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"