Ugh, I was about to congratulate you for taking on the tough topic of performative gender versus the experience of transgenderism, only to see some mansplaining regurgitation of Blanchard's "it's like BIID and it's really autogynephilia" dust.

Bleah.

Well hello, and thank you for these thoughts. I'm an old lady who 'transitioned' in '01. I put it in quotes because my essential nature didn't change a whit, of course. I'm still the intersexed gal I was in 1958.

I think one of the great benefits of society's semi-opening to transgenderism is the opportunity to ask how much of gender is performed--but as you imply, it could not be entirely performative, else transgenderism would not take on the power that it does over our psyches.

In my case I found "bottom surgery" to be tremendously liberating--such a relief--not just at the time but many years later. I think that speaks to a 'brain mandate,' if you will. I am reminded of a brain energy scan--it was either an fmri or a pet scan--that showed male and female fetuses in utero, exhibiting dissimilar patterns; the female had (typical) mirror symmetry between cerebella, and the male was (also typically) heavier on one hemisphere. What that dissimilarity might mean, I can't say, of course. But I think it does not at all degrade women to say that we are different.

(Somewhere a TERF's head just exploded, I think.)

I want to encourage you to think and write more about this (perhaps you already have).