To me, a gender identity category serves as an explanatory framework, a conceptual tool that helps make sense of disparate experiences. It's a useful label that summarises a persistent pattern of thought and action that attaches to my body, my preferences, my social performance. It's a tool I use to control the dysphoria. "Trans woman" does feel like a better theory of myself than "cis man", but it really doesn't feel like the discovery of a "true self".