I am male, because despite what my physical form happens to show that the moment, I know what I am, and what makes me feel comfortable on this earth. I am able to function as male, and I no longer get constant, incessant irritation of being read as female. I still have dysphoria surrounding my body, and that's something which I can only hope will lessen in the future when I finally have testosterone flowing in my body like I should always have had. I've disassociated from my body a fair bit these days which makes it easier to deal with, and to stop thinking about the wrongness of it all.
I didn't know how much coming out and living as male would improve my life until I did. I didn't think it would change anything to a large extent as I'd been presenting as male for over three years prior to my coming out, the only difference to my life then and now was that I had a female name, and had the female box ticked on paperwork. Then I came out, and no longer had to hear that name or pronouns, no longer had to share a room with girls, no longer had to walk through that door with a stereotypical silhouette of a woman to go to the toilet. I no longer had the low simmering of anger all day long, I could just live and be free.
When I first realised that I was trans I found it very hard to come to terms with the future of my genitals. I hated thinking of testosterone making it into something not quite here nor there. Since then I've seen some recent good metoidioplasty results, and feel more confident in that it will one day be like it should always have been. And I no longer think of testosterone as making it into something inbetween, but rather wishing for testosterone sooner so it begins that growth, and I'm looking forward to being grateful for very millimeter that I get. It was one of the hardest things for me to get my head around for me though in the beginning. I come a long way in my thoughts about it since.
As for chromosomes, you don't even know for a fact that you are XX. A lot of people have atypical chromosomes without ever realising unless they have chromosome screening. Do they really make that much difference to your daily life?
All that said though, I find, like quite a few people from what I've read in discussions about it before, that the word "man" doesn't always fit as well as other near synonyms, guy, bloke, boy, etc. My explanation for this is that I don't look in the mirror and see a man, either I see something which makes dysphoric, or something which resembles a boy. I have not had a male puberty yet, and that's one of the first precursors to being a man in my view, and there's much more of that to being a man in my opinion. Like Rudyard Kipling's "If—" I think there's more to being a Man than just being an adult male. Obviously they're men, but they're not Men, if that makes sense, and I can't see myself as that capitalised version of the word, which I think of when I say "I'm a Man."
Part of my issue with considering myself a Man is also I think to do with never being referred to it as well. It was sort of a bit of a turning moment for me when we were discussing our childhoods, schools, and work, and how they've all become a bit namby-pamby, and he said, "But that's ridiculous, you're eighteen, you're a man." I no longer speak with my father so having a guy around the same age as him saying that to me brought up a few emotions.
Maleness is a complicated thing, but it's something you need to work out for yourself if you fit into that category, and then what you want to with that information when you work it out. One thing to remember is that, if you're not sure if you'll feel any better in a male role is that you'll never know unless you try it. Will it make you feel any worse than you do now to transition?
