What Does it Feel Like to be a Girl?

Not like you might think...

Source image by Scott Robinson

Note: This is written from a transfemme perspective for clarity, but should apply equally well to people questioning themselves as any particular gender. Gender-swap it as necessary for your own situation. See also part 2 of this series, Why don’t I feel like a girl?

Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m always surprised at how often I see people who are stuck in questioning their gender. People who strongly suspect they’re transfemme, but are snagged on the question “what does it feel like to be a girl?” The presumption is that being a girl must feel like something, right? It must have some kind of emotional or experiential texture to it.

They are hoping that if only someone could describe this elusive “girl” feeling to them, then they could scan themselves to see if they have it: if they’re transfemme, then obviously they would have this “girl” feeling and that would resolve their gender questioning. As if it’s just a problem of not knowing how to recognize that feeling.

Not so fast

Before trying to identify this elusive “girl” feeling, let’s go back to the presumption that being a girl feels like anything to begin with. That is, does this “girl” feeling even exist? Let’s suppose it does. Let’s even suppose that you have it. But if so, how would you know?

It’s sort of a rhetorical question, but also not, because the question points to something important: We all only have the one gender identity. We might not have always known what it is, but whatever it is, that’s the one we have. Indeed, not being sure about which one you have is why we question our gender at all.

If you’re transfemme, then you are a girl. Trans girls are girls, and trans women are women. (That’s a subject for another post, but for now we’ll take the reality of trans identities as a given.)

Thus, whatever this elusive “girl” feeling is, transfemmes already feel it. And because that feeling is rooted in your identity, you’ve also always had it. Assuming it even exists.

Contrast is key

Ok. So if there’s a “girl” feeling, you already feel it. The job is only track it down and come to understand what it feels like. But how do we do that?

Let’s start with an easier question: how do you know what anything feels like?

We know what hot feels like because we’ve also experienced cold. We know sharp from dull because we’ve cut ourselves on sharp things but not dull ones. We know happy from sad, having been through both happy and sad moments in our lives. Likewise excitement and boredom and any other contrasting feelings you could name.

We know them because they feel different. Further, our experience of them comes in predictable circumstances that get certain words associated with them, and so we learn what the feelings are and what labels go with them.

Gender identity doesn’t have that

The problem with asking what it feels like to be a girl is that you simply don’t have that type of contrast. Why? Because if this feeling exists, it would be rooted in our gender identity. And we only have the one identity.

If you’re a trans girl, you’ve never known what it feels like to be a boy. You’ve only known what it feels like to be a girl stuck pretending to be a boy. If you’re a trans girl, you’ve never known what it feels like to be a cis girl, either. You’ve only ever known what it feels like to be a girl who is fundamentally misunderstood by everyone around her.

That’s what you’ve felt, and what you’ve always felt. That has been the constant character and quality of your life. The feeling of being a trans girl, in however that may be for you, has been an unchanging drone, a constant stimulus, in the background of your life. And our brains are really good at filtering out constant stimuli.

Moreover, since you’ve always had that feeling but never had the chance to experience its opposite, you also don’t have anything to contrast it with. You’ve always only ever known what it feels like to be you. You haven’t ever had a different identity in order to experience the contrast, and thereby learn how to recognize and label each one.

One of two possibilities must be true: either there exists a “girl” feeling but the contrast problem means you literally cannot know what it is, or it doesn’t exist. Either way, it can’t help you resolve your gender questioning. I side with Occam: it seems simpler that the feeling just doesn’t exist.

Roles versus identities

Of course, you’ll have had the experience of playing different roles in your life. Child. Student. Friend. Enemy. Lover. Employee. But we’re not talking about roles. We’re talking about identities: The role you’re playing isn’t the same as what identity you have deep down. But that gets confusing, because “boy” and “girl” and “man” and “woman” are also roles that people play in their lives, and those roles share the same labels as the identity we’re looking for.

We must be careful here not to confuse the social role with the identity, because the clash between the two is exactly what is at issue when someone is wondering if they might be trans: Does the role I’ve been made to play actually match who I truly am?

We have to approach that question from the identity side, because we already know full well what role we’ve been playing. The irony is that while it’s the identity that’s in question, it’s the role that might be the problem.

Contrast worth pursuing

I see so many people struggle with gender questioning because of this “what does it feel like?” question about gender identity. I can’t tell you what you will find at the end of your questioning, what identity you will conclude you have. I can only tell you that the struggle won’t be resolved by answering that question.

So don’t get hung up the elusive “girl” feeling. It isn’t some elusive, final proof of your identity: if you’re a trans girl, then however you feel is already what it feels like for you to be a girl. Just look for what helps you be happy and feel good in your own skin. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

Maybe you’ll decide that you need to transition in order to be happy. Great! Go for it. But don’t expect transitioning to reveal a “girl” feeling to you either. Transitioning won’t change your identity—that’s not what it’s for—so it won’t give you a contrast to measure two identities against. All it will do is change the role you're playing in life. Potentially to a role you like a whole lot better.

What transitioning can do is show you the contrast between what it feels like to be a girl who is misunderstood by everyone all the time, to being a girl who is understood. And that is a contrast worth pursuing.