I think I actually put that down. Reasoning: gender is mostly, IMHO, social performance. Since I was born male, and was mostly trained to perform maleness, that’s mostly what I perform. But it’s not a conscious, reasoned-out choice made by weighing reasons for and against. It’s just the coincidence of what happened. A counterfactual me who had been born female and raised to perform femaleness, but was otherwise the same, would not be so masculine-leaning as to transition.
Weirdly enough, my normal behavior tends to code as more masculine than average. This is, as people would obviously reason if they could think at all clearly ;-), overcompensation for spending half my youth being told to stop being such an oversensitive pussy and man-up already (sorry for the language, but the experiences were rather severe, actually).
A counterfactual me who had been born female and raised to perform femaleness, but was otherwise the same,
I don’t understand how this counterfactual is supposed to work. Does being born female include not having a Y chromosome and thus no SRY gene, thus no testosterone bath in the womb and the resulting cascade? If so it’s unclear what you mean by “otherwise the same”.
I think I actually put that down. Reasoning: gender is mostly, IMHO, social performance. Since I was born male, and was mostly trained to perform maleness, that’s mostly what I perform. But it’s not a conscious, reasoned-out choice made by weighing reasons for and against. It’s just the coincidence of what happened. A counterfactual me who had been born female and raised to perform femaleness, but was otherwise the same, would not be so masculine-leaning as to transition.
Weirdly enough, my normal behavior tends to code as more masculine than average. This is, as people would obviously reason if they could think at all clearly ;-), overcompensation for spending half my youth being told to stop being such an oversensitive pussy and man-up already (sorry for the language, but the experiences were rather severe, actually).
I don’t understand how this counterfactual is supposed to work. Does being born female include not having a Y chromosome and thus no SRY gene, thus no testosterone bath in the womb and the resulting cascade? If so it’s unclear what you mean by “otherwise the same”.
Well yes, of course.