I’m trans, and to be honest I don’t have a good answer for this question. I have no idea what it feels like to feel a gender, but I do know that some of the things I did experience made me feel very much not like the gender I was assigned. I felt incongruous with my body, and confused with how people viewed me. I later learned that’s called dysphoria.

When I saw a speech language pathologist to learn how to talk in a way that wasn’t grating to my ears, she explicitly told me we didn’t need to work on mannerisms or behavior. I still have no idea what she saw, but I don’t act any different than I did when I was a guy. I just get a lot less flak and odd reactions for it.

I don’t know what it feels like to feel a woman any more than I knew what it felt like to be a man though. I just know it fits, if that makes sense.