Take this all critically, because I can't speak for all trans people.

> I broadly thought transgenderism was about a desire to be perceived and feel/identify on all levels as a man when assigned female at birth and woman when assigned male at birth, as opposed to just wanting particular sex organs.

It depends. Most of us see gender as a buffet. There are medical, social, and legal ways to transition, and you can take what you want when you want it. A lot of us end up wanting some body modification, but it's not a requirement either way.

There are lots of non-binary people, so the trans umbrella also includes people who don't feel or identify as men or women. I feel kinship with them, because it feels a little hollow when I assert that "I am a woman". I don't know what it means to feel like a man or a woman. I don't think the non-binary spectrum is a space "between" man and woman, I think it's the entire space around and outside of man and woman. I won't mind if I find myself there somehow.

> you simply just want breasts and a vagina? Or do you want something more broad here?

I might have exaggerated. It will take a lot of words to clear it up.

For me, the medical transition definitely is the most important part.

I do want she/her pronouns, but they're secondary.

I'll emphasize again that I'm not speaking on behalf of all other trans people, because if I talked about other people the way I talk about myself, it would be exclusionary.

But in my case, the she/her pronouns are part of presenting as a woman, and I only want them as part of the whole package, if that makes sense.

I prioritized my transition based on a ranking of something like "What is the cheapest? What requires the least permission from other people? What am I least likely to regret?"

At a high level, this put the 3 pieces in this order:

- Medical first, because I have to live in my own body all day no matter what.

- Social second, because it would eventually be weird to look like a woman and still tell people that I'm a man, but I wasn't too upset about he/him pronouns back when I was still questioning my own gender.

- Legal last, because it's a big commitment and it didn't bother me that much to be legally male.

At a low level, they overlap a bit. I started laser hair removal and hormone replacement about a year before I changed my name and pronouns at work, but I am now waiting for COVID to clear up before I can even think about genital surgery.

And gender is just so weird that, the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.

But what I'm realizing is, I consider the pronouns to be part of my presentation. During that first year of HRT, I wasn't actually sure if I would be a woman at the end. I don't have an internal compass for gender, I had to try it out and see if I would like it. So I didn't mind being "he/him" when I was still questioning. It was a secondary priority.

But after a while, it got to be weird that my medical transition was going amazing and I was still "he/him" at work. I grew my hair out, I painted my nails and gradually wore more feminine clothes, and it got to feel like, in terms of the clothing and presentation, I had crossed from "Man with long hair" to "Woman with male pronouns". So then I came out to my coworkers, changed my name and email in the computers, and luckily everyone was okay with it.

In a world where everyone is an ally and pronouns are always respected, yes, I want to use she/her. I don't really know if people see me as a woman, I don't pass very well, but the pronouns are at least a green flag that people are being polite to me, regardless of what they think.

But in the real world, I was extremely reluctant to ask for something that could be trivially denied or could spark a politics debate around the office.

So... I hope that clears it up a little. For me transitioning has been first and foremost about reconciling my mind and my body. I spend a lot of time alone, and I spend a lot of time online where I don't need a gender, and I like that. In HN threads that aren't about gender, I'm not a woman who programs, or a woman who was assigned male at birth, I'm just a programmer who programs.

But out in the bizarre real world, "My pronouns are she/her" is an invitation to be invalidated, and "I'm buying a vagina and nobody can stop me" is a statement of fact. I let myself be a little macho sometimes. Even cis women do it.