But less glibly, I do think that being trans is an experience which is much more socially mediated than having a headache.

Like, lots of stone butches of the past who didn't want their femme partners to interact with their junk might very well have articulated their experiences in terms of trans-maculine dysphoria today, and I might have happily identified as a flame queen in 1960s New York or as a Femminiello in old Napoli, though both of those are definitely outside of my own experience or understanding today.

I don't think any of these should be taken as an indicator that those people were 'actually' members of our modern lens of understanding transgender experiences (though I think there's definitely a place for the rhetorical use of that kind of presentism, since saying 'Rome had two trans empresses' has use as a kind of blunt way to frame a lot of the standard historical narrative's own occlusions and biases even if it's not strictly speaking accurate).

A headache is classically used for epistemological foundationalism because, well, it's a fucking headache, I'm sure someone's found a culture in some remote area where headaches are unknown, but otherwise they're a pretty universal human experience that doesn't really need to be explained or framed by a culture's unique mores, whereas gender and its roles have a very clear root in our society and differ markedly depending on one's cultural lens. But yeah I don't think we disagree and I don't want to dismiss people's subjective experiences, though I will admit, and maybe this is problematic, that when totally closeted trans people make pronouncements , particularly as women or about the trans community, I do tend to be at least pretty skeptical and judgey, simply because I do think someone's authority to speak on these things to a large degree benefits from having skin in the game.