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Original poster

Is this "gender identity"?

54 replies

Kaiserin · 26/07/2020 23:30

What does it mean to "feel like a woman"?
For a long time this made no sense to me, and sounded it was all about embracing gender stereotypes. However there seems to be (according to some) a distinction between gender identity (in your head) and gender expression (the way you dress and act).
So what's that womanly feeling? Do I (a female) even feel womanly?

Then it clicked: when a man is mean to me, I feel threatened, but that feeling is only as deep as how much I fear that man may be able to hurt me (otherwise? shrug, whatever). When a woman is mean to me, I doubt my self a lot more ("what's wrong with me?"). The man is "other" (still human, but distinct). The woman is a mirror, another self, and her rejection hurts my own sense of identity and adequacy.
I'm not saying that feeling is right or wrong, or that everyone has it, but (I've just realised), for me, it's real (and a bit shameful, as I thought I had stronger "mental boundaries". I guess deep down I'm still a little girl trying to please my mum...)

So, assuming that feeling is "gender identity"... trans women see men and feel they are "other", they see women and feel "that's another me!"... And if a woman says "sorry, but I don't see you as another me", the trans woman's feelings get hurt... But is that any different from anyone being rejected by the "peer group(s)" they identify with?

I'm a female with not very feminine interests. I identify with females based on our shared lived experience, due to being the same sex. I also identify with people (often male) who share my interests. I have experienced rejection from both groups due to my otherness. But surely I can't force people who don't identify with me, to identify with me? I can expect kindness based on our shared humanity, but surely I can't demand control on their own feelings, or request that they lie about such feelings?

So... unrequited feelings of identity are real ("I identify with you, but you don't identify with me, and it hurts"), but they are not any more a hate crime than, say, unrequited love.
... Does this idea I just got make sense to anyone else?

OP posts:
Barracker · 27/07/2020 01:53

Identity is an individual thing. A statement of knowledge about one's individuality.

The only way for a group - and gender is literally a group - to possess a communal, shared identity would be for that identity to have a set of defined characteristics common to every individual in it.

Eg, I am an introverted person, my identity is introvert, here are the characteristics of an introvert which I possess...
You are also an introvert and you possess those same characteristics.
Now, we're a common group, with a group identity.

But with 'female gender identity'?

You could put 100 women in a room.
Their sex is female
But they all have different personality traits.
So which of the 100 personalities gets to be the 'female gender identity'?
Perhaps 10 of the 100 women claim their personal identity is THE female gender identity.
But they all have different personalities! What are the shared female characteristics? Do they even differ from male characteristics? In what way are they female? How can this group gender identity 'female' be 10 conflicting things? That's not a group.
And what does that mean for the identities of the other women? Not female?

When women say "I have a female gender identity" they mean, I have a body, the word for it is female so whatever personality I have must be the 'female gender identity'.

But personalities are not gendered. They're human. Female is a reproductive class, not a feeling or personality type, and not an identity separate from one's sex.

nepeta · 27/07/2020 01:13

All identities depend on the interplay between the self and the others around that self as well as the general environment. The gender theory stipulates (orders us all to have this) that gender identity does not depend on that interplay at all but is some abstract, inner feeling, and that it doesn't depend on the sex of one's body, either.

I am sure that this way of framing the issue makes sense for transgender people, but I don't think it makes sense for the vast majority of people. My identity as a woman is certainly very much based on the fact that I live in a body others easily can clock as female, and that many of my life experiences are influenced by that body and the way others treat me because of it.

More generally, I am not at all sure that everyone, or even most people have such a thing as a gender identity, but that is because there is no real way of looking at the concept or doing research on it or whatever. But when I visited one trans rights site I read there that I have a gender identity, even though I don't think so, because I would feel devastated if I woke up tomorrow morning in an opposite sex body.

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't wake up devastated, though I might worry about my husband's reactions to this sudden change. But it would have no effect on my inner identity overall, and it would be really interesting to see if orgasms truly differ by sex or if suddenly men started actually hearing what I say in meetings.

The dangerous slide in the use of this concept is that now my whole female existence is erased because my identity is not supposed to be about living while female but only about some abstract inner feeling.

Stripesgalore · 27/07/2020 00:14

Women are a massive group though. How would one woman being mean change your identity anymore than one person who was five foot four or one person who was British or whatever.

DianasLasso · 26/07/2020 23:36

Nope. Doesn't make sense to me.

The reason I feel differently about a man who is aggressive towards me is simply because he is much more likely to escalate to actual physical violence and possibly sexual violence than a woman. That's it.

I don't feel "betrayal" over a woman being aggressive to me because "she's like me..."

That's not how it works.

Men are simply bigger, stronger, statistically more prone to violent attacks and come with a built-in rape weapon. That's it.