Gender Identity is an oxymoron

so how to explain the huge surge in trans people.....is it the pharmaceutical companies pushing this agenda-wanting lots of people on cross hormones & other drugs/having complicated surgeries & becoming medical patients for the rest of their lives?

I dont buy pharma as being the root cause tbh. Don’t get me wrong, pharma will be ready to make a shitload of cash of it if it happens without a sniff of remorse but I do t think they are the prime mover here.

I think it’s a symptom of where we are in society just now. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and the entire climate over this was different. Gay rights were in the news, there was definite optimism, and crucially there weren’t these little narrow gender boxes for men and women. Look at pop stars in that time - Adam ant for example. Kurt cobain. Robert Smith. All dresses and make up and still straight. It was OK to be a man and wear a frock. It was Ok to be a girl and have a shaved head, or short hair, and be a goth/punk/grunge/indie kid. Now I see teen girls who have al the same look and it’s very very feminine - long hair, pouty selfies. It’s a bit porny.

It was a flamboyant time. There was a sense of social solidarity- nowvthete isnt, its all extreme individuality and ID politics.

Then the web - allows meeting of people with more extreme views.

Then the rise of instant gratification and fake news - now instead of facts checked we have a constant stream of info and people’s opinions are seen as valid as facts.

Then porn - argh - again in my day it wasn’t easily accessible. Now it’s instantly there on the phone, and it’s abusive in the main.

There’s a thread about this somewhere if one of our encyclopaedic-memoried posters can find it.

Don't worry sardines, your post was an interesting one at any point in the discussion.

I believe that trans people have this internal sense but I have no personal experience or understanding of what they are talking about and so it does not make sense for my state of being to be in any way defined in relation to their beliefs.

That sounds fair in terms of you stating your own beliefs. A religious person might call me an athiest though, or agnostic. I guess that's fine for them. I probably wouldn't list either as anything to broadcast about myself, but in relation to their beliefs? To them I'm agnostic; I can't not be I suppose.

So whilst no-one is forced to define themselves in relation to anyone else's beliefs, they might define you in terms of them. I agree, "cis" implies you do have a gender identity, but agender? If a trans person said that in relation to gender you were agender would you find that understandable?

oh shit didn't refresh the screen and done loads of work, there are about a million posts since where I thought the conversation was!

Will catch up.

so how to explain the huge surge in trans people.....is it the pharmaceutical companies pushing this agenda-wanting lots of people on cross hormones & other drugs/having complicated surgeries & becoming medical patients for the rest of their lives?

agender or cis both confirm a belief in gender though, at least the way they are used

for people who have no such feelings, it feels wrong to accept labels that imply a belief in it

if a person has no such feelings then that are not "cis" or "trans" or "bigender" or "agender" or any of the other labels, they are not in that stuff at all

they simply are male or female according to the commonly understood meanings that have served the human race (and most of the animal kingdom) adequately well for millions of years (incluiding pre language)

I believe that trans people have this internal sense but I have no personal experience or understanding of what they are talking about and so it does not make sense for my state of being to be in any way defined in relation to their beliefs.

Well it sounds like a logical premise - if it can happen to a fish it can happen to a human.

But actually it’s not. Don’t forget that fish live their lives constantly in the contaminated medium (water). From egg stage to adult, they are literally swimming in it.
A human foetus isn’t. Everything that hits the foetus is filtered through the mother’s bloodstream and the placental barrier. Oestrogen IS something the mother has naturally in her system. 0.005% or whatever extra oestrogen isn’t going to be significant to a human foetus because it’ll be well within the range of what different women have anyway. Fish don’t get exposed to any human oestrogen normally so to the it’s a new stimulus, and they’re swimming in it constantly, absorbing it all the time.

So while it sounds logical, it’s actually not a premise that stands up.

I think it is a choice whether you comply with gender stereotypes or not.

But knowing which set of stereotypes apply to you is not a choice. Whether you think it's because of your physical sex characteristics alone, or if you think it's because of some internal sense of identity, you can't choose which set you negotiate with. You can only choose to reject or accept the ones you know apply to you. The "knowing" is not a choice.

Ah thanks Rat-I would hope someone somewhere is actually investigating what is going on! I think sometimes people genuinely don't understand trans people so assume they should fear them....also not helped by the wayside of them behave sometimes-but I can't work out if we will look back and think what a mess we made of supporting trans people. OR if we should just help them to accept the physical bodies they were born with...

Again, people aren’t fish. We seemed to have to point that out to Hugh quite a bit.

Lol!

You can feminise fish this way if you’re extreme about it but even if you do soak humans in the run off from urine containing hormonal contraceptives it doesn’t make people transgender.

I wonder though (Hugh wasn't talking about contraceptives specifically), wasn't he kind of implying that we might in some way be feminising/masculinising people in subtle ways that may only be observable in virtue of our complex conscious identities and behaviours? Suggesting that that may well be possible if something like the contraceptive pill can demonstrably feminise a fish?

CantankerousCamel

Thanks. I think I've finally understood why I couldn't make any sense of the term 'gender identity'.

flowers

OK, I'm probably going to be shot down for this, but I think everything we do which is not imposed on us or involuntary is a choice. Homosexuality is not a choice - it is attraction, which is involuntary - we do not control who we are attracted to. Having a homosexual relationship (or a heterosexual relationship) is a choice. Whatever your sexuality you can choose who you have a relationship with, or whether not to have any sexual relationships at all.

I think it is a choice whether you comply with gender stereotypes or not. You may choose to comply with them because you fear being criticised for not doing so, or because you feel they 'fit'. You may choose not to comply with them because they don't fit, or just to show the world that you're a rebel. Whether or not the stereotypes fit your personality is not a choice - this is the involuntary part. What you do about it is a choice.

But none of these things make you anything other than a gender-conforming or gender-non-conforming person. The fact that so many people feel the stereotypes don't fit just shows the stereotypes up as the bullshit they are.

Oh I remember Hugh! His grasp of biology was I’m afraid a little off though. Rather a lot off in fact.

You do find metabolites of all sorts of stuff in the water supply - from drilling chemicals whose breakdown products are oestrogenic to cardiac drugs.

The levels of them in the water are very low though. In our local tap water we find arsenic, all sorts of shit. You do in most tap waters, but at very very low levels.
Being able to detect stuff with a mass spec is great, but it doesn’t mean it’s concentrated enough to cause an effect. It’s the dose that makes the poison. Below the point of biological effectiveness for any drug tested where I lived at the time I engaged —told Hugh he was entirely wrong— with Hugh on this matter. There were a couple of good scientists on that thread...

You can feminise fish this way if you’re extreme about it but even if you do soak humans in the run off from urine containing hormonal contraceptives it doesn’t make people transgender. Again, people aren’t fish. We seemed to have to point that out to Hugh quite a bit.

Ah, fuck, accidentally quoted something from another thread. THIS is what I meant to respond to:

But what about the effect of many women taking the contraceptive pill-can this end up in the water supply & somehow change the biological make up of people?

Ah, straightsplaining what is and isn't appropriate at LGBT events, wonderful.

There was a poster on here for a while, HughE I think it was, who has written quite a lot about a similar thing. Talked a lot about the effect of hormonal-type chemicals being administered to pregnant women and the potential for the outcome to be some kind of intersexual-ness of the baby that is not the kind of "intersex" we currently recognise (i.e. differing chromosomes or androgen sensitivity issues). I thought it was quite interesting.

Does anyone know if there is any research happening, to look at why there is such a large increase in people saying they are trans-appreciate social contagion/internet plays a huge part. But what about the effect of many women taking the contraceptive pill-can this end up in the water supply & somehow change the biological make up of people? Is there a genuine hormone imbalance? Seems such a complicated area and if one asks questions people are too quick to shout you down as being transphobic...

It most certainly does, but gender is the social roles and practises enforced due to sex class, therefore it cannot affect the identity of a person of the opposite sec class, if it does, it ceases (by definition) to be gender.

I think I agree with this. If I've understood this correctly, this means that gender is imposed on us from the day we're born. We can choose to accept or reject this, but what we can't do is to step into the shoes of someone from the opposite sex and claim that we have been conditioned into their gender. Because gender is the conditioning, not the 'identity'.

If I have got this right, then it is very much like a white person claiming to be black, when they haven't had all the life experience of being treated like a black person.

OldCrone

Well, for a long time in this society and still in many societies, same sex attraction was/is considered 'abnormal' with the socially imposed stereotype being attraction to the opposite sex.

By that definition, wouldn't homosexuality also be a 'choice'?

Why? What has homosexuality got to do with stereotypes? Homosexuality is about attraction.

Rat just wanted to tell you that I get what you are saying and I agree with you

flowers you make me so happy!

Those who promote this will find themselves disgraced, if not legally culpable, depending on the role they have taken in this monstrous practice

Surely very few people promote medical treatment? Surely most people are either doctors who think its in their patients best interests, patients who liaise with their doctors, and others who defers to the better-placement of the two former-mentioned to make the decision?

I think anyone actually promoting it beyond the necessary is almost certainly monstrous, but mostly I think it's just normal people doing the best they can either for themselves, their loved ones, or those they are responsible for in a professional capacity.

Good thread!

OldCrone
"But if you choose to do something which aligns with or goes against the stereotype for your sex, it is a choice. Anyone can choose to do things typical for their own sex or the opposite sex. But if you're doing things typical of the opposite sex that just means you're going against stereotypes. It's not a 'gender identity'"

By that definition, wouldn't homosexuality also be a 'choice'?

Rat just wanted to tell you that I get what you are saying and I agree with you

I am also deeply wary of the promotion of trans identities and gender identity to young children. And I am aware of the alleged paralells between that sentiment and section 28, but it's not the same thing. The potential for physical and psychological harm to children 'affirmed' in trans-ness is massive. And I worry about the conflation of physical (dimorphic) sex and gender identity. They aren't the same thing.