This is actually one of the key things about cis versus trans psychological makeup. It’s kind of more useful to look at the majority cis experience as a sort of flexibility of sexual phenotype (- what looks or appears male or female). The majority of cis people are actually fairly fluid in their concept and Preferrence of not really gender - but sex characteristics and they mentally adapt to meet whatever gender expectations and circumstances they end up in usually as a path of least resistance.
Transness (and a small theoretical subset of cis people ) actually experience the opposite of this : sexual phenotype rigidity. It’s like there’s a setting in the brain dailed all the one to one side of the brain’s expectation of physical sex characteristics. Gender as a concept of “feminine and masculine” as categories of social expectations of behaviour and culture is kind of is just the performative baggage on top. What is really happening is almost 100% about the body’s characteristics and the reason social engineering is such a big deal is because language is a mirror. If someone calls you by the wrong name or pronoun that is actually mapping onto you perceiving your own body’s through someone else and you can’t control how the feedback makes you feel because you are rigidly stuck on an independent internal reward/punishment system. Disparity brings pain, matching the expectation brings joy. Nothing is neutral.
The “gender performativity” concept a’la Judith Butler is actually more in line with a cis person’s concept of gender than a trans persons and untangling the two is really difficult because there’s not as much backwards engineering what cis people are actually like to properly compare. I can tell you though after speaking to a lot of both cis and trans people about their experiences that this is actually more like two entirely unique theories of how the idea of “gender” works where “gender” is actually meaning two kind of related concepts but not quite 1 to 1. There’s a fundamental difference that lies deep under this thing.
This is actually one of the key things about cis versus trans psychological makeup. It’s kind of more useful to look at the majority cis experience as a sort of flexibility of sexual phenotype (- what looks or appears male or female). The majority of cis people are actually fairly fluid in their concept and Preferrence of not really gender - but sex characteristics and they mentally adapt to meet whatever gender expectations and circumstances they end up in usually as a path of least resistance.
Transness (and a small theoretical subset of cis people ) actually experience the opposite of this : sexual phenotype rigidity. It’s like there’s a setting in the brain dailed all the one to one side of the brain’s expectation of physical sex characteristics. Gender as a concept of “feminine and masculine” as categories of social expectations of behaviour and culture is kind of is just the performative baggage on top. What is really happening is almost 100% about the body’s characteristics and the reason social engineering is such a big deal is because language is a mirror. If someone calls you by the wrong name or pronoun that is actually mapping onto you perceiving your own body’s through someone else and you can’t control how the feedback makes you feel because you are rigidly stuck on an independent internal reward/punishment system. Disparity brings pain, matching the expectation brings joy. Nothing is neutral.
The “gender performativity” concept a’la Judith Butler is actually more in line with a cis person’s concept of gender than a trans persons and untangling the two is really difficult because there’s not as much backwards engineering what cis people are actually like to properly compare. I can tell you though after speaking to a lot of both cis and trans people about their experiences that this is actually more like two entirely unique theories of how the idea of “gender” works where “gender” is actually meaning two kind of related concepts but not quite 1 to 1. There’s a fundamental difference that lies deep under this thing.