I don't talk about this a lot, but reading Whipping Girl (Julia Serano) really changed my relationship with gender. I was fine with being a woman, I didn't really feel drawn to being anything else, but I never really felt it was okay to actively like being a woman until I read her work.
My version of womanhood and what it means to me is probably about as actively constructed as any trans woman's, but it never felt quite legit to want to be a woman (since I didn't start it as a conscious thing). Reading that "woman" is always constructed made it feel achievable and legitimate for me, too.
Conversely, talking to and reading the writing of trans women is how I figured out I was a trans man, because my previous view had been basically "nobody really wants to be a woman, we're all just kinda stuck with it, right"
and then I learned from women who very much want to express themselves as women and be recognized as women, even when all the social pressure is pushing them the other way
and that's how I realized that this was a Me Problem
(it's complicated tbh because there's lots of parts of womanhood under patriarchy that lots of women have entirely valid objections to. nobody cis or trans welcomes everything society expects of women. but when you find yourself objecting to all of it, well.)
