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Notes -
A common argument in trans discourse is "who are you to say someone isn't the gender he says he is? No one would know better than the person himself."
I've spent years operating on the opposite assumption about myself, that I'm a bad judge of myself. Furthermore, everyone has dissatisfaction with themselves and the world. Personally, I flip-flop, get dissatisfied about my life and direction, but most people tell me "that's life, get over it". But if I had a trans-like belief that "I know what I am, but the world won't let me be it," with tons of people telling me over and over that I'm right and there are evil people out to get me, I think I'd have latched onto it hard. Not because it's necessarily true, though. It converts vague restlessness into a clear enemy and a fixed identity, and that provides false stability and obsession for a feeling of listlessness.
So I don't buy that conviction is evidence of accuracy. If anything, the more invested I am in a belief about my identity, the less I honestly should trust it. I think it's at least possible that having an outside view is more accurate than one's own personal beliefs.
Is having skin in the game a reason to trust your self-read more, or less?
I think the issue is that most trans people don't feel that the outside view is operating in good faith. If there was a society wide consensus that transness was value neutral and all we were after was diagnostic accuracy then it would be easier to trust the outside view, but outside of particular social microclimates transness is stigmatized and so if you really are trans the outside view is going to be wrong. It's true that this oppositional relationship can polarize people into false certainty, but that seems like an inevitable consequence of the stigma, the more costly a decision is the bigger the sunk cost, the more people are going to dig in and defend their decision. Make the decision less costly, build trust that the outside view is a neutral diagnosis, and people may be more willing to reconsider it.
I'd also say that the opposite error, excessive trust of the outside view or not transitioning because of the cost, is very common. I felt that I was trans as a teenager and didn't transition for over a decade because I felt that if there was any uncertainty I should avoid the social/material costs of transitioning. This is not an uncommon story and I feel I would have been better off transitioning younger. Whatever the metaphysics of identity transition itself is a decision and subject to social incentives, and outside of certain social microclimates those incentives are overwhelmingly against transition.
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