Question Can I ask how do men know they are trans women?

A lot of people here gave some very jaded albeit probably very accurate responses, but i also want to point that i think some of them might feel like they have richer, more complex emotional experiences than other boys, and have bought in to the misogynistic idea that only women have complex emotions.

I have a background in activism/music and I know atleast 12 guys who used to present as typical hetero guys who in mid 2010s all came out as trans. Being oppressed is currency, I think they were jealous of the attention that women/POC musicians got and have romanticized view of oppression. Also a lot of these guys were never the masculine ideal so they were bullied as kids etc and wore like black lipstick and eyeliner sometimes. So they suffered but weren’t allowed to say they suffered because they were “straight white men”. Now all the sudden they can opt in to oppression, their bands get more attention, they can say they’re the biggest truest victims on a hero’s journey to abolish the cis oppressors. They were t wearing black lipstick because they were goth they were women this whole time! I do believe that gender dysphoria is a real condition that people experience but I have a hard time believing half my social group all genuinely struggle with their gender identity.

It’s not “dysphoria”, it’s pornsick misogyny.

I think it can be a result of a lot of different things.

• I think some men genuinely have sex dysphoria which also may or may not be caused by some of the below:

• Some men never fit in with boys growing up or other men due to patriarchal structures and male on male violence, so their mind processes this as "they're treating me like women therefore I am one".

• Some men have BPD/an unstable sense of identity and this gives them that.

• Some grew up in religious cults they now reject, but the way their brains were developed still exists, so the gender norms, misogyny, and homophobia present in how they percieved their worlds from a religious lens just manifests in a different way.

• autogynephilia

• Some men who are straight have harmless but atypical ways in which their sexuality is expressed in a het space (why do we never see straight men in booty shorts who have outwardly submissive behavior trying to pick up women in straight bars?). Thus this internal mismatch between their sex, sexual orientation, and ways in which they express their sexuality (and how these things conflict with heteronormative/straight culture) makes them feel this means they're women.

• Social contagion

• Some of these men had parents who indoctrinated them into it

• Some men are actually bisexual or gay but have internalized homiphobia and this dichotomy presents as "I must be a woman then"

• Some men genuinely relate more to women and our experiences and again process this as "I must be a woman".

• etc.

It's porn brain rot, plain and simple

I've asked a lot of them that, in a genuinely open minded and curious way, on reddit/Twitter/etc. The answer is never coherent. In my experience** it has always boiled down to "I have an emotion that I call 'feeling like a woman.'**"

When asked what that feeling actually is, it's often "gender euphoria" i.e. a feeling of sexual excitement from wearing women's clothes and/or putting on makeup and/or doing activities that they associate with women.

I have on occasion pointed out that women don't actually feel that way, in other words that feeling is not correctly described as "feeling like a woman," but it won't surprise anyone here that that comment generally meets with hostile retorts (I'm transphobic, how dare I gatekeep what feelings are "feeling like a woman"), and me getting blocked.

Another common answer is that they "feel like their true selves" when wearing women's clothes, vs. they feel "dysphoric" when contemplating themselves as a man. Again, not a feeling that women normally have.

I'm just confused, what does the science say and why is what was once a very rare form of dysphoria now increasingly common?

Because it’s not dysphoria in most cases. They just either have a fetish or want to get attention, or they just might not feel like they fit in with most men.

Honestly, I think experimenting with wanting to be the opposite sex is far more common than we’d think. However it does not always mean dysphoria like lots of these people are making it out to be. I don’t believe that “trans” is an actual thing because it would imply that someone is literally trapped in the wrong body which we know isn’t ever the case. I think there are just GNC people who internalize society’s gender based expectations so much that they feel uncomfortable in their own skin. This would account for the very small percentage of people who are the closest thing to “real” trans.

But I have browsed a lot of TIM subreddits and most of the “dysphoria” on there can be written off as a fetish.

It's a political identity and/or subculture at this point. So all it takes is 'I want to join rainbow club and help the cool kids fight the oppressive older generations! Maybe it'll help me get laid, too!'

When a man loves himself very much...

Men get an erection and jerk off to thinking of themselves as a woman, albeit a woman from porn. That's "gender euphoria" and that's what they mean.

Its almost everything you said plus one other thing that is normaly overlooked. You got this modern society, that really pleases no one, we got not a strong identity or social groups. You feel unhappy and unworthy, are lonely and has some degree of dismorphia. What is easier to try to make yourself a better person, put in doubt your past and decide you didn't take the best decisions or decide all your problems, all the things you didn't like its becuase destiny put you in the wrong body? The later is 1) not your fault 2) shields you from any responsability, past, present and future 3) gives you an "identity" 4) makes you so so very special...