Now pregnancy is a relatively short-term experience in life, but it is one of those experiences that really does tend to alter women's perceptions of our bodies as well as of the world and our place in it.

Just using this as a jumping-off point -- it completely alters perception. You alluded to relaxin, and that fluctuates with the menstrual cycle as well as its big role in pregnancy and childbirth -- and frankly, parts (pubic symphysis, SI joints, the rectus abdominis in diastasis) don't always go back into place . . . if ligaments go into any degree of sprain, even in the knees, for instance, for adjusting to balance a pregnant belly, it may damage or up/down-regulate the proprioceptors around the joint in a way that won't fully reset, so post-partum balance, gait, ROM, etc. may be very different from pre-pregnancy.

That really surprises me about tall women and pregnancy -- I would have guessed the opposite, since connective tissue diseases seem to correlate with height (no data, just an observation). You see it more in self-selected populations like professional dancers and basketball players -- I don't know if they've looked at female leagues, but male basketball players have a high incidence of arrhythmias that commonly feature in valvular disease, which is very common in connective tissue disorders. Clearly something else is going on with height that's advantageous for birth. Huh.

I'm a woman and as tall as the average man in North America, so I do get the "taking up vertical space" and having eye-level interaction aspects of what it may be like in a man's body of comparable height, and I'll own I've used that to hold my ground with men in assertive-but-nonviolent situations before (education and work in male-dominated environments). It has been useful. But all the intrinsic details -- relaxin, pelvic shape, Q-angles, lower numbers of fibers per muscle -- those are uniquely female, and I don't see how they could be "imagined."

And yes to the sexed differences in balance, gait, ROM, center of gravity, those are all in play. Growing breasts is a game-changer. Not just the weight, but the forward flexion, the self-conscious "curling inward" so many girls do because of all the factors you mentioned -- if that persists, it can chronically stress the mid-back, C-spine, TMJs, provoke migraines and autonomic dysregulation and all sorts of unpleasantness. It's basically a postural "startle response" that becomes a lived-in body position, and, well . . . it's sadly self-explanatory, isn't it?

I've seen some really sketchy (non-SRS) surgical outcomes and postsurgical chronic pain conditions -- probably in the hundreds by now. Including women with purely cosmetic breast implants. I'm shocked at how casually reassignment procedures are treated by transtrenders. I had major invasive surgery myself, and though it went brilliantly, it took years to regain my ROM and re-adjust to the postsurgical new-normal. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and I've seen much, much worse.

No worries for the straying. I could endlessly nerd out about A&P and neurology!