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I'm generally not that interested in trans stuff, and haven't really talked to trans people about their subjective experiences of it, but my wife suggested an idea about it the other day that had never occurred to me: I've never heard of a pre-transition trans person express the fear of not 'passing' in the opposite direction -- e.g., a pre-transition trans man, feeling like a man in a woman's body, finds himself in the women's locker room feeling afraid that the other women will detect that he's actually a man, despite his physically gynecoid appearance. If I were to wake up and find my mind 'trapped in a woman's body', I think it would be hard to escape the 'illusion of transparency' -- I'd be paranoid that I'd be found at as not a real woman, no matter how much I looked and sounded like one, because I'm 'essentially' a man. Is this an experience that trans people report?
The most vocally trans woman I know reports being abused by guys in middle and high school locker rooms specifically due to insufficient masculinity. She also has some serious baggage due to being continuously measured against her younger sister. This led to what could charitably be called “mommy issues,” but seems very compatible with the impostor syndrome you’re describing.
I suspect self-reports of this nature would be a little uncommon, because it feels like giving in to one of the more smug anti-trans talking points. At the same time, there are definitely people who feel paranoid about getting rejected by their fellow men/women.
If this person is over ~35 I'm gonna go ahead and say that (oddly) this was pretty much the universal experience of middle and high-school boy's locker rooms -- somehow even the bullies get bullied. (now they don't even make dudes shower together, so I'm not sure it's the same)
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https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1756-i-was-transgender-didnt-know-it-6-weird-realities.html Here's a cracked article that seems to shed some light on the question. Yes, obviously it's not the most reliable source, but I'm not convinced that those even exist when it comes to things adjacent to transgenderism, and obviously it's just one guy who admittedly gives plenty of support in his account for the autogynephilia hypothesis.
I feel like I should note that I'm pretty sure the balance of evidence leans against FTM and MTF transgenders being meaningfully the same thing/mirror images of each other. His experience probably doesn't reflect very much on that of the FTM crowd.
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I think the discomfort you'd feel would be that you lack typical female socialization, and would be worried about giving that away by not knowing certain etiquette, or behavior, or what have you.
I realize this is not the current orthodoxy, but the only way "being trans" forms a coherent concept, IMO, is as both a desire to have a differently sexed body, and then actively taking steps to remedy that situation. You can't be discovered to be "essentially a man", because there is no male essence aside from biology.
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Not trans, but my own take on it from talking to trans and not-trans-but-considered-it people:
One of the most common precursors to people going trans is an inability to mesh with one's own gender in social settings, especially in group settings. The guy who can't handle male social dynamics and ends up bullied or simply alone. The girl who can't wrap her head around female social games and thus is effectively exiled from female social contact.
I think of one moderately autistic woman I know who struggles very hard with this. Her natural responses in social situations lead her to being pretty inevitably hated by groups of women after enough exposure. This bleeds over into work, and has major negative professional impacts.
When interacting with men, on the other hand, she gets along great. It's not a sexual thing either, just that when she gives direct, blunt responses it's appreciated instead of hated.
I suspect this is why it correlates so strongly with autism. They struggle to fulfill the convoluted and difficult rules of intra-gender social interaction and find the (much looser) rules of cross-gender interaction more welcoming. They then falsely think this means they'd be better at intra-gender interaction as the opposite gender, rather than that they're simply benefiting from easier rules
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