I don’t know if anyone transitions for this reason, but people are sometimes more willing to foregive certain “flaws” in one gender than another. For example, it seems to me that a lack of career ambition is more socially acceptable in a woman than in a man—a man who wants to be a househusband rather than a breadwinner has to confront negative stereotypes that a woman that wants to be a housewife does not. And men are often able to be more direct and aggressive without suffering social repercussions.
As for myself, I think that, holding as much else constant as possible, I might have been a little bit happier having been born female, but I think not being short might have helped even more—in addition to having been a short kid, my adult height ended up being about six inches below the median, which is also the kind of thing that’s worse if you’re male...
I don’t know if anyone transitions for this reason, but people are sometimes more willing to foregive certain “flaws” in one gender than another. For example, it seems to me that a lack of career ambition is more socially acceptable in a woman than in a man—a man who wants to be a househusband rather than a breadwinner has to confront negative stereotypes that a woman that wants to be a housewife does not. And men are often able to be more direct and aggressive without suffering social repercussions.
As for myself, I think that, holding as much else constant as possible, I might have been a little bit happier having been born female, but I think not being short might have helped even more—in addition to having been a short kid, my adult height ended up being about six inches below the median, which is also the kind of thing that’s worse if you’re male...