On "most people who say 'I'd be ok either way' just haven't thought about it much" - my suspicion is that a pretty large fraction of nominally-cis people actually do not have a strong attachment to their gender. I've seen this discussion play out in a couple of other places, and the result there was that roughly half the group had a strong sense of internal gender and couldn't believe the other half didn't feel anything of the kind, whereas the other half couldn't figure out what the first half was talking about and were disbelieving that so many people felt that way. My working hypothesis is that if you define "agender" to mean just "no sense of an internal gender", then a large fraction of the population (maybe 1/3, maybe 2/3, probably not 99% or 1%) is "agender".

If a person indicates they haven't thought about it much, fair enough to say "maybe they would feel differently if they thought about it more". But it seems presumptuous to say that even if a large number of people say "this isn't something I experience", they really must experience it, they just don't realize it. That seems like claiming you know better than they do about their internal sense of themselves. (And yes, I realize cis people do this to trans people all the time; it's presumptuous that way too, and extra obnoxious as there's a lot more history behind it.)

TL;DR: if "I don't feel any sense of X" is a common reply, maybe that's because many people actually don't have any sense of X. That doesn't mean people who do have a sense of X are wrong/delusional! It would just mean it's common not to have that sense; it may also be common to have it.

Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
Here is a quick questionnaire that may help you determine whether you are transgender.
I have here a button. If you press the button, your body will magically transform you into a cis-male version of yourself (i.e. what you might have looked like had you been born with XY chromosomes), and everyone in your life will accept you as if you were always that way. Do you press the button? What if the effects are permanent and irreversible?
Would press, I think. Would also pay $2000 to press, because I think I'd earn it back in increased salary pretty fast. Wouldn't pay $100,000 to press; that would be a big financial hit if I was wrong about the increased salary thing.

I'm asexual+aromantic, so losing partners (potential or real) wouldn't be an issue. I would probably find some aspects of male physiology annoying (I find some aspects of my current body upsetting too, but I've developed mechanisms to deal with those, and I'd have to find new ones). But I think it would be worth it to me, to not always be The Only Woman in the spaces I work and relax in, to not have my femaleness as a constant un-removable overlay on a huge range of interactions, coloring how people (but mostly men) see me. (Yes, maleness colors interactions too - but in my profession, it's the assumed default.)

If you were to wake up tomorrow morning with a male body, how would it make you feel? What about in a week? A month? A year? Ten years?
If it happened without my prior knowledge or consent I suspect all personal worries would be subsumed into "Wait, what, the laws of physics just did WHAT?" And/or thinking I was insane, especially if everyone else tells me I've always been male-bodied, as in that case "I have lost all my memories and invented a whole alternate life" seems like by far the most likely interpretation. If everyone else remembers me as a woman, then I'm pretty sure my first reaction would be a combination of trying to figure out how this had happened, and "Oh gods, my family / mortgage / job, how can I prove my identity"?

(I like my life. Do not particularly want it disrupted.)

But setting that aside... the thought of having a male body is not particularly appealing to me. However, the thought of being transformed into my brother's identical twin is much more appealing than the thought of being transformed into a woman with large breasts and a curvy figure.

I hate the idea of people viewing me through a sexualized lens. When I hit puberty I (a) cut my hair short, (b) stopped wearing anything that showed my body shape for about five years, and (c) wore the tightest sports bras I could find in the hope that it would prevent breast growth. I got lucky; the body I ended up with is not very different in shape from the body I had at age 12, just taller. But I am not attached to the female-coded aspects of my body. (I also researched hysterectomies starting around age 12.)

Would you rather be an average man, or a rich, attractive, successful woman? What about a woman who is only slightly richer, more attractive, and/or more successful?
I'll go with riches and success. I would certainly not trade my current life for the life of an average man. I assumed the button above left intelligence/skills/career intact.

If you were completely alone on a desert island like that hypothetical person I mentioned earlier, would you rather have a male or female body? What if a small group of friends and/or family were there too? A small group of strangers?
Female, provided I have a lifetime supply of my medications with me (they stop periods completely, and also stop my ovaries from growing giant cysts that render me incapacitated with pain). If I do not have my meds, I will take a healthy male body over a pain-wracked female body.

Small group of strangers I'd probably rather have a male body; I'd feel safer.

Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
Anyway, it's pretty common to hear people shrug and say, well, I don't think about it much, but I assume I'd be fine either way. You hear it from cis people, you hear it from nonbinary people, you even hear it from binary trans people who haven't worked it out yet. Probably because it feels like a rational, correct-sounding answer, I suppose? Generally it means you should keep thinking about it some more. Tweak the questions, change the parameters around a little, explore your feelings.
And sometimes it means no I really have thought about it and my internal sense of my woman-ness is pretty similar to my internal sense of my nationality - that is, it's had a big effect on my life (influencing where I can go, what I can do, and how people regard me), I have an official document that lists it, it influenced the cultural messages I absorbed as a child. But I'm also pretty sure that there is no deep affinity to [country of citizenship] engraved in my DNA, because my nationality is entirely a social/cultural construct. That doesn't mean it's not important, or it didn't shape me - but if an American tells me how she's always just known deep down that in her soul she's Australian, despite never having even visited the country, then I am going to give her the side-eye. I don't believe in intrinsic nationalities. Likewise, I don't believe in intrinsic gender for me personally.

But as Knaight says, all the evidence is that gender identity is "a big thing for a lot of other people that I personally don't get". (Knaight's post generally reflects my own feelings on the matter.)

Let's say instead of having everyone accept you in your new body, it makes it so that nobody notices. You are the only one who even sees the change. You're still perceived as your assigned gender by anyone who looks at you. The change is just for you, not for anyone else.
Yeah, in that case I have zero interest in pressing the button.

Nooooo that's incorrect! Because trans people also experience dysphoria related to their physical bodies! Primary and secondary sexual characteristics are obviously NOT social constructs!
Some trans people do - not all, if my understanding is correct. And since it's not all, that suggests you can have a sense of gender that is discordant with your assigned gender, while being perfectly comfortable with your body. This is mostly what makes it confusing to me; mental body maps miscalibrated to your actual body make perfect sense, but that's clearly not the only thing that's going on.

I think (correct me if I'm wrong) that AmberVael is classifying primary/secondary sex characteristics as traits that are (very strongly) associated with a particular cultural gender category. Because humans have roughly binary biological sexual characteristics (yes, I know intersex people exist, and even non-intersex people have a wide range of physiological variation, hence "roughly"), these form a natural way to split up the categories. But the traits are not the categories; you can be culturally regarded as a woman/man while not sharing the primary/secondary sex characteristics associated with those cultural categories.

Identifying with a given gender category can mean that you feel an affinity or identification with traits lying within that category - which could be physical traits, or activities, or qualities of personality, etc. Someone who cares nothing about any of the other traits in the category could want to be located in the category of "man" simply because they have a strong affinity for male-coded physiology (and severe dysphoria with their assigned-female body). But equally, someone might be fine with their assigned-female body and have no desire to change it, but always feel uncomfortable and out-of-place in female-coded spaces and activities, and want to be accepted as a man.

My understanding is that this describes some people's experiences pretty well, and it has the advantage of covering both people who feel physical dysphoria and people who feel social dysphoria. But my understanding is that there are also people for whom gender identity is not about any identifiable traits, it's just a strong feeling that they are happier and feel more like their true selves when they are identified (by themselves and/or by others) as members of a particular gender category.

Brains do not need codified reasons for the weird things they do. (My brain became irrationally euphoric in its first five minutes in Edinburgh, and no, I don't know why either.) I don't think trans people should need to construct a strict logical rationale behind those feelings of happiness/self-fulfillment when being associated with the "correct" gender, in order to have those feelings - and the actions that flow from them - respected and supported.

As Troacctid also said, the main reason for poking at how you feel about these categories is to figure out how to optimize your happiness; others' stories about being trans may reflect common patterns, that you can use to guide your own understanding. But there's nothing that says you have to fit anybody else's pattern.

[Usual disclaimer: I am AFAB and identify as a woman. I identify as cis unless people are using a definition that requires a sense of internal intrinsic gender identity as a woman, or similar. I am not an authority on trans people's experiences; what I've written above is from my own perspective, some of which I've learned by reading the writings of trans people on their own experiences.]