Transgender vs not conforming to gender stereotypes?

[Sandstone-Shadow]

In the process of avoiding homework, I was browsing random Youtube videos and ended up on interviews with children who identified as transgender. Most of the ones I saw were kids who were born male but identified as girls: they liked things that are typically defined as feminine, like wearing dresses, drawing, doing their hair/nails, etc.

How do you come to realize you're transgender and not a boy who likes feminine things or a girl who likes masculine things? To me, I see these as being two different things; I'm a girl who likes some masculine things, but I've never thought of myself as a boy. (That actually answers my own question a little bit... but I'm still interested to hear other ways of putting it.)

Does society play any role in this? I could see a child being influenced by society (ie: "society says girls like dolls, dresses, and pink, so if I like dolls, dresses, and pink, I must be a girl"), but what is the other part of it? How do you know you're transgender and not just someone who likes things that are "supposed" to be for the other gender?

I know this is a subject that means a lot to people here, so hopefully I haven't phrased anything badly. I don't know much about it and wanted to understand better. Overall I'm just curious and thought this would be a good place to learn more.

 

[Jolty]

it's about how you feel about your body
if you're born as one sex but feel like you should have characteristics of the other sex, then you're probably transgender

i have seen that a lot of (but not all) trans people tend to like things associated with their "chosen" gender anyway, that could be partly influenced by how society is maybe. but society definitely has no part in dysphoria over your birth sex.

 

[Gevaisa]

Considering that it's all internal, I don't think that there needs to be a definition of what makes a person trans.

I've always thought of bodies in general as kind of disturbing, and the idea that someone could identify with one at all is as foreign to me as the idea that someone could identify with one sort but not with another. This sort of makes me poorly placed to comment on the subject. The problem with this sort of discussion, though, is that no one can experience someone else's experiences. Categorizing people based on the experiences that lead them to acting a certain way or wanting to be the other gender is purposeless, and in my experience, trying to define categories that way usually ends up hurting people. That being the case, I think the deciding factor on whether you're trans or not is whether or not you think you're trans. Assuming that you have an accurate understanding of what trans means. (Not that it has an particularly specific definition, as far as I'm aware. It's a sort of confusing topic.)

Sorry for the late reply.