Gender

[gagged_Louise]

I get what you mean gloombunny, but isn't this about having the choice how one wants to shape one's femaleness too? Someone who is physically born (biology) and raised (social mores and codes) a woman has, in some ways, more of a choice how to "be female" - and that's not just equal to being tender, caring, graceful and nurturing - because she has a firm foundation: no one can take away her female body and her knowledge of 'living in a women's realm' and feeling natural with it. But to others who identify strongly with some kind of female attitudes and qualities, or could see themselves being in a girl's position sexually - we both do that, though in different ways - this is not a foundation we were born with, a learning process is involved, and getting to be an in-the-flesh female may seem the ground needed to get there - and also, in order to get other people to accept this side of you on an everyday basis. Without having to explain "I'm not a freak or a cracked actor, this is me". You're absolutely right that trans behaviour and transgender reality is a very multi-faceted phenomenon.

For an analogy, middle-class kids with a secure home base, money from home and a good education opt to dress down and act like working-class outsiders/punks some of the time. It's not the working class kids you most often see showing off that kind of rebellion cool or style warfare. Many of them would shy away from dressing in a "sloppy" way for a party, a reception, a night at the theatre. Why? Because the middle class kids have the money and the security to indulge in playing colourful white trash, and then return to their elite college or PR bureau. They have the freedom to choose, even when that means choosing to deny the normal ways of the middle class - and having the freedom to say "this stuff is important to me/to us and that stuff isn't much to care about" (in a general sense, not just talking style and music here) and backing it up with being a man/woman/student/black immigrant/media personality etc is part of the freedom to express yourself, but it's not a right we are born with. Think of all the instances when person X is able to say something for which person Y would have been booed off stage and branded an idiot, because X is, more or less consciously, reckoned to have "the background" that makes it a viable or permissible thing to say.