Do you feel that gender identity exists and is innate?

Throughout this thread you have made statements and then when questioned about them you say well its not really my viewpoint. Maybe you could be more clear as to when you are stating what you actually think as opposed to just making statements that you later say are not your view.

I dont know is botox a female or male stereotypical thing to do?

This is the problem, though. You have repeatedly used the terms sex and gender as if they are interchangeable but they're not.

I think you keep doing this sort of logic, OP, which is where the muddling is coming in.

Stating there aren't male and female frames, and simultaneously stating that it's possible to have a frame that resembles a female frame. Which you've already stated doesn't exist.

Well would you really say you’d be having gender affirming care next time you get your Botox? I know I won’t be. The use can suggests it wasn’t my viewpoint it’s just how I’ve seen people use the term

Sounds like something else to blame mothers for to me. These women and their bloody hormones!

What I find very interesting is gender affirming care can be anything from me getting my haircut or my nails done to trans people taking hormones. So clearly these stereotypes are a bit more pervasive in society than people are letting on

Are you now saying that you don't believe that haircuts and manicures are gender affirming care. If so, that was not clear from your original comment.

I still think you're saying the thing I tried to explain...

when you state
There are definitely traits which more males have than females.

But you also state that we only use these traits and nothing else to decide who is male and who is female, it follows that the 'male' we are assigning the traits to is nothing more than 'the person who has those traits' and not their biological actual sex.

So it's circular as per my previous post.

Again I disagree. I think at times you are conflating 'physical characteristics of sex' and 'personality stereotypes'.

Here's one on facial recognition. Then there's Mumsnetter Katie Alcock, who is great on this topic.

I was at a wedding talking to a retired consultant who used to work at the Tavistock. (He left as he couldn't agree with what they were doing with transitioning young kids)

He said his experience was it was the female colleagues who could spot post-transitioning patients with accuracy compared to him and his male staff members.

And what about commenting upon them?

If you stop using those kinds of labels then society will eventually catch up and not consider manicures a female stereotype. If you keep using those labels nothing changes.

I'm not saying no one knows what sex is anymore; I'm saying that to determine sex, we use gender.

I would disagree with that. If you see a person who is pregnant, I am not assuming their character or personality to determine that they're female.

I don't think height, frame etc are commonly considered 'gender'. You're doing it but I think it's confusing to most of us.

Regardless, I don't really think it's got anything to do with anyone's actual sex or gender identity, so it's getting a bit of a long derail!

For some reason, this thread (and particularly the OP's posts) has made me think of this long ago thread -

www.mumsnet.com/talk/mumsnet_classics/2307274-I-am-everything-you-hate-about-people-on-the-internet-I-am-here-to-help?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

@FairHippopotama you described these girls as mismatched. You assert they have a "brain-body mismatch". That there is something about their brain that doesn't "match" their bodies. What on earth does that mean unless you are referring to sexist stereotypes about women and girls. Having traditionally masculine interests, or behaving in a way that is more commonly associated with males is not a "brain-body mismatch". There is nothing about their brains that don't "match". It's a female brain in a female body. Behaving in a way that isn't expected of them because they are female is not a "brain-body mismatch".

When I say we I’m talking about trends in society. You can be an exception and there still be a rule

"the ideas of prenatal hormonal exposure resulting in brain-body mismatch have been investigated and do exist, resulting in true gender dysphoria."

Not this crap again.

And sexual orientation can, to a degree, be proven, while gender dysphoria can't..so we are back to how do we prove who is genuine?

What I'm talking about has been proven - the ideas of prenatal hormonal exposure resulting in brain-body mismatch have been investigated and do exist, resulting in true gender dysphoria

Nonsense.

Provide a link to these investigations.

I don't slap any gender labels on men that might get a manicure. If you do then you are part of the problem.

Adopting stereotypes doesn't make someone male or female, but my argument is that if a male 'passes' as female, then he is a woman; if society applies the stereotypes associated with females to you, then you are a woman. Whether you are a transgender woman or not is based on whether you are actually female or not

I am old enough to remember Boy George’s first appearances on the pop scene.

there was a lot of talk about whether he was male or female. He wore makeup, had long hair and plaits, and clothing was not stereotypically male. Clothing was loose so you couldn’t judge on frame.

i know many people who thought he was a woman. As far as I know Boy George has always been male and not in anyway transgender. Simply a man who didn’t conform to stereotypes.

so are you saying that you would insist Boy George is a woman, as he “passes” as a female?

when my child was small she had short hair and wore trousers and hoodies. She has never identified as anything other than female. Many people insisted she was a boy, does that make her a man?

So: I am female but identify as a man and I change my appearance so successfully that everyone in my small town and workplace is fooled and "treats me as a man" (what exactly does that entail?). You say that makes me a man.

Then I get a new workmate, who due to a history of sexual abuse is extremely alert to sex differences. She clocks me as a natal woman straight away. Do I cease to be a man then? Or when she says "she" about me to a colleague and they realise too? Or when the whole workforce knows? What's the tipping point?

And do they just have to "treat me" as a man to make me a man, or do they actually have to believe I am one? Would I have been a man if they had never been fooled and had just been "kind"?

Incidentally, this thought experiment has brought home to me just how very destabilising the dependence on affirmation by others of one's "felt" identity must be. Not a healthy way to live and I'm not convinced it is kind to encourage it at all, because it leads to seeing anyone who doesn't (or even might not) toe the line, as a threat.

They don't usually pass; you're right. But that's the societal change that the gender-affirming movement asks for: that trans people are treated as the gender they see themselves as.

But how can I treat someone "as the gender they see themselves as" when you have already acknowledged that gender isn't a thing, it's just a bunch of stereotypes? What you're actually asking me to do is to treat them as the sex that they are pretending to be. In other words, to collude with them in their delusion.

Adopting stereotypes doesn't make someone male or female, but my argument is that if a male 'passes' as female, then he is a woman; if society applies the stereotypes associated with females to you, then you are a woman. Whether you are a transgender woman or not is based on whether you are actually female or not.

I understand that this is your argument, but I fundamentally disagree with it. You are effectively trying to reduce the meaning of the terms man and woman to a bunch of deeply flawed stereotypes and to divorce them from their biological reality. A woman is a female adult human. No more, no less. And a man is a male adult human. If you aren't willing to accept that, then we may as well dispense with the terms man and woman altogether because your argument renders the words utterly meaningless.

You're right that we should move past these stereotypes, but they're here to stay at the moment. Throughout history and across many different cultures, various stereotypes - various roles, expectations, and norms - have been applied to men and women. Although I am a gender abolitionist - I agree with you that we all have 'individual interests, preferences and personalities' - I doubt these gendered stereotypes will just fade away.

You're contradicting yourself here, I'm afraid. You can't claim to be a "gender abolitionist" and say that you want to move away from the old stereotypes while simultaneously seeking to perpetuate them by arguing that we should recognise gender and gender identity as a thing. The concept of gender emphasises stereotypes, and it doesn't move us away from them at all. And those stereotypes are only here to stay if we collectively choose to make them stay - they are by no means universal or consistent across different cultures. Asking people to accept that the adoption of certain stereotypes "makes you a man" or "makes you a woman" works in a manner that is diametrically opposed to tackling stereotypes. If a man likes wearing dresses and we pretend that this makes him a woman, that merely strengthens the stereotype that dresses are for women. Wouldn't it be much better instead if we were to say that some men like dresses and that dresses can be for them too if they like them? Perhaps if we all did that, then the stereotypes really would begin to fade away over time, and that would be so much better for everybody.

Just to clarify, my point is not that we use stereotypes for a determination of gender, but for a determination of sex instead. What set of stereotypes we then apply to people reflects their gender.

With regard to the first sentence here, no, I fundamentally disagree that we use stereotypes for a determination of sex. Sex is determined by biology, and most of us are easily capable of recognising biological sex regardless of "gender" markers which might be intended to persuade us otherwise. I don't understand your second sentence in this paragraph, it appears to be tautological.

For example, we use a woman's short height, feminine face, and dress to determine that she is female. Given we determine her to be female, we apply feminine stereotypes (stereotypes of women) to her. This means she is a woman. However, it could really be that 'society' was wrong, and that this woman is male.

Again, I don't really know what you're getting at here. A woman cannot be male. I think you are saying that a short trans woman with a feminine face could be mistaken for a woman, and that we would therefore make other assumptions about her because we would mistakenly believe her to be a woman? But that argument is flawed, a)because it's highly unlikely that even a short trans woman would actually be mistaken for a female and b) those of us who reject sex-based stereotypes tend not to make loads of other assumptions about people based on their sex in any case.

"What I'm talking about has been proven - the ideas of prenatal hormonal exposure resulting in brain-body mismatch have been investigated and do exist, resulting in true gender dysphoria. (For illustration, another example of something prenatal hormonal exposure affects is sexual orientation.)"

No it has not. You are talking to us here as if we know nothing at all about this topic, where in fact you are patronising us.