I am saying this as a cisgendered woman (I was born with a vagina). Being a woman is just not that important to me. I have cursed it many times in my life. I can't even be bothered with most girly things like makeup or shaving my legs in the winter. I remember a brief period as a young teen of longing to have breast but once they were there I no longer really cared about them.
I don't have all that much of my identity wrapped up in being a woman. My gender may be a huge part of how other people see me but it really is not that big of a deal to me. well at east 75% of the time I feel that way. When I am on my period or when I was pregnant all bets are off and my life revolves around my uterus.
For Caitlyn Jenner to go through what she has in an effort to be the person she is today her gender has to be important to her. It would have to be nearly all consuming.
In all the backlash that I am seeing people keep asking "why would a person do that to themselves". The fact that so many of us can not truly wrap our heads around what she put her body and life through to be who she is today should be enough to tell us how badly she wanted this. She wanted this more than I ever have and yet I am treated as more deserving of feminine pronouns.
She wanted to be a woman badly enough to go through painful surgeries and recovery.I sometimes wear padded bras and consider the under wire a personal circle of hell.
She wanted this so badly that she was willing to risk loosing friends and family.
Her gender means a lot to her. For me it is not necessary to understand WHY she wanted to be a woman. There are lots of things about friends, family and strangers I don't understand. Hell I will never for the life of me understand how my children can watch videos of someone else playing minecraft. I don't need to understand. All I need to know is that it makes them happy and they are not hurting anyone.
