As a trans person I find myself working backwards to try and figure out what makes a person cis and this experience you’ve described actually seems to me to be the most common. I theorize that most cis people (though not all) are actually defined by an absent or fluid internal gender.
I theorize that a lot of cis and trans people talking past each other has us trans folks assuming that you, like us, experience gender as something rigid and stratified. Like one of the aspects of my experience is that I have zero ability to feel neutrality about my body’s sex characteristics or about the way people culturally react to my body. Every interaction where my physical sex comes into play in how my life is lived is absolutely hard wired. Some make me feel deficient… Generally anxious and depressed because I feel almost indescribably cheated of comfort and invisible to the people whom with I feel an affinity which makes me feel utterly alone and stranded. Dysphoria - a gulf not between just body and mind but between life and something that feels like an opposite. Not death persay but an empty facsimile of existence where I am a non-entity obscured by a series of barriers.
Others make me feel inexplicable joy and connection and vibrantly alive. The random vendor who called me “sir” over a year ago when I was sure I didn’t pass isn’t just memorable it made my month. Gender euphoria is well named as it is heady and intoxicating. Not simply a respite from dysphoria but a golden shimmering stand out where the memory can be relived vividly.
The stratification of feeling - dysphoria and euphoria is so concrete but neither is at all logical. I believe very firmly that the sexes are equal and being a man is not better or worse than being a woman if you were to look at those things in a purely objective sense… But that doesn’t change a damn thing. This isn’t a logical thing. I can keep feeding it logic but it will never change the fact that as I go about my day I feel constantly slapped with intense feelings about my body.
But cis people don’t seem to feel anything about their gender so their uncertainty is natural. When they are completely non reactive to them the question of “how do you know?” is natural because when you reach down being told that you have an internal sense of gender and don’t find one then the natural response is doubt. But I think there is an underlying reason why the satisfaction rate of trans specific gender affirming surgeries is so low… If you are cis a change of physical kit might not actually be terribly alarming because that fluidity might work in your favour. The only risk to transitioning a cis person by accident might just be to fertility which not all people, particularly trans men, actually give up when they surgically transition. Meaning we might just be assuming incredible levels of harm from a population that a) is unlikely to care about sex enough to prioritize physical transition and b) might not be lifeshattering adversely effected and c) if they want to transition back they can. The culture that supports trans people is also nessisary in the rare event someone does want to go back because they will likely be externally still be read as a trans person and would essentially basically require the exact same accomodations.
As a trans person I find myself working backwards to try and figure out what makes a person cis and this experience you’ve described actually seems to me to be the most common. I theorize that most cis people (though not all) are actually defined by an absent or fluid internal gender.
I theorize that a lot of cis and trans people talking past each other has us trans folks assuming that you, like us, experience gender as something rigid and stratified. Like one of the aspects of my experience is that I have zero ability to feel neutrality about my body’s sex characteristics or about the way people culturally react to my body. Every interaction where my physical sex comes into play in how my life is lived is absolutely hard wired. Some make me feel deficient… Generally anxious and depressed because I feel almost indescribably cheated of comfort and invisible to the people whom with I feel an affinity which makes me feel utterly alone and stranded. Dysphoria - a gulf not between just body and mind but between life and something that feels like an opposite. Not death persay but an empty facsimile of existence where I am a non-entity obscured by a series of barriers.
Others make me feel inexplicable joy and connection and vibrantly alive. The random vendor who called me “sir” over a year ago when I was sure I didn’t pass isn’t just memorable it made my month. Gender euphoria is well named as it is heady and intoxicating. Not simply a respite from dysphoria but a golden shimmering stand out where the memory can be relived vividly.
The stratification of feeling - dysphoria and euphoria is so concrete but neither is at all logical. I believe very firmly that the sexes are equal and being a man is not better or worse than being a woman if you were to look at those things in a purely objective sense… But that doesn’t change a damn thing. This isn’t a logical thing. I can keep feeding it logic but it will never change the fact that as I go about my day I feel constantly slapped with intense feelings about my body.
But cis people don’t seem to feel anything about their gender so their uncertainty is natural. When they are completely non reactive to them the question of “how do you know?” is natural because when you reach down being told that you have an internal sense of gender and don’t find one then the natural response is doubt. But I think there is an underlying reason why the satisfaction rate of trans specific gender affirming surgeries is so low… If you are cis a change of physical kit might not actually be terribly alarming because that fluidity might work in your favour. The only risk to transitioning a cis person by accident might just be to fertility which not all people, particularly trans men, actually give up when they surgically transition. Meaning we might just be assuming incredible levels of harm from a population that a) is unlikely to care about sex enough to prioritize physical transition and b) might not be lifeshattering adversely effected and c) if they want to transition back they can. The culture that supports trans people is also nessisary in the rare event someone does want to go back because they will likely be externally still be read as a trans person and would essentially basically require the exact same accomodations.