Livre d'Or

*hug* Thank you for this comment; I do hope this stuff isn't too painful for you. You're one of the people I think of as, well, you-gendered. And you're stating your feelings about this in stronger terms than in the post I linked to, but I can relate to how you're describing yourself as well.

I don't know if I can actually say I'm not a woman; in some ways I'd like to, but in other ways, I feel I get perceived as a woman and that counts for something (and I'm not particularly willing to go to significant effort to change that perception). Which is not to say that you have to come to the same conclusions as me, of course, obviously you could well be more intensely not gendered than I am.

Really good point about the inherent bias of talking about this kind of thing with people who are inclined to have these kinds of conversations! I definitely do know cis women who feel a strong sense of female identity, it's clearly not a purely oppositional thing. I think the people in the linked discussion who are arguing that non-feminine women should call themselves women in order to expand the range of options for other women are likely to be in that sort of category, they are cis women who have a clear female identity even though they don't conform to all the stereotypes.

As for pre-transition FTMs being more feminine than you, goodness only knows I know cis men who are more feminine than I am! (Yes, it's possible I'm wrong about some of the men I regard as cis, but I'm including people I know for a fact are cis.) Practically anyone who is feminine at all is more feminine than I am. I don't think that means I'm actually unknowingly trans myself and in denial about it!

Like you, I don't really have any desire to be a man. I want to be a person, not a gendered-person. Of course, being a man is the unmarked gender, isn't it, and obviously I'm not a defective-man, I'm actually a whole person myself. But I'm fairly certain that presenting as male would not actually fix that, I can't see myself as male, and at least with being female I have some practice at it and some ability to fake it where necessary.