Sandi Toksvig "doesn't get it", poor love....

In that sense I almost get gender identity but it is purely and completely a social construct.

And it's an outside thing imposed upon you (or that people attempt to impose, with greater or lesser degrees of success). Whereas an actual identity would be part of you.

I've been thinking about gender identity and the fact that I don't feel I have one but then I thought about the social construct of gender and thought "Well, I'm fully aware of that and how it impacts upon me, how I've gone along with it and how I haven't through different periods of my life." Now, yes, I was beginning to be aware of that at a young-ish age, maybe as young as 7 but probably a bit later. I knew what you were supposed to be like if you were a girl and what you were supposed to be like if you were a boy. In that sense I almost get gender identity but it is purely and completely a social construct. If I'd been born fifty years earlier the idea of what I should be as a woman would be different from the one I was born into. In fact, it's not so much an identity as understanding constructs and stereotypes. The issue with a lot of the loudest voices, especially those who are very much on the a and the g and the p side of things is that their notion of the construct has sweet FA to do with anything that currently exists. It's part 50s well put together housewife, part 60s sex bomb, part prostitute, part the school girl fantasy of paedophiles. It has nothing to do with anything approaching reality. We only have to look at the recent photos of Eddie Izzard campaigning in Brighton, wearing a pink mini-skirt suit with large fake boobs to see an example of just about all of those tropes.

Fucksake, she never even came back at all!

Rude.

Anthem of Gender Ideology.

Quite jealous of this one, actually.

I always give WEP credit for getting me properly started on this, and I bet I’m not the only one!

Comforting to see that MN was on it that far back.

Depressing to see that WEP wasn't so much captured, as completely useless from the beginning.

Of course we won't get an explanation.

Eresh will remember this thread. Sandi dropped a guest post demanding our support for WEP and vanished. We asked and asked and asked why this new party for women thought women's prisons should have men in. Not a sign of her.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/guest_posts/2502963-Guest-post-Sandi-Toksvig-The-time-is-right-for-the-Womens-Equality-Party

We will not get an explanation.

We never do.

Because the explanation inevitably boils down to regressive, harmful, sexist stereotypes, and the people with the gender identity can’t risk spouting such nonsense.

So they resort to, ‘it can’t be described, it’s just a feeling’, and in doing so, just confirm that it’s all nonsense.

@ScremeEggs I'm interested as to what extent, or how, your gender identity has anything to do with your sex?

So, do you think of it as something like a bunch of psychological traits, personality characteristics, likes, preferences, skills, dislikes, natural behaviours? And/or is it linked to the physicalities of being in an XX body? (E.g you wear more fitted clothes, don't like heavy lifting, something along those lines)

I feel about this the same way I'd feel about someone explaining they had a deep inner natural belief that their deity existed.

Or that everyone had a guardian angel.

Fine. You do you. No problems at all, we're a multi faith society. But your beliefs stop with you, stop expecting other people to agree with you that it's truth, and they must convert to your faith. Stop policing people for not believing what you do.

Personally I probably wouldn't dispute "gender identity" itself, which may make sense. (Consider magical mind swap scenarios.)

I would question (1) how anyone could know if it was a properly grounded and rational belief, and (2) how it would be enough to make someone a man or woman.

When one person comes up with words to describe what gender identity is that gains a bit of traction, more people start using the exact same words to describe their previously indescribable experience. Few people want to be the first to describe the feeling.

I think most of it is people wanting to be part of something and to support the cause, than actually feeling gender identity.

You'll be waiting a long time for an answer to that question. If @ScremeEggs does answer I predict that it will be something like this:

"It can't be described, it's a feeling, just something you know. Everyone has a gender identity, and if you don't think you have one it's because it matches your sex."

How it's supposed to match is never explained. What is also never explained is how the person saying this knows that their feeling about a gender identity is similar to other people who experience this feeling, because if you can't explain what the feeling is, how do you know you're feeling the same thing as other people who claim to have a gender identity?

It's fascinating, you think about it a lot, you've had it for donkeys' years.

It's got nothing to do with stereotypes, or clothing, or anything of that nature.

You'd be the first person to ever answer this question, but in that case and with every word in the English language at your disposal, could you describe it?

Maybe the certainty about having this essential gender identity is just evidence of really effective socialisation.

“Be kind” in relation to trans people is such a giveaway as well. I’m a woman. If I say I’m a woman no one has to “be kind” to me about it. It basically means “play along with their delusion, don’t be a meanie” like when you pretend you don’t know your 2yo isn’t really a monster but is them in a costume.

if a TW is really a woman, why is kindness needed? It means “make way for the needy man”

I'm all for people with gendered souls being free to prance about in the nuddy with other people with gendered souls, if that's what floats their Righteous halo-bedecked boats, in a Virtuous Circle-Jerk of Validation of Righteousness and Genderism.

It's when they insist that everybody else partake in the nuddy-prancing, because hashtagBeKind and hashtagInclusive and hashtagValidation, that I object.

It surprises me, @Helleofabore. It will never, ever stop surprising me. 😞 Especially because I don't think it's blindness to the impact on girls & women so much as an instinctive attempt to dismiss any impact as unworthy of meaningful consideration.

Less data is OK, simply because there's still data. Less clarity is justifiable, simply because it's all for a good cause. With no further consideration of relative pros and cons or conflicting needs to justify this, it becomes a simple value judgement: less for females is fine in the name of more for a different group on principle. No further reflection required. Self-evident.

And it's that which makes me feel even more strongly that the word "less" is at the very heart of all this: an innate sense of girls & women as "less" that's too deep-seated for many to recognise.

A load of mystical wank.

there's clearly something else as it's not just "biology"

Yes, there's societal conventions and stereotypes.

Oh, I see.

Maybe gender is fascinating, in the literal sense.

Perhaps like star signs, it seems complex, mysterious and deeply significant, when in fact it's manufactured, illogical, opaque and ultimately meaningless?

How is it 'fascinating' if you can't even explain what it is?
As in fascinating how we're all different

Well, that's less than an hour ago 😁

🙄😁
As in age

How is it 'fascinating' if you can't even explain what it is?

And what does having this gender identity entail?