[chroma]

I've played a few VR games that allow you to customize your avatar. I've tried male bodies, female bodies, robot bodies, ridiculous carton bodies... everything. At no point did I feel that anything was wrong or out of place. This is true for everyone who I've loaned my headset to.

I think trans people are overgeneralizing from their own psyches. They feel like they are in the wrong body, and they assume that everyone else would feel the same if they were body-swapped into the opposite sex. But as far as I can tell, only a tiny fraction of people experience this. Gender dysphoria seems to be about as common as aphantasia or synesthesia.

Personally, I don't think of my body as part of my identity. It's a machine that I ride around in. If I woke up in the body of a woman, I'd be really annoyed but I doubt I'd go through years of hormones and surgery to be perceived as a man again. It would be easier to learn how to use the new body than to try to make it closer to what I'm used to.

[mffnbs]

It seems like you're admitting to critiquing something you've no experience or understanding of in an effort to diminish the experiences of those of us who claim to experience the world differently. It's entirely possible and even probable that your VR experience simply comes nowhere close to mimicking gender dysphoria.

[chroma]

I'm not diminishing anything. I'm just pointing out that people tend to imagine all minds behave like their own, hence why you believed that cis people would experience gender dysphoria in VR avatars of the opposite sex. I've accumulated enough experience to indicate that isn't true.

Another piece of the puzzle: Pretty much every trans person I've talked to who has used VR has enjoyed choosing an avatar of the opposite sex. Afterwards when they're back in the real world, they tend to miss it.

This maps to my model of reality that says that the vast majority of people cannot experience gender dysphoria. They prefer their current sex mostly out of habit. Other people such as Scott Alexander[1] and Ozy[2] have said the same thing, though they arrived at that conclusion by posing thought experiments to their friends, not using VR.

1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gende...

2. https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/cis-by-defaul...