Ferk

I agree. But this also applies to all social/behavioral labels.

Not all pizza-lovers are the same, not all left-handed people are the same... etc.

The question is: what is it that makes a "man" be considered different than a "woman"?

What do those 2 men, who are different, have in common that makes you still call them "men"?

Sorry, I was just agreeing with what you said in your second paragraph. Because it makes complete logical sense what you said there. So the "of course you would" was just a reaffirmation of what you described yourself, not a mandate over what you should feel.

Also, I do experience gender, just the same way as I experience color, taste, pain, happiness and all other experiences. I tried to explain it when I gave the example with "green" before. I experience green.. what I don't know is if "what it feels like" to experience green for me could really be identified with "green" beyond the social understanding I have from my interactions with other people when we see green.

In an island of men (not women) you would be exposed to the same different external behaviors and preferences associated to the archetype that you do not identify with, so of course you would feel a difference.

These external behaviors and preferences you perceive as different is what I was referring to with archetype/label/stereotype/pick-your-word.

The experience you describe requires interaction with other people who you (and society) categorizes as "girls" and "boys".

Without this interaction with this external categorization: would you have been able to find anything was "different"?

I feel that in order to have something feel "different" you need to have something to compare it to. Something you can perceive from others and that thus it must be reflected externally and not just something purely internal at the level of qualia (otherwise you wouldn't be able to compare it). So this is what I meant by archetype/label/stereotype/pick-your-word. That thing you felt was different which you perceived when comparing with other people outside of yourself.

I don't know, I would not say that I knew automatically when I was born what's the difference between "man" and "woman". Of course I have had clear feelings and preferences about a variety of topics, some instinctive and well defined, ever since I was born. But I don't think that's determined by a label. They clearly can fall into a particular label, but only "after the fact".

To me, "man" and "woman" can't be labels that go beyond the social/behavioral because I don't know what it feels like to be a man anymore than what I know it feels like to be a woman.. I only know myself, I can't possibly compare what I feel to what others feel, because those feelings are a "qualia" that cannot be simply be transmitted with words.

And without communication to compare and reference, I could not judge whether what I feel is "man" or "woman" at the level that you choose to do it. To me it's logically impossible to set a gender at such a deep level.

An analogy would be how I can never be sure that other people experience the same thing I experience when we both see and point to the color "green". "Green" is a construct based on our common understanding of the experience a particular wavelength that is emitted by an object we are pointing to. But the label "green" cannot go beyond that external consensus, because what I experience when the impulses caused by that wavelength reach my brain could perfectly be different than what you experience when that same wavelength causes yours.

We might even agree on what are the wavelengths that we call green, based on our own internal experience, because the experience I feel when seeing green might be similar every time I see green (and the same will happen for you)... but that does not mean that we are both having the same experience, it could be that what you experience as blue I experience as green and that what you experience as green I experience as blue, and yet every time we would agree on calling the same wavelengths the same way, because we would have learned to call them that way.

So it would be meaningless to say beyond any social agreement that I deeply think that this color should be "green" only based on my experience alone, because it would not be any different from saying that this color should be "blue"... the only thing that makes us both agree on calling a particular color experience as green and not blue is the social understanding of that experience matching a common external pattern we both agree on, and that we each match it with our respective (and possibly different) subjective experiences (qualia) when we see that color.

But the identity that I’m describing with that label, that exists at a level below social norms, and below stereotypes, even whilst being influenced by them.

Ok, then I see we are talking about different concepts. I was talking about the label itself. To me "woman" or "man" are just labels, they don't define what I am and don't affect in any way the image I have of myself.

By your definition I'm neither a "woman" nor a "man" because I don't personally feel like I should box myself in an identity to fit any particular definition of a label.

However, I'll be perfectly ok with boxing myself in one particular label so other can better understand my behavior and the language they use.

So I'm not a woman or a man, but the result of my behavior can be commonly classified as one.. and that's the only thing that makes me, commonly, refer to myself in public as one of those roles. But I'm not adapting my behavior to those roles.. it's the other way around: the roles are created to classify my behavior. People would commonly say I'm "cis" because the category that fits me best happens to be the same one that I was assigned at birth, but the category does not have influence over what I am.. it's the category the one that fits me, not me who fits the category.

To me, the words "woman" and "man" only make sense when linked to specific properties that the label is trying to find ways to describe as a group. They only make sense as stereotypes, they don't make sense in a deep internal level because what I am is more complex than a set of specific behaviors and looks... the expression of my internal complexity might be classifiable after-the-fact (for example, you could say I'm a person who drives themselves by logic, sometimes a bit too much), but they are just external aspects and not something that goes much deeper than a set of behaviors I appear to present to the outside world.

It's reductive if you see "stereotypes" as something simple. Imho, stereotypes are very complex (or perhaps another word would be "archetypes", if the word "stereotypes" has too many secondary connotations for native speakers, maybe).

To me the "stereotype" (or "archetype", or "social construct" like I pointed in my first comment) of a "woman" includes every characteristic or aspect that could make someone identify a person as a "woman". Not all aspects might manifest in all women, the more aspects match, the more confidence the person would have to identify the other as a woman. Same for "man", in fact, it could be a person matches both stereotypes/archetypes at an equal amount. Also there can be other gender stereotypes outside those two, because as long as you are using a word to describe a category of people you'd often have a complex set of properties that people would use to define whether it fits that category or not.

I agree that putting people in a box is just contributing to segregation, but I did not choose that, I'm just trying to understand how people are using the words other people invented. It's almost inevitable, even the word "trans" is in some way a category, and there are even super and sub categories... like say "LGBTQ+" or "non-binary".

Stereotypes are complicated.. when I say "gender stereotypes" I don't mean that there are only 2 stereotypes.

Is perfectly possible (in fact, it might be common) to have in mind different stereotypes for the word "feminine" and for the word "woman".. otherwise terms like "feminine man" or "masculine woman" would make no sense.

The stereotype of what's a woman (ie, what makes people consider a person a woman independently of their lower bits) is not necessarily the same as the stereotype of a feminine person.

What I said is that for a trans, "gender relates to what stereotype (social construct) a person identifies with". I did not say their gender matches a particular stereotype, but that it relates to it.

Someone who does not identify with a typical stereotype and believes that this makes them be of a different gender, is defining their gender based on whether they fit (or don't fit, in this case) a specific social stereotype.

However, someone who does not believe gender relates to stereotypes at all would not see that person as having a different gender because that person's gender (for those people) would be unrelated to whether they match (or identify themselves with) a stereotype or not.

Of course you (or anyone) don 't need to have surgery to conform to other people’s gender stereotypes. But I don't think that's what was implied here.

What's "feminine"? is that not a gender stereotype? I don't think there's anything wrong about being a man that closer fits a feminine stereotype than a masculine one.

what they really mean is that “men are supposed to be one way and women are supposed to be another,” with the implication that someone isn’t a real man or women if they are not that stereotype

I think what they often imply is that for them gender is just a way to refer to male and female sex, and not really a stereotype. If someone is female/male then in their eyes they are a woman/man regardless of what they look or how they behave, because it's not about social stereotypes for them. Even if a man looks and behaves like a stereotypical woman, it would not stop being "a real man" because for them gender isn't about looks, behavior or feelings of identity.

However, the trans community sees gender as something that relates to what stereotype (social construct) a person identifies with, and this makes gender independent of sex, because you can identify with a gender stereotype that does not match the stereotype that you might typically associate with your biological sex.

"liberalism" is a confusing word with 3 different meanings: "economic liberalism", "classical/conservative liberalism" or "social liberalism".

Seeking "freedom" does not mean much without specifying what kind of freedom you seek and in which area.

In the USA, "liberal" is almost synonym with "leftist" since it's always understood as "social liberalism" which actually relies on a strong government to defend social freedom.