Brighton primary school admissions - gender identity

CoteDAzur The dysphoria versus dysmorphia argument is well old and has been compared and argued out before in plenty of places....yawn...

Ask them what they could do as a girl, that they can't do as a boy?

Erm, fuck all as a child. Girls and boys should not be treated differently. The trans narrative states that they should be. Hence why it's so fucking horrendous.

Sunburnt, you may have missed my question.

How do I place myself on the gender spectrum? What do I need to know to make some kind of decision?

The question at the moment is as alien to me as "where are you on the colour spectrum?"
or
"What sound are you?"

I literally do not know how to understand gender in the way you describe it. What IS it?

Why Sunburnt? Because only trans people can decide they are something they want to be feel like?

People who feel like they are cats are not operated on to make them look feline. Nobody sticks tails on them and scratches behind their ears.

People who feel like they should be amputees can't find a doctor to amputate the functional limb that causes them distress. Nobody says to them "Oh, you feel that left arm should not be there? No worries, we'll cut that out for you".

So what is so special about males who "feel like" they should be women? Why do you think their bodies should be surgically changed to fit the feeling in their head which contradicts reality, while others receive only psychological treatment to bring the feeling closer to physical reality?

femfortheday "Ask them what feeling like a girl feels like. Ask them what they could do as a girl, that they can't do as a boy? Let them express themselves however they choose. Tell them that they can do anything they want, regardless of society's arbitrary gendered roles."
Why aren't parents, teachers and the health professionals working with trans kids asking any of these questions? Oh wait a second...they are!!

HermioneWeasley "Because the latest meta analysis has shown no sex based brain differences." Lol! Back to school for you then. Or you could just google some shit.

Ask them what feeling like a girl feels like. Ask them what they could do as a girl, that they can't do as a boy? Let them express themselves however they choose. Tell them that they can do anything they want, regardless of society's arbitrary gendered roles.

You know, that stuff RadFems have been arguing for for decades.

I'm happy to answer that, but would you mind answering my question first?

John Money may have thought gender was a social construct, but he attempted to show this by making somebody who had suffered a traumatic accident undergo further invasive surgery and 'live like a girl' without their consent. Its difficult to see how anybody could draw wider conclusions about gender from this case.

HairyLittle Poet Asking if colours are infinite is really a physics question. Colour relies on light and the eye and there are boundaries of wavelength for the spectrum of visible light.
There might be a quantum limit on wavelength difference, but for colour it doesn't matter. Colours are a product of the human eye and colour resolution relies on that process.
Colours are perceived by the human eye. But we digress.
If a four year old kid is telling everyone around them over and over and over, day in and day out, for months and then years, that they feel like a boy or feel like a girl and that is not the same as their biological sex what should we do?

sunburnt if you're sure there's such a thing as gender identity, where does it reside? Because the latest meta analysis has shown no sex based brain differences.

So if trans people are biologically the sex they are, and brains don't have a sex, where does this "wrong body" experience come from?

By the way, saw an article this week by an American guy who was telling us his son is trans and is his daughter. His evidence - likes dressing up and playing soccer (which is mostly played by women in the states). He had tried everything apparently including painting his room blue and buying him t-Rex pyjamas, but to no avail. So must actually be a girl.

I have yet to hear anything from any trans person about "feeling like" a man or woman which isn't gender stereotype bullshit.

And I utterly disagree that children of 4 have the cognitive ability to have any concept of "gender identity". Many of them (as in the stories shared by MNetters) don't realise that biological sex is fixed at that age.

Ophelia Reductionist cop out

RadFem Brigade sounds good, shall we make badges?

And yes there are whole political parties lobbying for this. Hence this form.

Sunburnt

I'm posting in good faith here and want to understand what YOU mean by this, so let me ask, when you say I definitely have a gender identity, and also that gender is a spectrum, to me that means possibly infinite, like colours of the rainbow. And you're saying I can be anywhere on it. But how do I place myself? I don't understand this part.
For the purposes of understanding gender I'm setting aside my understanding of body sex.

I promise I am not baiting or provoking. But I do not understand how I should describe myself or what is my frame of reference. If you are willing, can you take me through your understanding of gender please?

Because without an actual definition of what woman/man means, we're in a situation where two men are Sat chatting about and being spokespeople for their experiences of 'being a woman'. While the women are in the back, making the tea and doing all the work, completely deprived of any language to describe their oppression.

You'll probably dismiss this as 'biological essential' but I know I am a woman because I have a human female body. That's it. I have no inner sense of 'womanhood' beyond my biological reality. Bits of my personality fit into the gendered woman box, bits don't. I don't have a gendered identity.

Okay, you seem to be getting very philosophical here Sunburnt. Four year olds are supposed to be able to answer this question.

What is gender? How do I know which one I am?

I feel able to say I'm an atheist through self determination and self identitification. I still think atheist can be categorised and described objectively. Knowing you are something and being able to describe how that thing is categorised are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, I'd like to self identify as a Royal King.
Yep. Think I'm going to go right ahead with that one.

"So you're no different to a man, except physically? But you're not a man because you can see the bits that are different, like genitalia etc. And if you think you're a man you're psychotic even though you're no different to a man inside."

Wow you really didn't get any of it, did you?

I am a woman because of my biology. There is nothing else that sets me apart from a man.

If one day I start to think I am a man (although I can clearly see that I am not), I would quickly seek professional help because that would mean my brain is lying to me. Yes, psychotic break could be a possibility. Or a brain tumour.

Was that really that hard to understand?

femfortheday "The genderist lobby"? Gimme a break. What lobby are you operating within? The RadFem brigade?

StepAwayFromTheThesaurus So there are characteristics of gender now are there precisely defined into categories?
Ever heard of a process of self determination and self identification? Why would you need some "objective test" to really come to know yourself? Couldn't you rely on the data of your own intuition? How have you come to know yourself? Because of what people told you you were your whole life? Or because you know who you are?
(Or because of your test results?)

StepAwayFromTheThesaurus So there are characteristics of gender now are there precisely defined into categories?
Ever heard of a process of self determination and self identification? Why would you need some "objective test" to really come to know yourself? Couldn't you rely on the data of your own intuition? How have you come to know yourself? Because of what people told you you were your whole life? Or because you know who you are?
(Or because of your test results?)

Sorry, I mean that I don't think it is necessary. I certainly think it is repulsive.

Sunburnt, Iif gender is not a social construct, what is it? What is this thing called gender that you are talking about?

I don't think it is repulsive to keep going over the details of how a child was abused for no other reason than it 'opened up a whole debate.' You can have a debate without discussing the details of that poor kid.

Not everyone has an innate 'gender identify', and forcing one on someone (who repeatedly tells you they don't have one) as the genderist lobby are so keen to do, is basically mis-gendering. A crime they describe as an act of violence.

Please stop telling women what they think and feel. It's misogyny.