I don't disagree with you, entirely.
But...
Going against the expectations of a particular subculture is not, necessarily, acting independently.
There is no shortage of other subcultures competing for your obedience to their expectations.
Going against one of them... is just going along with another's expectation that you do that.

I guess Why you do it, is the question.
Did you choose which Herd to subjugate yourself to freely as one last, ironic expression of "free will"?
Or did you just feel a sympathetic identification with one that was lacking in the other... i.e., Did it choose you?

The "forces" that discourage gender transition in Western society, for example, are far less influential than those that encourage it. Not only do they encourage it, but they demand blind acceptance of their purported reasons for encouraging it, and they attack any dissent as "bigoted" and "hateful".
Indeed, they actually enforce their expectations through the lynch-mobs of "cancel culture", HR departments, etc., up to and including the Force of Law.
All of which, of course, makes them the "Establishment"; and anyone else, the new "counterculture".
"Going along" with Establishment expectations is most certainly the easier route, and is no evidence of free will whatsoever.
By demanding subservience to their beliefs on gender, they have ironically become: The Man.
And there's never been anything "courageous" or independent about bending the knee to The Man.

I doubt you could find any facet of human behavior that doesn't have some constituency... some 'community' that has expectations of its de-facto members, who will be ostracized if they fail to meet those expectations through some sufficiently-dramatic transgression.
"Ostracized" can mean anything from being quietly abandoned by the Herd if they're lucky, to being viciously attacked and driven from it explicitly.

But, obedience to the Herd does not mean you don't have free will either... it just means you're a coward.
Or lazy. Or... you may just happen to agree with the Herd in the first place.
Free Will is certainly a thing, I just don't think people exercise it nearly to the extent that they think they do.
And I think we'd all be better off if they did.

@rway It doesn't matter that there might be subcultures that exist IF I was never initially part of them. The fact that others might welcome my choices, may be of value IF they were in a position to influence me prior to the decision....something that might be more apparent NOW, but certainly wasn't back in 1984!

@tracycoyle I wouldn't know anything about your personal choices or influences.
It could just be an amazing coincidence that your independent choice turned out to be a dominant and popular cause célèbre throughout the Culture over the ensuing decades. Maybe you started a trend.
I do know that generally being an "anti-Establishment" non-conformist has been all the rage since the '60s, and people have been increasingly conforming to that idea ever-since, ironically.
...as the people around them came to expect of them.
Conforming to other people's expectations doesn't always mean acting like they do, or behaving the way they wish you would behave... just the way that you believe they expect you to behave; which often produces a lifelong cascade of self-fulfilling prophesies from both parties; none of which having anything to do with anybody's "free will".
Most communication and most personal interaction happens at a subconscious level, and so avoids any susceptibility to free will altogether.
That doesn't imply that there's no such thing as free will; just that it's rarely, if ever, exercised absolutely.
It also doesn't imply anything about you, personally. I don't know you.
What choices you've made, and why you made them, are none of my business.

Hello rway, What I always find interesting regarding gender transition is that gender binary matters a lot to those who seriously consider changing their gender. Otherwise, they wouldn't bother with surgical procedures, for example - it's a huge commitment as they are irreversible. While they may make a conscious decision on which gender they want to be, their decision-making process may be unconsciously restricted by the gender binary concept, where neuroscience becomes involved, I guess.

@Naomi Yep. We are big on the whole binary thing....otherwise, there would be no dysphoria to begin with. Which tends to tell me that non-binary people have no gender dysphoria, but probably have a significant body dysmorphia issue.

@tracycoyle What's interesting then is that although one's decision to change their gender appears to be out of ordinary and therefore appears to be by their free will, the actual decision-making process is on the basis of a rather conventional gender binary concept. If so, it isn't so much of free will...?

@Naomi One could argue that going to the bathroom is not based on free will, or eating. If there were no BIOLOGICAL basis to gender, there would likely be no dysphoria. I don't get to choose my biological sex - free will is not involved because I am not given a choice. Gender is no different, even if it has a different foundation. We don't get to choose our gender, for 99% of the people, that is not a problem. For the 1% or so of us with incongruent gender, it isn't a choice to to seek congruency - it is a need. Can it be suppressed? Sure. Does that make it a choice? Yep, like deciding to work through pain.

@Naomi I think the most tragic examples of blind conformance to society's binary stereotypes, is when parents actually choose to physically mutilate their children because they act "butch" or "effeminate", or like to play with the "wrong" toys...
That's shallow, ludicrously over-simplified, and (call me cynical, but...) probably more about them and their "woke cred" than it is about what's right for the child.
That's a decision for the individual to make themselves; the mature individual, as an adult.