>>151205033
Anyone that believes that the self can change must innately understand that labels are mutable; otherwise, they wouldn't believe change was possible. There are two conclusions one can reach from that starting point.
Some will realize that labels are descriptive. With this, labels become meaningless; they are a distraction from time better spent enacting change. You become strong through exercise, not through declaring yourself such. You become an artist through practice, and so on, and so on. The labels will come later and on their own. You wake up one day and others are calling you strong, whether or not you have ever called yourself strong, and often after you've become even more aware of how weak you still are.
The alternative conclusion is to decide labels are abscriptive, that we can redefine things and reality will come to agree in time. It is a more pleasant conclusion for people who are desperate to be anything else than what they are. On some level, everyone knows that this isn't how things really work, but it is a comforting line of thought.
>I'm a gym guy now, so actually, I can take a day off and stop in for hamburgers.
>I'm a game dev! I wrote 200 lines yesterday. What's it matter if I procrastinate by playing 8 hours of DotA today?
So, to a person in the position of wanting to be a woman, who, realistically, has limited actions available to become more feminine, it becomes all the more important to hang their hopes on those self-declarations. There sits Lilith: a woman who ignored the guidance of man and God, who rejected the ur-society because it put her in a role she did not like. She is a woman stubborn enough to ignore all warnings, to accept all costs. Who else would the transsexual want to be?
