#cis people (at least cis men) on average are def a lot worse at explaining their feelings on gender comparatively

[zealsoughtsequesterustanxiedemon]

I think your theory holds water for a decent amount of cis people who enjoy GB. It's at least a simple answer for why they would enjoy the self-insert perspective of reading the work. I do think they can still function as wish fulfillment for cis people who are low on Q2, mainly for people who are very confident in their gender but are dissatisfied with specific gender roles. Wish fulfillment can sort of operate large-scale and small-scale in those ways (and of course people aren't bound to only inserting themselves into MCs of their own gender).

Personally, I'm sort of high on Q1 and probably middle on Q2. I enjoy GB stories, but I sort of gravitate more towards the other option you mention, CD stories. They contain a lot of the same wish fulfillment, but I'm less likely to encounter any kind of personal dissonance with the protagonist's gender and my own (granted I've run into that problem less as I've grown older). That difference is sort of built into the tropes of the genres, CD stories mostly have the character maintain their original gender and GB stories mostly have the character grow into their new one.

Outside of the the self-insert perspective of reading the work, I do think there's generally two other categories of ways to enjoy these stories (I'm assuming these probably fall amongst some of your non-wish fulfillment explanations):

The GB specifically happening to someone else

The GB happening regardless of whom

The former is probably less common? No idea how many people are into it for this specifically, but I figure they have to be out there. So many of these stories deal with someone getting GB'd and shacking up with their best friend, it has to appeal to some people from the best friend angle, right? Also, just, people w/ trans friends who want to understand them/see characters like them. The latter often deals more with enjoying the themes of a work; exploring gender, sexuality, and breaking them, etc. That's probably something that most fans of the genre are at least somewhat into. I feel like that angle of the work is sort of present whether something is wish fulfillment or not.

IMO there's just a lot of ways to enjoy these kinds of stories and liking them is cool 😎

What do you think cis people get out of genderswap stories? Especially ones which are very wish fulfilment for us trans girls. Sure some mangaka are definitely eggs or repressed and it's sad but for the ones who aren't I still haven't really figured it out so I'm curious what thoughts you have

Honestly ever since the author of "Misfile" came out as trans I don't think I am able to confidently state who is likely to be cis or trans, because I considered them specifically to be in "likely to be cis" category because 1.) not wish fulfillment 2.) author had a trans parent they could write the story parts off.

I also have been trying to ask people around about this and I never got a coherent answer either. I do have a theory though:

Let's say if I asked people two questions

"how would you rate your experience living as your assigned gender"

"how would you feel like living as other gender"

I'd say that:

trans people would assign higher grade to the second than the first

cis people would assign higher grade to first than second

trans people with a high difference between the two are most likely to transition

the lower the difference between the grades and the higher the gatekeeping and other costs are, the lower the chance a trans person transitions

cis people with significant difference between the two would be unlikely to entertain the scenario of let's say, "woke up as a girl one morning" as some sort of hypothetical

so that leaves people who would rate a high grade to a first question, and a slightly lower grade to a second question (like, let's say, 9/10 and 8/10 respectively)

Are there people like that? Dunno. If these people exist, would they transition? No. Would they transition if transition was easy and not gatekept? No. If there was a hypothetical device that would let people switch back and forth easily, would they use it? Definitely.

Given an absence of such a device, what remains is crossdressing or exploring the feels through hypothetical scenarios. This leads to @ashe-delta's explanation of genderswap stories of "giving people a safe space to explore gender", or how I used to call them, "a mirror to my own heart"

With all that said, I'd say that the final answer for stories that are specifically wish fulfillment depend on the degree of it: if high, the author is likely trans/egg/repressing; if low, we're likely dealing with cis person who is not "strongly cis".

For non-wish fulfillment stories there's a bunch of explanations I could come up with, but this will go in another reblog, as I've been holding this one in inbox for a bit long already.