Yes, it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable to parents too, even if you are the most progressive person in the world when it comes to gender. Our society is set up for gender and gender identity to look a certain way, when it doesn't happen that way, it's a surprise.
I'm trying to not pass judgment on this stuff, because how hypocritical would I be, right? But man, it's so easy to just listen to people with experience and let their experiences inform your thinking. Every single "I don't get" or "that can't be true" is directly related to not having that experience and then not believing those that do.
I'm def an I-don't-get-it'r or I-can't-wrap-my-head-around-it'r, I'm sure because I have no knowledge myself or from anyone I know of the concept of feeling anything gender-wise other than sex-wise as defined by physical attributes. Like, I don't recognize me "feeling" male; I just know I'm male because there's a dick and 1-2 balls down there. I can't sense any distinction between that knowledge (?) and any mental feeling about it. I absolutely need someone who's gone/going through it to educate me to where I can bridge my mental gap between biological-but-doesn't-follow-traditional-norms-of-that-gender and knowing-they-are-a-different-gender-than-their-biology.
I had a really long post about this but I can simplify it. Why do you need to be educated about how and or why a person who feels trapped in the wrong body feels the way that they do? I don't know what it feels like to be male either. I don't know what it feels like to be right handed, or black, or tall, I'm just all of those things. My empathy doesn't come with a requirement to understand, it's really born out of someone else's gender identity is none of my rough ridin' business and it annoys the crap out of me when other people make it their business.
I working off the assumption that there is no further explanation and I don't need one.
Because I’d like to understand. I’d be equally unable to wrap my head around your analogous examples. If a tall person felt or believed they were short and insisted they were short, I wouldn’t understand how they could feel that way about a physically evident thing. And if there were prominent numbers of people feeling like that to where it was part of lots of major societal issues, I’d want to try to understand that “unbelievable” subject matter.
You’re right, understanding isn’t a requirement to have empathy for the people, and I didn’t say it was.
Right, but you're asking someone who feels this way to explain why or how they feel this way, in the case of this conversation a child at that, when those of us who don't feel that can't explain why we don't. I think you're asking for an explanation because it's an unconventional feeling, but the conventional feeling doesn't come with an explanation either.
I definitely don't want it from a child. That's why I separated out the quotes I did initially to just be about the inability of myself or someone who doesn't have any similar or analogous experience to perceive how this can be. I haven't seen anything I can simply read that bridges what I'm missing. So I'm not sure there's anything that could do that beyond someone, obviously an adult with a lot of patience, trying to educate me.
And I don't think it's the difference between an unconventional feeling vs. a conventional feeling. From what I've gathered, you and I agree as to us "feeling" male, or right-handed, or black and white, that we
don't "feel" that. We know (?) we are male, right-handed, etc. b/c those things are defined to us by the physical characteristics.
But there's obviously something beyond that "I am because of this piece of physical evidence" that I don't grasp what that is or how it comes to be. Perhaps "feel" or "feeling" is the wrong word, but I'm using it from this:
Gender identity is how you feel inside and how you express your gender through clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It’s a feeling that begins very early in life.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identityThe answer might be that I just don't realize that I do indeed "feel" being male or right-handed or white, but that it's such an obvious thing to feel that I can't perceive a difference between feeling that and knowing it because of the physical traits.