Is there any such thing as gender identity?

Are people in the middle of the spectrum neither sex, or both sexes?

This was asked also on another thread in the grouping of the questions which were answered with a flip it will be arbitrated by the thousands and scientists.

We also pointed out that there probably hundreds of thousands of scientists that don’t realize they need to go back and reprove the millennia of understanding that sex is binary. Because, it is only a small fringe who want to destabilize known science. I am all for theories and that theories should be discussed.

But not that pseudoscience theories should be considered proven and accepted science.

Thanks @helleofabore. Maybe one of those scientists could drop in and answer them.

I have another question. Are people in the middle of the spectrum neither sex, or both sexes? Or is it that a meaningless question because it implies a non-existent binary? And if that's the case, why have sex at all? Why bother with the concept in the first place? We could all go off and play chess instead, and rely on the stork to bring babies...

OK, I'm getting silly now. I'll stop.

Apologies for the backpedal. My phone didn't show the last umpty ump posts 😊

It doesn't exist in the same way that God doesn't exist. It is an intangible feeling, a belief. And some people believe in it as an inherent reality, just as some believe in the reality of God .

I don't believe in either.

For the record, sex is binary as proven by human reproduction since human time began, so to speak. There is NO third gamete, there is no third sex.

There IS however a very wide diversity of body types within each sex. And with modern techniques, people with differences in sex development are identified as either male or female reliably. In fact, people’s differences are often only experienced by one sex.

But still, to reproduce, sex is binary and that is the ultimate purpose of the human body whether it can successfully do this or not.

JustSpeculation

When asked previously on a different thread, the answer involved passing the buck to ‘thousands’ of scientists to decided who arbitrates the axis for who is more female than another female.

I too am interested if they will come back with something more meaningful. So far, nothing but more links or repeated links. Let’s hope in the past week this poster has more information to share to answer our questions.

@Shizuku

Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen that Riga document before, and it was interesting. There are four objectives, and the fourth one I completely agree with. I don't see how anyone could disagree with it.

The third seems quite straightforward (though I cringe at the word "instruct", which is very authoritarian). The other two aims are just not clear.

On the one hand it says that sex is a spectrum. On the other, in objective two, it seems to be saying that sex is a matter of a judgement call based on a variety of other characteristics and the presence or absence of specific sex organs. So I have questions:

If sex is a spectrum, which means a measurable value that varies over a continuum, how can it be derived from an amalgam of different features? How do you derive a single value from these features?

If sex is a spectrum, then it would mean that some people are more or less male and female than other people. It was be a reasonable guess to say that, oh, Arnold Schwarzenegger met more of the male characteristics than, say Tony Robinson. So he is more male than Robinson. Equally, as this is a continuum, he is less female than Robinson. That's a bit weird. Is that how you see it? Do you see Tony Robinson as being in any meaningful way female?

Moving on, it would be theoretically possible for someone to have both more male characteristics AND more female characteristics than another individual. That is, if we are establishing sex by totting up significant features. And that can't happen on a spectrum. How do you deal with that?

Also, how would you account for the bimodality of secondary sex characteristics when you plot them on a graph? By this I mean that when you actually plot these characteristics on a graph, you get a grouping that has two modes - effectively two bell curves which overlap. It works, this. I've done it myself with shoe size (women tend to have smaller feet). Bimodality is an indicator that you are actually dealing with two distinct populations. And the grouping factor turns out to be - what? Well, it's sex, isn't it?

My last question is this. How do you know that secondary sex characteristics are sex characteristics (as opposed to some other kind of characteristic) if you don't have a concept of sex beforehand? And how, if you do have such a prior concept, can it be based on characteristics which you are using the concept to identify? That's totally circular.

I would be seriously grateful if anyone could point out where I've gone wrong with this, if I have.

There could be a thousand different sexes and the sex that produces large gametes and gestates babies would still need specific rights, services and protections, regardless of feelings about identity.

Sex is on a spectrum is it? How are babies made?

Still waiting for that magic third chromosome that proves sex isn’t binary...

Well, intersex people have asked for people to stop claiming sex is a simple binary, so if you want to defer to them on these matters...

Not all intersex people. There are plenty of people who are pretty insulted by the idea that they aren't simply male or female with a disorder of sex development and somehow don't have a sex or are a third sex.

So it's difficult to know which set of intersex people we should defer to, and probably better not to appropriate their reality to make unrelated arguments in any context.

oiieurope.org/statement-of-the-european-intersex-meeting-in-riga-2014/

"The four objectives are: 1. To challenge the definition of sex as consisting of only male and female and promote the knowledge that sex is a continuum, as is gender."

Genitals are a really good indicator. It's not 100% but it's a useful system as long as you leave provision for the occasions when it was wrong.

Which would refer to individuals with DSDs, rather than transgender individuals, and individuals with DSDs have (tended to) ask that... can someone remind me? Is it a) to be frequently included as a gotcha or b) not to be?

How can it be wrong? Either you’re a male, or a female.

Whether or not the person confirms to gender stereotype BS is an unrelated matter.

Genitals are a really good indicator. It's not 100% but it's a useful system as long as you leave provision for the occasions when it was wrong.

I always thought saying a transwoman is a woman because there is some vague ‘evidence’ about brain patterns, despite their entire physical form being programmed as a male down to their chromosomes, is a bit like saying humans can be bananas because we share 44% of our DNA with them.

[quote Gerla]@justspeculation - I asked the same question. No answer though![/quote]
No answer is possible. The problem with circular argument is that you can't break out of the circle. A=B because B=A. People are who they say they are because who they say they are is who they are. Any refusal to accept this denies their lived experience. Any questioning which is in any way challenging is destructive and, eventually, literally impossible to answer because any answer involves going outside the circle.

Personally, I think it is utterly pointless to try to use neuroscience to prove that gender identity exists, or that you can differentiate trans individuals as a distinct group, or that TWAW and TMAM.

Gender identity, if it exists in some individuals, is a psychological state, an individual's view of themselves. Like any mental representation, that's likely to be based on the information the brain processes and stores, not the structure of the neural circuits themselves. Despite the claims of some neuroscientists, we can't (and most likely won't ever be able to) detect what information the brain is processing, only where in the brain that information is being processed.

TRA misuse of science to bolster their position is something that can be factually refuted. Showing that they're wrong about the science they are quoting establishes a pattern of lack of credibility.

But gender ideologist are trying to use the science to prove that their world view is correct.

However it’s not clear how gender ideology helps trans people, except to provide affirmation.

What is the goal? - to identify real and fake gender identity regardless of whether an individual suffers from gender dysphoria or suffers discrimination because of gender non conforming behaviour? Can the rights of ‘fake trans’ people be ignored once we have a handy test for gender identity?

Intervening with surgery earlier? (Which would seem regressive taking into account experiences of people with DSDs)

There would still be no need to organise people according to gender identity.

The only reason to recognise sex is that it has unavoidable material consequences and those consequences won’t disappear.

And of course, we may think we are presenting ourselves in oneway, but the world may read us differently. You cannot totally control how you are read.

Identity is a combination of whatever it is that you align yourself with, and the presentations of the self that act as the interface between you and the world. the way the world reads you, or how you would like to be read.

Identity is not a fixed thing. It is a mental construct around which the rest of the personality coalesces; and identities tend to shift and change with time, experience and circumstance.

So no, gender identity is not a real or measurable thing. And people only have one if they think they do. And furthermore, what you imagine being of male or female gender means will depend on how you read or imagine 'male' or 'female'.

The only measurable quality to being male or female is the biological, bodily one.

You know what though? As interesting as this is on an intellectual level. I really don't care that much whether tw have different brain patterns to women, much as I don't care much whether London cab drivers have different brain patterns (they do). As long as we keep our attention on such matters we forget that actually women aren't discriminated against because of their brain patterns, no woman has managed to talk herself out of a rape by saying "actually, if we could just scan my brain, you would see that it is far more similar to a man's". Women are attacked and disadvantaged because of what we are (female) and in 99.9% of cases our sex is obvious at even a cursory glance. We cannot identify out of it.

I recognise that sex segregation can exclude trans people. I just also recognise that lack of sex segregation can also exclude women.

This is the heart of the problem with dismantling all sex segregation.

It comes down to whose exclusion matters more?

Sexism and patriarchy being what they are the default answer is usually that the ones with a penis are ranked higher.

This is why we introduced sex equality laws in the UK. The law has been helpful in giving women a way to challenge male dominance, whether conscious overt sexism or unintentional cultural bias.

It might be fairer to say that some of the over interpretation, incorrect analysis and misinterpretation of brain imaging studies can be hocus pocus. Hopefully getting better now, in part thanks to the infamous Ignobel salmon blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/