What does feeling a certain gender even mean?

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I don't get it.
Put me in front of the hypothetical magic gender expression swap button and I get stuck there like Buridan's donkey before settling for male out of convenience more than anything. Male requires no readjustment. Male stereotypes are strategically beneficial for what I want others to think of me. Misogyny sure would suck being the target of. Periods sound awful. However, if the world was a less misogynistic place, having a female body might be neat sometimes, I guess. I'm not really attached to the male form per se. There is hesitation, and I feel that says something.
In my nightly dreams, I often inhibit a randomized character. My dreams are very interactive-media-coded. Sometimes I don't get a body at all in my dreams and just experience them as disembodied free cam.
Sometimes I feel like a more neutral, utilitarian form would best reflect who I am at my core, stripped of identity and focused on function.
Maybe I experience gender and just don't realize it. Maybe it exists across from the unusually wide rift that lies between my conscious and subconsciousness.
How do I recognize gender when I experience it? Do I even experience it? What would that look like in practical terms?

This really resonates. That hesitation in front of the "magic button" feels meaningful — like gender isn't absent, just not clearly aligned with any one form. Choosing male out of convenience or strategy rather than identity says a lot, especially when paired with how your dreams shift or even remove embodiment entirely. Maybe gender for you isn’t a fixed point, but something contextual, subconscious, or even utilitarian — more about function than identity. The fact that you're asking these questions so deeply might mean you're experiencing gender in a way that doesn’t fit typical templates, and that’s entirely valid.

As someone said to me once (as my gender presentation floats around androgynous) --> "Eggheadjr, you're just you"

Someone who used to be a friend of mine (before we naturally drifted apart) described growing up trans to me. I'm cisgender.

She said that when she was growing up, there was this sort of looming feeling. A feeling that was vague and frustratingly difficult to pinpoint yet always there. The feeling that something wasn't quite right. One that you were always aware of in some capacity but you didn't quite realise just how much it was in your life until it stops.

I remember when she told me that my outfits had inspired her when she first started transitioning. She told me that my femininity was admirable. That I used to be a source of gender envy for her.

When I was growing up, I used to get picked on for 'not counting as a girl'. So, it was validating to hear that. It...felt like closure that I didn't even know I wanted until it happened.