Please fix my understanding of trans-people. When someone feels a different gender than their body's physical sex, what are they feeling?

[Anonymous]

I'm gonna make people mad with this question. But I really have been struggling with this idea for years, and I hope people's ideas in this space where it's okay to ask questions and learn can help me understand people I meet later on. If there's any reading material that can explain this in detail please let me know.

PREFACE:

Maybe I'm still ignorant about what gender is, but what we consider masculine and what we consider feminine are kinda two groups of personality traits that we could have one, both, neither, or some from each group. Feminine traits like empathy and nurturing + male parts is ok for example.

When people assume the gender identity opposite their sex assigned at birth, tend to feel empowered to express traits like masculine or feminine characteristics, likes/dislikes, and clothing. This makes me think they are acting the gender roles of the gender they identify with. But, those gender roles don't need to exist at all nor do those traits need to be tied with a particular sex. And we're actively trying to remove gender roles from society in pursuit of feminism/egalitarianism.

THE QUESTION:
Why not just remove gender identity from the equation and just make it okay to embody any personality trait whether it's a male-associated or female-associated trait? This removes the obsession with pronouns and confusion over what group to put someone in. The groups didn't need to exist in the first place except in the hospital and maybe when deciding you want kids. It also takes the focus off of the shape of ones body. So we can separate the confusion over gendered personality traits from development of sex specific physical characteristics.

If there are some people who feel wrong with male/female parts, should they be in a different category than those who just want to identify with a group in line with their traits? But I haven't seen any distinction being made or any language to facilitate this concept yet.

[slatyb]

Imagine that you wake up tomorrow in a female body. Nothing else has changed. How would you feel?

[Asker]

Honestly I don't think I would feel or act differently. Like I said, I'm okay expressing my personality traits regardless of whether they are associated with sex assigned at birth. This is why I am confused why people are making such a big deal about gender identity.
(Though sexual orientation is very separate from gendered traits, gender roles and gender identity, and I probably wouldn't be attracted to men at least immediately.)

[slatyb]

That's not the question you asked. You asked "What are they feeling?" Suppose you woke up tomorrow with a female body. Would you change your wardrobe? Wear makeup? Be attracted to men? What would you be feeling?

[Asker]

To be clear, I would not act differently. No change to wardrobe. No makeup. As I said, sexual orientation is a totally different topic from gender identity and sex assigned at birth so I don't think that would change. I would not be feeling very different.

This is actually my first post in years and I'm not sure how the formatting of these goes anymore. I was hoping that the question topic of this post could set a tone and my long description under it would clarify that my question is about how they feel in regards to do they feel dysphoria with their physical body or do they just choose to identify with a set of gendered traits. But I should've been more clear.

[slatyb]

So now imagine you are a woman who feels the same way as you would on that morning waking up with a female body..