So ... Does this indicate that you CAN be 'born the wrong gender'?

I have never heard sexual identity said in the UK, and as under UK law we routinely use sexual orientation as the workplace and school based equal ops term, protected in law, to mean gay, straight etc, I think it is just confusing to say sexual identity.

I resent the use of the term identity attached to me in general. The whole 'I identify as...' makes whatever the person say next sound dishonest.

Where do things like being 'camp' and 'butch' come into this? They are things that blur the lines between sex, gender and sexual preference, but are again part of a binary view on all of the above.

To go back to the earlier post about how gender identity is subjective, and then someone else saying pain is also subjective...

I disagree that what pain means is subjective. What pain is, what we mean when we tell each other that we are experiencing pain, when we set out to inflict pain, what that means has an explicit meaning that is not subjective. We all mean the same thing. It is universal. Describing the level of pain you are in is subjective, but what the word pain means is not.

The issue with gender identity and so the word woman isn't that we are subjectively reporting our own levels of womanhood. The problem is that what a woman is no longer has an explicit meaning.

If I say, well I am a woman, and I am very nurturing, like Star Wars, like chewing gum and don't like tennis so that is what a woman is then that is hugely subjective, but it is also very explicit.

We can now debate whether that is what a woman is, run empirical tests to decide how many women there are based on how many people are those things I listed, and each of us can now, based on our own subjective internal experience, decide if we are a woman according to that explicit understanding of the word.

But people who believe in gender identity refuse to explicitly say what a woman is. I can think of no other category people are expected to put themselves into which has no definition. I don't care how subjective people are in saying what a woman is as a gender identity, but I think they should have the decency to be explicit as to what they mean.

Because while they're not, I'm going to assume it just means the old version of what women are meant to feel internally - bit stupid, subservient, not too good with numbers, very emotional, bit silly. Because the idea of woman, now it doesn't mean a person with a female body, can't just have been plucked from thin air. You must be referring to something you expect us all to understand.

I always thought it was

Gender identity = do you feel like you are a man or a woman (or non confirming etc)

Sexual identity = who you are attracted to women/men/both

Sex = is your body female or male (according to that article I posted incase Holly was interested) this is actually way more complicated than you would think.

Sexual orientation! That's the phrase I was looking for, not preference. Preference would refer to the sex in the kitchen.

WRT sexual preference, we (royal we) are keen to define ourselves aren't we? We're happy with the idea of homosexuality now, but it's still an one or the other situation - whether someone is gay or straight, they have one preference. Bisexuality seems more 'taboo', perhaps because we find it easier to accept that people prefer either men or women. I think this is related to gender identity, as again it's an either/or situation. We can accept a man feeling like a woman, or a woman feeling like a man, but we struggle with the idea that someone could feel like both, or neither.

If sexual preference was more fluid, in that two (or more!) people could choose to have sex without biological sex having anything to do with it, maybe gender identity would also be more fluid. I think gender and sexual preference are linked, but because of society.

It's all really interesting, btw. Very thought provoking.

Sexuality is just a general term for all a person's sexual thoughts and feelings, isn't it? So if you enjoyed having sex very frequently and like having sex in the kitchen, that would all be part of your sexuality.

While sexual orientation is what usually goes on equal opps tick boxes, is protected under the equality act, and means whether you are gay, straight, bisexual, asexual or pansexual.

I don't think people use the phrase sexual identity very much, so don't think it has a clear meaning to most people.

Sexual identity, I was just reading the wiki definition so it's been around for years it's just me who's not heard it before!

If gender identity means the gender that you identify with then surely sexual identity would mean the sex that you identify with? Logically? Although that's not how it's being used on this thread, from the context.

What's wrong with saying sexuality?

I'm confused again.

Part of the problem with this conversation is that in society generally people have started saying "gender" when they mean "sex" and I think this is because the word sex is a bit naughty isn't it.

That last wasn't aimed at anyone BTW! Just these things are all actually very different so I'm not even sure why they are all put in the same conversation and I suspect it's because they've all got things to do with sex as in intercourse.

I also think that sexuality and gender ID and sex are getting all mixed up when they're not the same thing at all.

Possibly because they are all relevant or interesting to people when it comes to sexual intercourse and so people lump them all in together in a prurient sort of a manner.

Is sexual identify the same as sexuality then?

Gender (as in socialised roles) includes sexuality, the assumption that children will be straight, the strong socialisation that straight is "normal" and for many children no other options are even offered (around the world). That is a very strong aspect of gender role.

whirlpool on another thread I asked a well-meaning transactivist what is the name for those people with vagina, womb etc. she said there is really no reason for such a word because there is no reason to talk about that group of people as a group. [despairs]

I didn't find you patronising. I like things explained simply.

I think the problem is a language one. A lot of the posters on the feminist boards are regulars and the same topics come up again and again so you guys are used to talking about them.
A newbie like me does have a lot of language to understand and get my head round.

I think out of all of this interesting thread I agree with Flora:

"People who argue there is a biological basis for transsexualism seem quite blinkered about where that line of thinking leads. You might find a biological cause for transsexualism but surely the conclusion would be that transsexuals have a type of intersex conditions, not that MTTs are actually women. "

Because the problem for women and girls, is that if transwomen are in fact, quite literally, female human beings, biology and all, then there is no way left to describe the group that the people with the wombs and stuff belong to. And loads of things get done to that group because of the wombs and stuff. So if we can't say who they are (women) then we, as feminists, have a big problem.

There was something upthread about how do you know you're a woman then, and for many of us it's when some fucker shouts "show us your tits" out of a van. Many women, according to threads on here, don't have this internal gender thing going on. We just "are", until we menstruate or give birth or have the menopause or get sexually assaulted, and at those points we're reminded (often not very pleasantly) of our female-ness.

Some women do have an internal gender identity obviously and of course if goes without saying that trans people do. Do men, on the whole? No idea. But the question posed upthead about whether we're comparing the right groups / asking the right questions, is a good one. Maybe a noticeable internal gender identity is something that some people have and some don't. And so of course the ones who have it think the questions from the ones who don't are simply disingenuous and obstructive, and the people who don't have a gender ID are left flailing around with literally no idea what the others are talking about.

Anyway, it's all very interesting.

Garrick thanks for the explaination but I have to say, please remember that not everyone has already thought about all these issues at length and have a clear understanding of what the difference is between gender, sex and 'biological' sex.
Just as not everyone has an idea of what 'ontological and epistemological assumptions' are.

It's nice for all the 'newbies' in the discussion to not be told off for not knowing.

As far as I am concerned, this thread is fascinating. I have a real issue with the idea that men/women can be defined as per their level of testosterone (that's the Olympics isn't it?) and not the XX or XY chromosomes because it's an hormone and of course, hormone levels vary. They vary between individuals of the same 'sex' (ie XX or XY) but they also vary in time in the same individual.
Using a hormone as a way to define the (biological) sex of an individula is crazy.

Im also at loss as to how you can have such discussion about sexual identity and gender when both of those are clearly interlinked. How on earth can you actually separate what is a sexual identity (which could be different from your biological sex) and gender?

I think there is a strong desire to argue that homosexuals are "born that way" because it helps with moving conservatives to accepting that people are gay. It's unlikely to be caused by hormones in the womb otherwise twins would have the same sexuality and this is not the case. If you think being gay is a valid and positive life experience, it doesn't matter whether someone was born that way, socialised that way, chose to be gay or any other reason.

I don't see how a sense of whether one is male or female can develop in the womb or even what it means to feel make or female. A foetus could not have body dysmorphia as they can't see what they look like. I'm not aware of parents reporting baby boys being distressed at their penises. It seems to coincide with the age when children learn that boys have willies and girls play with dolls.

buffy if you are willing to take the time to explain the social stuff that would be appreciated.

I will try and get my head round it but no promises.