I don't really know where to start here. It seems like we're speaking separate languages altogether. There are multiple meanings to the word "feel". You're conflating several of them above. Some of the things you've listed are emotions (sad), some are actually physical and chemical signals being accepted by the brain (hungry, fatigued).
Some are more esoteric, and it gets complicated depending on whether the self-perception bears any connection to reality. Is a person who "feels" funny actually funny? What do they mean when they say that they "feel" pretty? Does that mean that they are interpreting an actual image of themselves (mirror, photo, etc.) as being unattractive? Or is it a mental state that is completely disconnected from observation? Or is it a mental construct based on the opinions and expressions of other people?
Indeed. You, yourself utilized more than one meaning of 'to feel' in the post I responded to. I did as well. And that is actually the point.
The ability to experience emotions is dependent on the functional integrity of a set of neural systems, predominately the limbic system and the amygdala. It's not magic.
Your ability to 'feel' yourself as female (I'm making the assumption here) is not in the least dependent upon your ability to touch and feel your genitals or to compare/contrast with what it 'feels' like to touch your partner's penis. Indeed, I would imagine that there is the sensory sensation of touching a penis and then there are the emotions that may (or may not) arouse within you, with lots of different feedbacks, etc.
Sure, the same was fairly true for me, although my parents were very unconcerned about gender roles, so I got to climb trees and play with cars. At least until puberty hit, and then I couldn't sit cross-legged because someone (read: an adult male) might stare at my crotch. But that's a whole different aspect of the cultural indoctrination of girls.
For a time when I was a girl, I was sometimes told, often by a sibling or cousin or sometimes just a neighborhood child or someone unpleasant at school that I wasn't 'really' a girl. Not that I didn't 'act like a girl.' I knew that I didn't necessarily act like I was told girls were supposed to act--and frankly, I vehemently disagreed with the notion that what I did or didn't do/like/behave was not something a girl would do or would like: I was girl, I was doing it, I liked it. QED. It was easy to simply shrug off.
Being TOLD I wasn't a girl: that was different. To me, that was an insult--not because being male was better/worse but because someone was fundamentally refusing to recognize me as who I was/am. That was the insult. Refusing to know me because they thought they knew something better or rather, it was actually an attempt to insult me and to get me to conform to some silly, insipid view of what a girl likes/does/is.
Did you "feel like a girl"? Or did you observe that you were a girl?
I felt like myself. I felt like the person I was, who had a female body. For the most part, as a child, I did not assign behaviors or thoughts or preferences, etc. to boy or girl. I knew my father left the house to go to work. I knew my mother did work around the house. I did not assume that all fathers left the house to go to work or that all mothers cooked and cleaned. And I did not assume that I would do ...anything at all the way either of my parents did.
I did not feel like a boy. I did not feel as though I did not belong in my body, even during early adolescence, when my body began to change. Even when I did not always welcome those changes, some of which seemed to bring restrictions on my actions (imposed by my mother).
I wasn't confused by any of this. I was irritated that I was being expected to stop doing things I liked because someone else said that girls couldn't or shouldn't do them. I thought that was a silly notion. I was a girl. I wanted to do those things. I liked doing those things. Clearly the statement that girls didn't do this or that was factually incorrect. I did not feel incorrect. I felt the box people wanted to force me into was too constricting and who needed to sit in a box anyway?
As for body differences, I never really noted them until I observed two boys peeing on a fire hydrant and wanted to be able to do the same instead of having to stop playing to go inside to use the bathroom. Penises looked to me like, except for urination, they would get in the way when you ran or climbed trees. I also didn't like boys' haircuts much. For the most part, aside from school and when my mother thought I should be dressed up, I was allowed to run around in pants and a tshirt. And to play with trucks and rocks and sticks and insects and to roller skate and ride a bicycle, and to get dirty. I thought and still think this is normal. I did enjoy dolls as they were more likely to go along with whatever my plans for an adventure were than my siblings. I think my parents, or my mother, was reassured by the doll playing. My father seemed to enjoy whatever my siblings and I liked to do.
As I grew older and imagined my life and my career, I imagined all sorts of things, some reality based, some not. I wanted to be a pirate. I wanted to be Tarzan --not Jane because Jane had to stay home and Tarzan got to swing on grape vines and have adventures. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to go on digs and learn about rocks and dinosaurs and ancient civilizations. I wanted to write stories and books and draw. I wanted to design houses. I wanted to have children, and to be their mother. I wanted to be a magical creature with wings to fly, a pouch like a kangaroo, able to run like a horse and to have a unicorn horn in the middle of my forehead. I wanted to be invisible so that I could observe without being noticed or bothered. Only one of those was in my mind associated with any gender.
Which some individuals who externally appear to be girls do feel.
What does that actually mean though? What do those girls feel that leads them to conclude that they "feel like a boy"? How do they even have a baseline for what a boy feels like?
I actually have no idea. I don't associate being a girl/woman/female with feeling any particular thing. It's just who I am.
The closest I can come--and I think of it differently, is knowing whether your are right handed or left handed.
A young man who grew up with my kids is dyslexic. He's really smart and creative but because he went to the local parochial school, his dyslexia wasn't identified and he just thought he was 'slow.' He's definitely not. Anyway, at some point, I was visiting my daughter who lived in the same city along with some of her friends, one of my sons, and we included this young man who was friends with all of them. He knew the neighborhood best, so he was riding in the front seat with me. I asked whether I should turn left or right at the next corner. He said he didn't know-- he had never learned to tell left from right. So I asked him to show me which hand he wrote with. He showed me his right hand. I told him that was his right hand. Anything on that side was 'right.' Somehow, no one had ever explained that to him--which I still find shocking. HIs parents are lovely people. intelligent and devoted, caring parents. But that led to a discussion: how do I know which hand is my right hand and which is my left? My right hand feels different to me. Not better or worse, just different. My right leg/foot as well, although I am ambidextrous with my feet.
And so it is with my sex and my gender: I feel female. I just do. I have often wished I had some of the conveniences and some of the opportunities that boys had when I was growing up that girls/I did not. I still wish I had had some of those opportunities. But I didn't actually want to be a boy.
I want to step back and draw a distinction here. Gender dysphoria is a real thing, certainly. but a lot of people over the last decade who have declared that they "feel" like a woman or a man or something in between or outside of the sex-binary do not have gender dysphoria. I've been provide with descriptions of how a person with gender dysphoria feels, what their perceptions are, how they relate to their own bodies... provided to me by people with gender dysphoria. I'm certain I don't have a complete expert understanding, but I have just enough to grasp the concept of something that is very much outside of my own experience. Although it's a small sample, none of them have expressed that they "feel" like the opposite sex. They've explained it as feeling uncomfortable in their own skin, feeling like there's something missing, being surprised to see their own genitalia, being repulsed by their genitals, being traumatized by their reflection in the mirror, because their mental construct of their bodies, and how those bodies relate to the world around them doesn't match their reality.
This is how I understand being transgender.
A whole lot of people self identifying as transgender recently do not express any gender dysphoria, they don't express any discomfort with or disconnect from their sexed bodies. Rather, they express themselves as being "socially" dysphoric. The want other people to treat them as if they're the opposite sex (or both or neither). Those tend to be the people who are most vocal about "feeling" like a girl or a boy. And I genuinely have no idea what they mean when they say that. None of them have been able to explain what "feeling like a boy" means in any way that is NOT exactly what you described above - a rejection of confining gender roles.
If you have a different experience or a different take on it, I'd love to hear it.
Well this is something I had to google. I very broadly agree that there is little or no reason to assign feelings or behaviors to a sex or gender. I don't quite understand people identifying as transgender when what they really object to is acting in some stereotypically gendered fashion. To me, that seems like something not transgender but as simply being unconventional. But this is not something I have even read much about, much less know anyone who feels transgender because they like to do things that stereotypes associate with the other gender? I'm not sure I get it.
