I found this video to be very interesting, and it made me think of something that I've been wanting to have a discussion about.

Intellectually, I'm 100% supportive of any gender/sexuality/whatever that people identify with, and I think everyone should be allowed to be the person they feel they are. Particularly when it comes to homosexuality, I'm accepting of it both intellectually and emotionally, I pretty much feel completely fine if I see two dudes kissing, or whatever.

However, at my previous job, I was confronted with something that I simply haven't been exposed to before: A former man, who had transitioned into a woman. This particular woman basically looked like a man in a dress, but the thing that made it strange for me was that she also acted and spoke exactly like a man. Basically the least feminine person imaginable. This made me very aware of how ingrained gender roles really are, as I have never seen anyone that was born a (physical) woman ever act quite this masculine.

I'm repulsed by the concept of gender roles, and I've always thought that men and women should act however they want, but I guess the culture I've grown up in has had a more profound effect on me than I thought. It turns out that I do expect women to act a certain way. I don't mean the caricature of a woman staying in the kitchen and nurturing children, but there is a certain spectrum of behaviour which feels natural to me, and once a certain threshold of masculinity has been passed, it starts to feel odd to me.

My conclusion on this is that I don't believe this woman would've behaved in this way if she'd been perceived as a female her entire life. Women are socialized in a different way than men. This makes me even more certain that a great deal of the behaviours associated with women and men have little to do with genetics, and more to do with culture (or maybe it says nothing on the subject, as I guess this woman is genetically a man?).

I've grown up with homosexuality being depicted around me my entire life, so my mind has simply gotten used to it, but this is something else. Like I said, I'm fully supportive of this intellectually, but I can't help feeling a bit strange around her. I'm not saying I think it's wrong, but I would like to have an honest discussion about people's experiences with this sort of thing.