Is "gender identity" real?

The evidence is that John Money invented this idea of 'gender identity' when he decided to remove a boy's penis after a botched circumcision, get his parents to bring him up as a girrl, and to lie to him and his bother and then proceeded to keep seeing the boys without their parents and made them perform sex acts on each other. Yes, he was also a paedophile.

I feel like we've been over this so many times, you could at least do some reading up on this before telling us that this is discussion is 'political'.

Also how do you explain very young children believing they are the opposite sex? I’ve heard of a 3 year old who has maintained they’re a boy and is still saying it years later (and the parent is totally in board). I’ve never met them but they’re relatives of my good friend.

One way this happens is that the parents, usually the mother, wanted a child of the opposite sex to the one which was born and before that baby could even speak it picked up the clues that the mother would love them more if they behaved as the sex their mother wanted.

Also girls who want to be boys could be partly explained in the past by girls seeing how much more freedom and fun and power boys had and wanting that. That certainly featured in my childhood.

A group of internal belief systems that people hold that erroneously convince them they are of the opposite sex.

This leaves out all the people whose gender identity conforms with their sex.

Which is most people.

So why do you think that gender identity issues is not one of the possible explanations that is worth considering?

I feel like the discussion here is largely political rather than based on robust evidence.

Also how do you explain very young children believing they are the opposite sex? I’ve heard of a 3 year old who has maintained they’re a boy and is still saying it years later

I was one of those children (though not saying it out loud, because my parent would very much not have been on board). So yeah, we exist. But I absolutely don't believe there's many of us, and most importantly, I believe that these children deserve to be safeguarded as much as any other, and so their bodily integrity must be preserved until they are adults who can make their own decisions about it.

I’ve discussed this w my non-binary adult child who says it’s not about ‘not being girly’, but not feeling or wanting to look like a girl at all (ie, not wanting to have boobs for example and not shaving legs/pits)I can’t crawl in to her brain so I really don’t know what it’s like to feel that way. . I can’t deny her reality but at the same time I do think it’s a combination of probable ND, being bullied at school so never fitting in until she went to uni and found ‘her tribe’ (which was when she came out as NB and lesbian eventually). shes swallowing the kook aid in a number of things so I think very easily ‘manipulated’ as well.

Also how do you explain very young children believing they are the opposite sex? I’ve heard of a 3 year old who has maintained they’re a boy and is still saying it years later (and the parent is totally in board). I’ve never met them but they’re relatives of my good friend.

No, gender is based on stereotypes!

I think gender identity is more akin to personality or likes. It’s like being an emo, metal head etc etc. It’s not a thing which others need to bend over backwards for.

I have not voted because none of the questions cover my answer. I believe that gender identity is a belief. So there are real people with this belief so they “exist”

in the past I’d have agreed that I had a gender identity but as I’ve learned more I don’t think that.

Im female - thats biological fact amd separate from identity.

i dont have a gender identity because I don’t believe in that system snd because there are many aspects of my life which are non conforming to stereotypes of male/female - but I’d never say that those choices make me male - having a male coded job or hairy legs/poor female grooming sometimes shouldn’t impact anyone’s identity

So for me gender identity is not “real” in the same way im not a catholic or a Buddhist. But I can see that others really believe, and adopt life practices in line with their beliefs, so GI is “real” for them.

And as it’s not necessarily readily observable or measurable by others in the way that sex is, it’s not a stable category that can be used for situations where sex matters.

ETA sex is immutable and real. Identity is performed or as a result of choices made, therefore changeable over time - so if the latter is real it’s not necessarily stable

i prefer to go with science, rather than anecdotal evidence that I can see and hear. The research is far from complete but you are talking in black and white terms as if if has been extensively studied and there is widespread agreement. We don’t actually know one way or the other, so I am remaining open-minded.

You are taking a political stance rather than a position based on facts, robust evidence and data.

Ask open-minded questions such a as “does the concept of gender identity explain these behaviours better or worse than other theories?”

I agree with @ByTheRiverside : it doesn't. There's literally no need to posit the existence of gender identity to explain anything. There are other, reasonable explanations to all these behaviours.

Regarding autism - remember that correlation does not equal causation. Nobody knows whether what appears to be a higher incidence of autism among transgender people is because autism is the cause or whether it is something else entirely eg people with gender dysphoria are more likely to see psychiatrists and psychologists so their autism is more likely to be spotted.

Gender identify is a psychological condition so nobody can prove it does or doesn’t exist. The comment about it being “magically unobserved” is silly - you can’t see pain, anxiety or desire but nobody argues about their existence.

i think you have to look at it in more scientific and less political way. Ask open-minded questions such a as “does the concept of gender identity explain these behaviours better or worse than other theories?”

Oh God not another poll

It isn't in the least bit real. There wasn't even any such thing as a "gender identity" until 5 minutes ago

It's about as real as that delusion some people had that they were made of glass. They really believed that too. Didn't make it real.

You are confusing gender with sex.

Gender is a set of made up ‘rules’ based on stereotypes and control. No one is born with a gender, it’s imposed on us from birth.

However we are born either male or female, but that’s sex. Not gender.

Some "cis" people really do seem to care a lot about performing their gender, avoiding certain things associated with the other gender, and even putting pressure on gender nonconforming people to stop being gender nonconforming. So I would think, perhaps, that these people really do have a "gender identity".

It's irritatingly incomprehensible to those of us who have found this sort of thing deeply irritating since at least the age of six, but it does seem to be real.

Some will believe that only some people have a gender identity of course

Some transgender people
believe all people have a gender identity but not all

try to avoid generalising

It is indeed a belief. That doesn’t mean it’s a delusion.
I think you’d lose interest in talking to someone who called you delusional.

It isn’t a good way to progress a conversation, or to find shared ground or compromise.

Contradicting someone is fine. Calling them delusional is not.