Please help me untangle why gender is such an issue

I'm with you on this NiceGerbil my whole life I've been trying to be seen as more than the gendered stereotype of my sex. To be taken more seriously, to be listened to rather than spoken over, to be acknowledged rather than have my ideas appropriated by others. This idea that I need to 'identify' with my gender would see me shackled to regressive stereotypes which position me as a suoport human

So much this.

This idea that I need to 'identify' with my gender would see me shackled to regressive stereotypes which position me as a suoport human
This new wave of gender ideology is very upsetting for a lot of women. Our upset, our unease at being labelled in this way doesn't count though. It infuriates me when some women say it costs nothing to go along with it - if that's what you think I would suggest you really haven't thought about it at any length.

*Ok well I feel like a person inside

That's why I was a feminist before I knew the word*

I have always felt very very strongly that I'm a person.

I'm with you on this NiceGerbil my whole life I've been trying to be seen as more than the gendered stereotype of my sex. To be taken more seriously, to be listened to rather than spoken over, to be acknowledged rather than have my ideas appropriated by others. This idea that I need to 'identify' with my gender would see me shackled to regressive stereotypes which position me as a suoport human. I'm still yet to see or hear an explanation of what is is to feel 'female' that is anything other than a list of restrictive stereotypical views of women and girls. Gender ideology is fundamentally sexist and regressive.

Since gender identity only exists in the minds of some people, and can't be described or defined, it's obviously not something which should be used to make laws or even mentioned in legislation.

Nobody should be teaching children that they should have a gender identity, and definitely shouldn't be telling them that their bodies are wrong and need medicating because they have the wrong gender identity for their body.

Gender identity is like religion. If you believe you have a gender identity, that's fine. If you believe in God, that's fine. But some of us don't believe, and we have the right to not believe.

This is exactly how I feel and what really confuses me!

I haven't suggested it should. I'm just sharing my experiences for those who believe gender identity only exists within the realm of transgender people

But why does that feeling supercede physical sex?

I don't know what the feeling is but it's there. I feel like a woman, I know other people don't experience that but if I were to be referred to as "he" for example it would make me very uncomfortable. I'm attached to my female body and to a certain extent being perceived as female. It's not my sole identity by any means but I do have an internal feeling of being a woman, I don't know how to explain it for those who don't experience it also.

I guess that's what the fuck it means @NiceGerbil

What is this female internal feeling?

I mean what the fuck does that even mean?

If I was transported into DH body suddenly. Well I'd probably go mad instantly because that's quite weird.

Otherwise. Why would i freak? As long as I still have my marbles. I'd need to do what he does around checking the sports pages in case anyone says did you see the match. I know to keep my eyes averted at the urinal. People would get out of my way on the street. I couldn't do his job because I don't know how to do his job...?

Ok well I feel like a person inside

That's why I was a feminist before I knew the word

I have always felt very very strongly that I'm a person.

This new thing puts that as a minority feeling.

When no one has actually checked. I have things that, I suppose form my identity. None of them have anything to do with. What I take gender id to be about.

What about all the people who are having to grapple with a concept that is alien to them? Who have fought to be seen as a person all their life? Rather than. Oh you're pretty and you have all that lovely hair and blah fuck off.

What about all those people? All the world over who want to be seen as PEOPLE.

That's all I wanted. It never came. And now I'm having a label applied to me which says yes. I love all that shit.

The impact on women and girls to either. Conform or 'come out' as what. Someone who says fuck you to gender stereotypes. A big ask for children.

I am so sick of this. I grew up in the seventies eighties. We were getting somewhere. This retrograde pigeonholing is just. Retrograde.

Right yep, but there are people on here who are suggesting no one has ingrained gender identity. @Datun

Knowing you're female when you are actually female is one thing. Knowing you're female when you're actually male is called something else entirely.

I am in my fifties and have never met a single person with a gender identity aside from a trans identifying person.
Not one of the women I know or have known has this mysterious inner identifying-with-womanhood feeling. They just are women, of all personalities and interests.

I feel like a woman (I'm biologically female). I can't really describe how or why I feel it (in a similar context as trying to describe the colour red without using the word "red"). I just feel like a woman inside my brain and my body, and I'd be very uncomfortable if I were somehow transported into a male body as an example. So I guess I do have some form of gender identity and I'm not transgender

If you are agender

Then what is your sex

If you follow the logic of some posters on here

You don't have one?

I really try to understand, if I were to accept that sex is a spectrum, what the implications and results of this would be. I’d say that, up until recently, most people would agree that there have been two sets of people - the ones getting pregnant and the ones doing the impregnating, i.e. the two sexes. So if instead it were a spectrum does that mean that if two people are too close on the spectrum they can’t produce a baby between them, (even if one were of what we would say was the male sex and the other, the female sex?) Does it mean the two people need to be at the opposite sides of the sex wheel (I’m picturing a colour chart wheel here!) to be successful in baby making? I just don’t understand what it would mean for sex to be a spectrum! It’s not like we can make something else besides a baby so to my mind, there’s only two outcomes - baby or no baby. Its not as if a trans person coupled with a person of the opposite gender has ever produced a baby between them without any outside help.

I would love to ask a M2F trans why they “feel like they are more female”. Is it because they prefer pink, long hair, feminine clothes, traditional womanly traits?

You've nailed it, OP.

It's a really binary way of thinking.

@positrans I'm not sure whether you're still here or not but I have the following, fairly blunt position I'd be interested to hear you thoughts on:

I don't have the slightest interest in a stranger's inner sense of their gender identity (howsoever defined or whether such a thing exists or not), or inner sense of themselves as anything at all, or in general. Someone's personal sense of, or beliefs about, themself is matter of supreme indifference to me unless I happen to have a personal relationship with said individual.

What I do care about in relation to people I don't know from Adam is how much of a threat they are to me or my children in a given situation. There is plenty of objective, verifiable data showing that people of the male sex carry out violent and sexual crime at an astronomically higher rate than people of the female sex. There is plenty of objective, verifiable data showing that people of the male sex are on average much stronger than people of the female sex. These two facts alone put me, a female person, at greater physical risk from make people than from other female people. Without getting into concepts of privacy and dignity, these are two significant reasons why female people and male people have been and are offered separate facilities and services in certain situations.

Based on the studies I have seen to date, transwomen continue to offend at the same or very similar rates to male people who don't consider themselves to be anything other than men. Based on studies I have seen to date, transwomen retain a significant physical advantage over female people.

Why, in your opinion (if indeed this is your opinion!), should gender identity - in which I have zero interest and which changes neither significant underlying risk factor - be privileged over sex when providing separate facilities and services?

Thank you!

Calling me 'agender' doesn't strike me as something that will result in productive dialogue, nor will contructing straw men out of questions i have asked in good faith.

Where are the studies where billions of people have had the concept of gender identity described to them, and have agreed with its epistemological roots and disclosed they identify with having a gender identity?
I think they usually observe that they have a sex, as I do.

I totally agree with you!

Thank you daisies

Gosh this is exciting...like waiting for Christmas, though i hope there are less sleeps

It is indeed pointless trying to impose any strict binary on sex or gender identity. The science simply doesn't support it

Coming back to this from earlier - there is no such thing as binary sex- because while it’s become dogma now, I really need to point out again what an extreme statement this would have been, say 10 years ago.

Did anything change in the last decade about how babies are made?

No.

Humans are sexually dimorphic (DSDs are variants, and do not disprove this rule). It’s how we reproduce, and that is literally all that sex describes. A truly modern society looks it straight in the eye, and works towards ensuring that no one suffers disadvantages because of their sex, because of their actual or perceived baby making capabilities, with all the attached baggage. Pretending it doesn’t exist or subsiding it under amorphous “gender” sends us backwards.

Cartesian dualism, which is what you’re describing - the mind and the body being separate entities- has been debated for hundreds of years and has some fatal flaws that haven’t been resolved, and still aren’t being resolved in this latest fashionable iteration.

evidence of the ‘well studied’ and ‘scientific’ and ‘fact

Did this turn up, ive looked but i cant see it

I may have missed it

I would really like to know what I’m supposed to be feeling to know what my gender identity is, because I feel like a spectrum of things throughout the day- some in common with women, some in common with men- and I’m not at all sure which of those feelings gives me my gender identity.

Because it isn’t just down to my interests (reasonably broad and applicable to both sexes) or the happiness (or not) I feel about my body or appearance. It isn’t even how well I feel I shape up as a female person, so what is it? What am I supposed to be feeling so I know whether I feel it or not?

I will not hold my breath on an answer.