Please help me untangle why gender is such an issue

And being feminine isn't the same as being female or woman ( in my book)
You don't have to be feminine to be a woman and you don't have to be a woman to be feminine

At this stage in your life you have had decades of socialisation , of course you might find it strange being transplanted . Because all the external cues and expectations would change.

Do you really think your inner self would change? Would you like different things?

Of course, but I don’t think the only difference between myself and a man is my physical body. I don’t think the only reason I am feminine is because of a coincidence or because I was raised to be this way, and that if you were to transplant my brain into a man’s body that I would be happy to live life as a man once I got used to it because really I’m no different.

How can you feel like you are a woman without defining woman by way of stereotypes. What is that identity based on? Rachael Dolezal felt she was black, was she?

I think people who say men and women have differences beyond nurture and sex are extrapolating from their own experiences way to much, and following a line of reasoning that says I better get that mastectomy

If woman means more than biology I am not one

Thanks guys.

Elsiebear90 men and women are men and women because of their bodies.

You can't be either without a sexed body.

It seems strange to me that it is mostly trans identifying people that have a gender identity and the rest of us are agender (autocorrect didn’t recognise that as a word)

Positrans

Please could you just clear things up by posting links to robust scientific studies that demonstrate the evidence backing up your claims.

There can hundreds, thousands or even one for every person - it's doesn't matter.

If it's something concrete that isn't a soul then it's actually personality.

Gender identity is linked to biology - science suggests that it has a biological cause.

See above. Personality.

I don’t agree that men and women are exactly the same except in body. I remember reading about a study where they tried to raise a a boy with a damaged penis as a girl and (didn’t tell him he was a boy) because they believed gender was a social construct rather than innate. The boy exhibited stereotypically masculine behaviours and interests, became suicidal and after finding out he was actually a boy changed his name and decided to live as a man. Obviously that was just one case, and it’s not really ethical to experiment like this on a large scale.

I’m a lesbian and I much prefer the company of women over men for romantic and platonic friendships, I’ve had relationships with men and women and I can tell you there are huge differences between the two other than just physically, in fact the physical difference is the smallest difference imo. People might assume all this is down to social conditioning, but I disagree. This is just my view of it, but I think my gender was something I was born with, and that is normally aligned to sex, except in some individuals where it goes wrong.

Positrans there isn't any need to impose a binary on sex - sex exists as a binary as biological fact.

If you're happy to accept others beliefs on their gender identity, are you also happy to accept that these can exist alongside the biological facts of sexual difference and legal frameworks around sex?

That is, that the acceptance of an internal sense of gender identity or agenda is separate from the external, shared biological reality of sex?

@Positrans if my brain were transplanted onto a males body how would I feel? I don’t think I’d feel different, at least I don’t think I’d do anything differently. My personality would surely remain the same? (My likes/dislikes/hobbies). My DP and I share household tasks, hobbies throughout my life have included surfing, quad biking, hiking, swimming, painting, sewing, studying etc. Those, I see, as my personality and not to help describe whether I’m male or female. So then I’d go onto other things like my appearance well, I’m a plain looking person jeans and a jumper mostly. As long as I’m comfortable. I don’t own a hairdryer or any styling tools. I own make up but never wear it, it’s probably bloody out of date. I have equal friends of male and female and I do the same past times with each. My DP shaves more than I do. So I suppose I’m highlighting all the things that are ‘stereotypically’ female, some I do and others I don’t. Does this mean I’d identify as agender?

What is it to feel Female?

Highly complex, nuanced
Yet people the world over know if they should see a doctor if they don't get a monthly bleed or wet dreams by th time they are 16, and they all automatically know which to ask about. Funny nuance that.

Sex is real - it exists - very happy to say that as a trans woman and in fact most trans people say the same despite what you might read, but sex is not a simple binary defined merely by gametes - it's highly complex and nuanced.

Even if that is true, even if biological sex is more complex than I can possibly understand, it doesn't make the blindest bit of difference to the fact that I don't want my pre-teen daughter being forced to share a tent with a child with a penis on a girl guide camp.

Plus if you assert that gender identity is linked to biology you assert that women are born to be oppressed by patriarchy. If sex is fixed, but gender identity is a series of stereotypes which act as a means of control then we can change that.

Gender identity is a continuum - people come up with different names for their own experience of it. There can hundreds, thousands or even one for every person - it's doesn't matter.

But if gender identity is simply a person's own innate sense of what sex they are, how can there be hundreds or thousands? There are two sexes (and genetic variations but I'm not qualified to talk about those, others on here have more expertise than me), in what way is it a continuum?

I suspect the belief in ghosts, psychics, deities and fortune telling would be as prevalent tbf.

Gender identity is linked to biology - science suggests that it has a biological cause.

No it doesn't. Science suggests that certain people might be predisposed to gender dysphoria.

There is no consensus that concludes one isn't the sex one was born because of a reason.

I don't believe that "billions of people" think they have a gender identity. You could run a poll to suggest that but if you expressed the question in terms of the quasi-mystical gendered soul it boils down to then I wouldn't expect it to be a common belief at all.

Gender identity refers to a person's own innate sense of what sex they are.

Sex is a description of biological reproductive potential.

Wanting to be, or thinking you are, the opposite sex is just one's own internal dialogue. Based on visual stereotypes that one would like to perform, or characteristics one perceives as female only. Or male only.

It's not a description of sex. Sex is a description of potential reproductive function. That's all it is.

I woke up tomorrow in the body of a man, I would be a man. I'd be pissed off. But I'd still be a man.

Gender identity is linked to biology - science suggests that it has a biological cause.

Sex is real - it exists - very happy to say that as a trans woman and in fact most trans people say the same despite what you might read, but sex is not a simple binary defined merely by gametes - it's highly complex and nuanced.

I've never read anything that has persuaded me that gender identity is any more solid a concept than a soul. It's a matter of belief, and like so many religious people there's a real resistance to anyone who says they don't share the belief.

If someone says to me that it doesn't matter whether I personally believe in a soul/gender identity I have one because they say so? Especially if they claim their theory is a fact but a belief (but fail to provide evidence. I have no time for that Your faith is personal to you, glad it helps you, but I don't want a part of it, and I definer don't want laws written and enforced based on it.

See positrans, when you see transwomen as women, that's when my dysmorphia actually gets much worse.

For me, if being a women is nothing more than sex, that's fine, I can park that to one side and get on with my life. Women is my sex, it's why some people mistreat me, but there is nothing else that I have in common with other women.

As soon as someone tries to shoehorn transwomen into the definition of woman, it makes me wonder what is a woman? Do I fit ? No. There is no definition of woman that includes transwoman and includes me. I am cast out. Even though I have suffered in so many ways because of my sex, I no longer have a space to talk about that. I am forced to accept women as an identity. That makes me feel sick. Scared. And that's how I ended up trawling the internet and coming across instructions about how to use suicide ideation to convince people I needed help

How and why is your gender identity 'female' Positrans? What does that feel like to you?

As ever SuperLoudPoppingAction, once you start thinking about gender identity without being a believer, you end up as understanding it as a person's belief about themselves having a gendered soul.

Once you see the gender identity ideology as being akin to a religion you can't unsee it.