Will share my personal experience here--honestly, I thought about this a long time personally for my own case, for years before and after my own transition.
To be honest? I ultimately arrived at the fact that I just feel happier when I present femme-ish. Usually still jeans and a t-shirt though--I'm not particularly hyperfeminine, as that's just not who I am.
I've decided that it works better for me, and that's enough for me.
Is it silly to "swap gender"? Absolutely. All notion of gender is silly, in my experience. We're told to perform certain appearances and actions and ideas, to socialize and be around people in a certain way. People treat you wildly differently (trust me, sigh) when they look at you and bin you as a woman versus a man--you wouldn't believe how stark of a difference it was even with old friends the minute they started physically perceiving me as a woman.
All of us are just trying to get through a wildly gendered world in a way that makes us happy--the least we can do is allow people their choice of the role they play in this grand performance, as all of us everywhere are acting.
'Transition' for me was just finally deciding that I got to pick how I socialize, how I act around people, how I dress, and so on. Someone could call me a man, perhaps--I wouldn't particularly be fond of it, and it would probably come across as unusual to others given my appearance, but surely it's a thing that could be said to me.
To be honest? I ultimately arrived at the fact that I just feel happier when I present femme-ish. Usually still jeans and a t-shirt though--I'm not particularly hyperfeminine, as that's just not who I am.
I've decided that it works better for me, and that's enough for me.
Is it silly to "swap gender"? Absolutely. All notion of gender is silly, in my experience. We're told to perform certain appearances and actions and ideas, to socialize and be around people in a certain way. People treat you wildly differently (trust me, sigh) when they look at you and bin you as a woman versus a man--you wouldn't believe how stark of a difference it was even with old friends the minute they started physically perceiving me as a woman.
All of us are just trying to get through a wildly gendered world in a way that makes us happy--the least we can do is allow people their choice of the role they play in this grand performance, as all of us everywhere are acting.
'Transition' for me was just finally deciding that I got to pick how I socialize, how I act around people, how I dress, and so on. Someone could call me a man, perhaps--I wouldn't particularly be fond of it, and it would probably come across as unusual to others given my appearance, but surely it's a thing that could be said to me.