You say you present as a man but you feel like a woman. I get the first part, because I can see that you do, but I’m not sure I understand the second. How would you know what it feels like to be a woman? For that matter, how do I know what it feels like to be a man? I suppose I could talk to other men – and maybe I once did – and then compare my own phenomenology to what they report is theirs. Yeah, I could say, that’s pretty much how I feel too. So are you saying you’ve merely imagined what other men might feel like, what other women might feel like, and then decided that what it felt like to be you was more akin to the latter than the former? That would make no sense, since your imagination could be entirely off the mark. Or are you saying you’ve actually talked to other men and women and then compared your own phenomenology to what they report is theirs, and that you find more commonality with the phenomenology of the women than with that of the men? That would make more sense, I suppose.
But this supposes you already know which are the men and which are the women. Isn’t it at least possible that all the people you thought were men, because that’s how they presented, were phenomenologically women? And all the people you thought were women, because that’s how they presented, were phenomenologically men? Then you’d conclude that what it’s like to be a woman is precisely not what it feels like to be you. And what it’s like to be you is precisely what it does feel like to be a man.
Those familiar with Plato’s Euthyphro will recognise the problem here. One cannot ask God what’s right because you have to already know what’s right to know which God to ask. By parity of reasoning, then, what it is to be manly is whatever it is to be what you’ve already decided is manly. And, mutatis mutandis, for what it is to be womanly.
So all you can really say is you feel more phenomenologically akin to people with these genitalia than to people with those. But if it turns out that the people with these genitalia feel more phenomenologically akin to people with those genitalia, then it would turn out that they‘re dysphoric but you’re not! Which is not to say you couldn’t be dysphoric. You could be if you were one of the people you consulted to see if you were dysphoric. But then you’d just be consulting yourself, which would bring us right back to where we started. So, it would seem, the only way you could be dysphoric is if you couldn’t know you are. Hmm …
Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Humour, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
this argument is a blatant straw-man. it completely ignores the idea that social roles and constructs exist and focuses on the physiological “feeling” of being a man or a woman which has nothing to do with gender dysphoria and could be argued isn’t really a thing to begin with. furthermore, it ignores the fact that at this point in history humans have an incredible amount of culture and knowledge formulated by people we will never interact with. you cannot separate the human experience and mind from the cumulative culture that has been established. it has been proven countlessly that humans are just as nurture as they are nature and are products of their environment. by arguing that one with dysphoria just come to the conclusion that they do not fit into the role they were placed into at birth from interpersonal comparison alone entirely ignores the reality that humans are social and cultural creatures. one does not need a omnipotent understanding of gender to identify that they have an inherent incongruence between their self-concept and the gender they have been assigned. there has never been a single human that has all the knowledge relevant to the actions they take yet humans still make those actions regardless and to presume that it is wrong for them to do so is at odds with every single waking moment of every human on earth.
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Much as I’d like to respond to this, I can’t because I can’t understand it. I’d be in your debt if you could make what you’re saying clearer, or at least less elliptical?
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