So what exactly is gender?

Excellent summary. Thank you.

But they don't get to self ID into Irish citizenship. There's a whole load of gatekeeping when it comes to nationality (basically because taxes).
And if our putative Canadian's case for Irish citizenhood was that due to some wash of cultural influence in the womb they actually are an Irishman who happened to develop a Canadian body instead of the usual Irish one, they'd certainly not get the result "oh you poor thing, of course you are Irish, here is your Irish passport". They would be laughed out of there and/or sectioned.

I think we might be at cross purposes. In my attempt at drawing an analogy

biological sex = legal nationality (let's imagine for now both immutable)

gender = perceived nationality (perhaps ethnicity)

The point being not to do with legal gatekeeping, but with the fact that someone can think of themselves and be accepted as (and importantly in a sense other than the legal one, be) American (or Irish or Scottish) because they speak in a certain way and live in a certain way (and place), not because they have been through a legal process.

MonkeyToHeaven · 23:53

Laydee brains! 😂

But they don't get to self ID into Irish citizenship. There's a whole load of gatekeeping when it comes to nationality (basically because taxes).

And if our putative Canadian's case for Irish citizenhood was that due to some wash of cultural influence in the womb they actually are an Irishman who happened to develop a Canadian body instead of the usual Irish one, they'd certainly not get the result "oh you poor thing, of course you are Irish, here is your Irish passport". They would be laughed out of there and/or sectioned.

While I agree, mostly, there is mounting evidence that some aspects of what we consider socially/environmentally constructed gendered behaviour/traits are influenced by biology.

"However, it is well established that biology plays a major role. In fact, in the last few years research has focused mainly on neuroanatomy and sexual dimorphism of the brain, exploring the influence and shaping role of several genes and sex hormones [4]. In particular, the sexual dimorphic brain is considered the anatomical substrate of psychosexual development, on which genes and gonadal hormones may have a shaping effect [11]. Growing evidence shows that prenatal and pubertal sex hormones permanently affect human behaviour and heritability studies have demonstrated a role of genetic components."

"...cismen and ciswomen present anatomical differences in the total brain volume, as well as in several sex-dimorphic structures. In particular, the total brain volume is bigger in cismen, and in transgender men similar volumes to the assigned gender at birth were found [12,13,14,15]. However, the total intracranial volume in transwomen resulted to be in between male and female controls [12]. Furthermore, sex differences have been observed in cortical thickness that is higher in ciswomen compared to cismen in several regions [16,17]. Studies conducted on transgender individuals reported signs of feminisation in cortical thickness of transwomen, while no sign of masculinisation was found in transmen [18,19]."

I think that you're making the same point as me.

If we accept that someone can be legally American but ethnically Ghanaian because of something nebulous and subjective, why not accept that someone can be biologically male but genderologically a woman?

Haven't you ever come across feminist who claim all behavioral differences between the sexes are socially constructed? And therefore illegitimate? There are definitely people who think that way.

Feminists think that women shouldn't be oppressed by patriarchy or reproductive roles at all, surely. Not that men and women are exactly the same. Why would feminists have created women-only spaces if all our so called socially constructed differences were illegitimate?

So, the fact that there is variation among individuals doesn't mean that something is socially constructed.

If it did, we would have to say that average height differences between the sexes are socially constructed, since not all men are not taller than all women, in fact there is plenty of variation.

Miriam Webster (American) includes transwomen in it's definition of woman, and I wouldn't trust it at all. It's like the Wikipedia of the English Language.
The OED (English) does not. It also doesn't have that guff about "woman/man" being about social gender blah blah....

Haven't you ever come across feminist who claim all behavioral differences between the sexes are socially constructed? And therefore illegitimate? There are definitely people who think that way.

This is not a mystery.

They are not, ethnically, American. Their ancestry is Scottish, in the same way the ancestry of another American might be Dutch, Irish, Italian, African, Cherokee, Spanish, or French.

These differences have regional distinctions within North America as well as even with regions and families. A family with English heritage might have a quite different set of Christmas traditions than a Dutch or Ukrainian family.

You can think of it as being similar to a British citizen telling you her family is Ghanaian, even if she, and maybe her parents, were all born in the UK.

The feminist urge to suppress the fact that men and women behave differently has been a disaster.
When have feminists ever done this ?
Feminist equality is about both sexes being able to do what the hell they want without gender role based restrictions.

This is interesting to me because of something I have noticed from certain people, who I suspect could cross over with people who are into the idea of gender:

Several times I have been involved in a discussion around history/ethnicity where someone mentioned either being English or being French, and some person buts in very self-righteously that anyone can be English and people are such bigots they think people whose ethnicity is Indian (for example) aren't "really" English?

It seems like such people aren't quite able to comprehend that as well as being a nationality in the modern sense, there could be such a thing as an English or French (German, Italian...) culture which is real and distinct and maybe most importantly has a historical existence and integrity. In their mind, anyone can become English in every real sense, and to dispute this in any context is racist.

What I find very confusing is that it doesn't seem to work the other way round for such people, I can't go off to live in India and claim to be Indian and might even be guilty of appropriation if I tried.

So I do wonder if there are people for whom the nature of categories of identity seem very confused. It strikes me as a language comprehension issue.

Yeah, well that's not how they explained it originally.

Originally it absolutely was all about stereotypes. I cry at films, I can be more vibrant with colourful clothes, I can't do maths.

And when women pointed out the absurd sexism, it changed to something innate, that guess what, can't actually ever be described

The key difference being that a Canadian can move to Ireland.

Gender is the recognition that whilst you are born a certain sex, you can identify in a more fluid way.

And that is why the feminist saying goes:

Women are oppressed because of their biology, and gender is the way it's done.

Males are more likely to engage in rough play, they’re more likely to be risk takers, aggressive and sociosexual. This is gendered behaviour. It is not sexed behaviour. Because not all males are like that; it is typically masculine, it is gender. The complete resistance to the fact that certain behaviour and expressions are associated with males and others are associated with females- and that this is gender - has created so much confusion.

In as much as it's a coherent concept, I would say that it's how human sexual dimorphism is enmeshed and reflected in culture.

So it's not static, and there can be arbitrary elements that emerge for historical reasons, but at the same time it's not completely separable from sex. So even where there is an arbitrary distinction it emerges because we see the sexes as both distinct and significant - we care about it. Other distinctions may be more closely related to sex itself so we can see patterns across cultures.

Of course individuals's relation to cultural expression can vary, but I think it's meaningless to say our internal gender doesn't match cultural gender.

If I ever move to Ireland and assimilate into that culture, then I'll be Irish.

There's a very good analogy here with people claiming to have a gender different from their sex.