't mind having female genitalia and find male people attractive, and therefore would consider myself a woman.

@Thebookswereherfriends so if you found women attractive instead of men, you wouldn't be a woman?

Awesome post padodp.