So I have seen the other thread discussing about this and I would like to post my own questions that should help focus more on the main topic.
1. Does anyone here, mainly people who's born and lived as male, ever have a situation where you want to say or express your feeling like "I feel like a woman", for example when dressed up?
a) If so, what do you actually mean?
b) Does it depend on the surrounding context where you say it?
2. As a listener, if a male, particularly CD, say/express his feeling "I feel like a woman" to you, what do you think it means to you if that should happen?
a) Again, does it depend on the surrounding context as well?
b) [For TS who has transitioned or GG] Do you find this appropriate for a male to ever say this, such that it offends your gender or anything?
From what I have collected from the other thread, it seems there's a lot of variety of meaning to this.
I have seen that some people seem to not be convinced a male should ever say this because they would never know how real woman feels. I completely agree with the "a male never knows how real woman feels" part. But it's a question to me why one would think a male can/should never express this feeling. Does this offend to anybody in anyway? Or would it cause any bad consequences if a male should say this in public? What's the gain from not saying "I feel like a woman"?
To me, as a speaker, if I'm going to say "I feel like a woman" when dressed up, I don't really mean "I know how woman feels", I just mean "I feel like a female version of myself, and that includes just some of real woman attributes that I know from my experience such as having breasts/long hair/clean skin/shaved legs/beard/walking femininely/etc."
I will throw another example that shows similar meaning. Let's say, your male friend (not a CD) has long hair and he makes a joke saying, "Look at me, I feel like a woman now." In this scenario, he just means him having long hair makes him feel like he's a woman, just from outside look. He's not talking anything about inner thinking of woman.
So, from all this, I'd really like to know what are other people thinking about this. And I'd like to say anyone does have a right to say whatever they want, as long as it does not harm others. But what I don't understand yet is why someone say a male should never say "I feel like a woman". I'd really like to get more knowledge and come to the middle-ground of this so that both sides can have mutual understanding of each other. Really, this is a general problem with human miscommunication, both speakers and listeners should come to the middle-ground to understand what each side perceives and come to mutual understanding.
Phew! That's quite a long post I wrote there. If you have survived reading until here, thanks for reading!
- Bonnie