Yea it makes a big difference.
People give me more space. While like you say nobody's trying to keep out of my personal space so as not to seem forward, they keep their distance and don't attempt to touch me or get up in my face. That's not to say the reverse can't happen with females getting up in a male's personal space and thinking that's ok, but in my case I don't like anybody up in there unless I know them and want them there. Body language probably puts them off, or maybe the eyes, I don't know... aside from their instinctive reaction to someone who looks more male than female.
Voice cues - I have to keep a fair amount of control over it or it could sound like I'm raising it when that's not the intention. In fact I feel like I have to keep more control over everything in general - not because I'm danger of losing it, but because other people seem more nervous around me than before.
There's a ton of subtle things I could mention - how people react to being offered help, or even just how they react to me coming up to them and speaking to them, how they tend to approach me and the sort of things they say when they do, etc. Among friends there's actually no shift in how they treat me, I never got along with people who insisted on exaggerated treatment or we were never gonna get along anyway. But strangers don't know this so they tend to act in the instinctive way people do.
In some ways it's hard to tell, say like when at work I didn't ask people to help me carrying heavy stuff, I'd carry it myself, get it out of the way before anyone assumed I might need help with it to ask so there wasn't a lot of 'chivalrous' behavior I invited to comment on. Of course now they don't offer to help and that's fine. Previously if I offered to help another guy he would refuse; whereas now if a guy is having genuine difficulty with something, he'll accept the help. He's not losing any points in front of me. Women pretty much always accept the help before and after, if they're having difficulty with something.
Yeah, the assumptions. I'm not into cars (I prefer motorcycles) or most sports etc. and I just shrug and say I'm not. It's true that I'm not into especially 'feminine' pursuits so I guess that's fine. One thing that plagues me in this sense is looking younger than my years, and being assumed to have the IQ of a dipstick because of it, but I think that affects both genders and the way people treat them. I usually respond to offset that assumption in some way, and it usually works. Facial hair will probably come in useful for that as it does tend to immediately change people's assumption about your age/life experience, so I'll be sporting a 5 day stubble ASAP. Being thought youthful is nice for a while but after a while it's a pain in the ass.
I like the fact I'm assumed to be capable, and I get the space I prefer. While I'm not much for flirting, women's flirting is more tolerable, and I didn't get much of that before, whereas now it's quite common and men leave me alone in that respect, also welcome.
The preconceptions are out of my control and everyone is subject to them - but on the whole I prefer the treatment I get now and it fits my personality much better. There are no more awkward personal conversations about having children, people's boyfriends, or people bashing on men and assuming I agree with everything they say by default... yeah, it's generally an improvement in terms of interaction. But different when it comes to interacting with people who don't know me and are operating on stereotypes and guesswork.
