Men are supposed to avoid femininity, and men who display certain types of weakness or indecision or vulnerability are derided as 'women' and threatened with exclusion from the relative safety [ uh, really? ] of man pack competition .

Yet of course men - most if not all men, can be feminine - it is just a way of being in the world. Sure, women are trained to cultivate femininity and are expected to perform in that way, but being female does not make you particularly feminine. When women are together without men around you see the same array of personalities and interpersonal communications as you do in a group of men, with the exception that there is a little more cooperation and a little less aggressiveness amongst the females.

As a child I looked out and identified with the girls- didn't get the message that being a boy meant I couldn't be a girl tll I was 5- and even after a decade of intense reflection I can't explain exactly why I still feel like I am one of the women- even while identifying myself as a man for the purposes of getting things done!

So when transgender as a status appeared, I thought, ok this makes sense, I am a trans woman, not a man, particularly bc I felt in my internal body mapping that my body was somehow like that of females. It is minor, but persistent. Maybe it is just trying to be like the females, so I look for things that feel congruent.

But it took only a few days to think of my body as a woman's body- bc it is my body and doesn't interfere with feeling like a woman. When I see other men, I don't think I am one of them, I just think, I have been serving in their ranks, so to speak, and I understand their motivations.

But at the same time, the definition of woman and man has almost fused. I lost my feeling of having to identify as a man to survive, and found that femiinity is enjoyable and feels way more authentic and something I want to do more of- but not performatively. But I also don't care if you call me a man or a woman bc I am some of each, I guess.

Once we allow for males and females to be masculine or feminine in a granular way, which is already happening [See https://gendermosaic.tau.ac.il/ , then what is the definition of man or woman anyway?

It is very similar to the problems with the social concept of race- there is no exact definition of white or black or asian or 'brown', and in practice we share across all 'races' the same distribution of personal character, so there is no point in identifying race as a way of assigning privilege or indulging hate.

Just so, if we stop assiging privilege to gender class, then it doesn't matter if we are men or women- we will bond and work together based on shared purpose, and so much trouble would disappear from the world.