@siege @JoscelynTransient I think it depends on how you define "trans".

From the outside, it's basically "live as another gender", with a spectrum ranging from "occasionally/for fun" to surgery/name change/etc.

If from the inside it's "fantasize about being another gender", then it would explain your reactions just as well as that screenshot.

I posted something a few years ago along those lines here, and the overwhelmingly kind reaction has been to effectively include me as trans. But I am...

@siege @JoscelynTransient ... 100% convinced currently that I will never live as another gender. I say that being totally fine with people applying the trans label to me. But I don't really, in my mind.

(The TL;DR is, I'm comfortable as I am, but if I could physically gender switch at will, I'd be happy to flip back and forth. Only time would tell in which form I'd spend more time.)

I think there's room for an in-between zone of the trans spectrum. Perhaps that would also make it less scary?

@siege @JoscelynTransient For what it's worth, this almost certainly relates to the relatively high statistic correlation of autistic and trans people.

The entirety of the autistic experienced, summarized, is "you do peopling wrong" - and that includes the expectations society projects onto your gender representation. It leads to a lot of introspection on what makes one "wrong", when one feels "right" on the inside.

Plus, personally speaking, there's a tad more distance between my mind and...

@siege @JoscelynTransient ... body than other folk seem to experience. I don't know if it's universal. But for me at least, it makes experimentation with the shell more "natural", because the ghost matters.

At least in principle; practice is where things get too hard to bother with for the most part.

It's less "yearning to be a girl", and way more "yearning to experience more lenses than one to experience life through".

I don't want to presume knowing what others feel, but it would make...

@siege @JoscelynTransient ... perfect sense to me if this was the source of some folks' dysphoria at least.

For me, it translated differently. I've just become stubborn about not letting others define me. And with time, getting more relaxed about this, too, because try as they might, they won't really succeed anyway.

Which is a large part of why I'm comfortable as I am.

@jens @JoscelynTransient I have several friends from my pretransition days who are in somewhat similar boats that you've laid out. They're aware they could be classified as trans, that they have gender desire internally but dont feel the need to act on it or label it. In the end its their life and call on what is and isnt important.

However: "there's a tad more distance between my mind and body than other folk seem to experience"

This sounds an awful lot like dissociation.

@jens @JoscelynTransient Denial is not something that a smart brain will simply overcome by being smart, that just means the brain is smarter at lying to itself. Worse, the smart person often thinks they're too clever to be tricked by their own brain.

And i dont want that to come off as stating either option is the truth. Just as long as you know the possibility and danger of the second, so you can recognise it if it occurs. I say that because you've replied to this thread..

@jens @JoscelynTransient you felt compelled to connect to it and talk about your own experience in relation to it - which means it must be important to you.

But if that second thing is true, and the gender desire you're talking about having is something that is in fact a core need that youve learnt to suppress then cracks will begin to occur in your psyche, body and life as it takes its toll.