Non-LGBT aspie hoping to learn more about the T

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I want to take the time to thank those of you who put yourselves out on a limb to explain to us cis people about being trans. I've recently become close friends with a trans man, and part of the reason I'm able to be completely accepting, supporting, and comfortable with his identity is because of watching conversations on various forums that I visit.

Sometimes those forum conversations included very intolerant persons (the OP on this topic is NOT one of them) who refused to listen, however just because they're not listening doesn't mean no one is listening. Hopefully for every troll, there are others like me who are listening and learning.

I have always been more comfortable around guys than women, I am a professional woman over the age of 40 & I don't wear any makeup, live in shorts and tee shirts (yet I have never been a tomboy) I have never doubted that I am a hetro female. How do I know I'm a woman? Can't really tell you, it just...IS. I just know that I am female, even though I don't fit the typical "woman" mold/ do what women usually do.
When my trans son came out to me a year ago I was sooo confused. I have come to learn that gender just IS. Gender is what you feel like you are and it doesn't always match the physical sex. I never knew how gender oriented our world is. Do you know there are no "happy birthday child" or "grandchild" cards? They are ALL either son or daughter. Our world is so geared towards M or F and I was never even aware of it before gender became a major focus in our family.

How do you know if you are a cisgender? The same way a transgender knows, it just is.

As a sidenote, in Japanese the word for "grandchild" is 孫 (mago). This term is unisex. There are no simple words meaning "grandson" or "granddaughter" in Japanese. Generally, if referring to a "grandchild," you would have to find some other way than the word to convey the person's gender.

There was actually an episode of Chibi Maruko Chan about this, where Maruko traveled to the next town by herself. She met up with an old man who mentioned he had a grandchild (mago) who was Maruko's age who he was expecting to visit later that day. Maruko simply assumed this grandchild was a girl as she imagined meeting a new friend and having fun playing; she was dismayed, however, when the grandchild showed up, to learn that he was actually the ADHD boy from her class. She had always found that boy to be annoying.

This is a joke that would not translate well into English, where "grandson" or "granddaughter" often comes more naturally than the unisex "grandchild."

I am a transgender woman. Honestly there is a lot here, I recommend doing some research. This video series explains more than I can in a forum post.

EDIT: unfortunately I can't post a link because the forums won't let me.

Go to youtube and look at "Deep Stealth" and look at their "Coming Out - Transexual basics" video

Big thank you to Ellingtonia & fossil_n and all the others on this thread working to understand something that is new to them
Your willingness to learn about something that is different, your desire to educate yourselves makes the world a better and safer place for my trans son THANK YOU!! !

I'm non-binary but have so far followed the traditional female-to-male transition path (with hormones and surgery), and I can relate to this lack of comprehension of what it "feels" like to be a gender myself. I think that's why it was so difficult for me to realize I was some variant of trans in the first place.

For me, what made the difference was understanding the disparity between social and physical dysphoria. I didn't mind my breasts all that much, but their being there and marking me as female in others' eyes is what gave me enough discomfort that I eventually had chest reconstruction surgery to address that. I didn't particularly want my voice to drop or to grow a beard, but my appearance without the help of hormones like testosterone got people calling me "ma'am" or "she" (to clarify, I think I prefer gender neutral pronouns like "they/their/them" but to avoid confusion or complications in a professional work environment, I just stick with male pronouns and a traditionally male-associated name).

I still don't really "feel" male, but I get supremely more uncomfortable being referred to as female than I do male, so I've settled into a series of compromises in order to more often be referred to as the gender I more often associate with. I still can't say how it feels to be male or female, and I think a lot of times I take steps in my transition blindly, with the knowledge that if I don't like the changes or how I'm feeling, I'll stop, at least in terms of dealing with taking hormones (obviously, surgery is considerably more permanent, so I suppose it's a good thing I don't regret my decisions in that regard).

I can't tell if my inability to understand what it feels like to be a specific gender is because I'm autistic and have difficulties identifying my feelings just in general or because I truly am non-binary, someone whose gender is neither concretely and totally male nor female. Another thing I had to factor in was that I do very strongly identify as gay (attracted physically to men/male-identified people) so remaining as someone female-presenting wasn't working at all for me there either.

It's been a very complicated dance, that's for sure. And sometimes it's beyond overwhelming because the only thing I really know for certain is how I identify in terms of my attractions to other people. I feel like for most people gender identity is more innate than sexual orientation, which develops later. For me, it was totally the other way around.

Not sure if anything I've said is helpful, but that's my experience with my own gender identity and transition decisions. I've found that the narratives can be really varied and if you consult 10 people, you might just get 10 totally different answers as to why they transitioned or how they came to identify they way they now do. I think that's why I agree with people who claim gender is a spectrum. It just makes sense, given my own experiences.