To think that the vast majority of people do not feel they have a gender identity?

[Galvantulang]

My company has recently started suggesting that we can record our gender identity and preferred pronouns (these would be publicly displayed on the intranet) on our HR record system. It's optional for now, but almost everyone I asked at work when the email came out went "eh?".

Apart from the data protection issues of collecting all this extra information, AIBU to think that the majority of people don't consider themselves to have a gender identity, just their sex?

i.e. you don't identify as a man or woman, you just... are one?

Watching laws and amendments to bills being proposed (especially in Scotland) based on recognising gender identity rather than biological sex, seems somewhat unreal.

Um...

Yabu = I feel like I have a gender identity.
Yanbu = I do not feel like I have a gender identity.

And I still haven't had any guidance on identifying my own!

I have asked this question whenever anyone tells me they have one "how do you know? How do I work out mine?"

It seems to be a bit like religious belief, a strong definite feeling that can't be defined.

Maybe if I pray God will tell me what my gender identity is.

You know it's quite possible some people experience a gender identity and some people don't. That doesn't mean the people who don't are better people or more enlightened.

Gender assigned at birth is the biggest load of bull. Who invents these phrases and why do ordinary people parrot them as gospel?

When my children were born, the midwife had a glance between their legs and told me boy or girl. She didn’t assign anything. She observed.

I don’t really feel I have a gender identity. There are lots of things I’d like to understand better about myself, but when it comes to where I fall on a gender spectrum, at best, I can’t see the relevance. I’d like to understand my mental illnesses and my neurodevelopmental differences better. I’d like to understand my menstrual cycle better. I’d like to know my risk for certain diseases. I’d like to uncover any particular talents or aptitudes I might have. Those are all useful to me. Gender, whatever that may be, doesn’t feel very useful to my being.

You know it's quite possible some people experience a gender identity and some people don't.

It's quite possible there is a flying teapot orbiting the sun.

You know it's quite possible some people experience a gender identity and some people don't. That doesn't mean the people who don't are better people or more enlightened

So why are children being told that everyone has one and they must pick one?

Most of the scientific understanding of gender identity has come form work with intersex kids

Just something else the TTA's co-opted.
Like female oppression.

TRA's!

I identify as broccoli. When M&S reopens I shall insist on getting changed in the veg aisle of the food hall.

@jj1968

You know it's quite possible some people experience a gender identity and some people don't. That doesn't mean the people who don't are better people or more enlightened.

Do you mean personality traits?

Whether or not people have a gender identity is in many ways irrelevant - what purpose does it serve to gather this information in a work context?

Gathering data on certain characteristics - sex, race, disability - may be useful because there are hierarchies involved and discrimination often applied to those at the lower ends, and employers may want to ensure that they are counteracting societal discrimination in their employment practices. In other contexts, such as medical ones, it is vital to know sex or race as this impacts on treatment.

How someone feels about themselves and their relationship with sex-based stereotypes may be of interest to a social science researcher but isn't particularly useful to someone's co-workers or employers.

@jj1968

You know it's quite possible some people experience a gender identity and some people don't. That doesn't mean the people who don't are better people or more enlightened.

Some people have religious beliefs, and others don't. Many people would prefer not to be asked about their religious beliefs in a workplace setting, particularly if it's information available to their co-workers, even though for others their religious beliefs are an essential part of who they are.

If beliefs or other internal, subjective experiences are asked about in the workplace, it is usually on anonymised forms that are about diversity/representation rather than anything that informs others. The option to say 'no religion' and/or 'prefer not to answer' tends to be included.

@jj1968

No, that’s not it. Some people happily embrace the gender stereotypes they have been taught and some don’t. And neither way is right or wrong.

But there is no such think as lady brain or man brain. That has been proven by neuroscience.

That is a sexist stereotype that was used for centuries to keep women out of education and white collar work places.

And to the person that says ‘intersex’ proves gender- how? How does being born with a condition that means you have sexually ambiguous genitals mean anything about the performance of gender roles. Most intersex people do. It even know they are intersex until they come to have children.

@notyourhandmaid

That is a good point. I am an atheist but I don’t go shouting about it in front of religious colleagues because it is irrelevant to my work- as is any discussion on my gender.

@jj1968

That article you listed is a travesty. That poor man had his testes removed as a child. That was terribly wrong.

That was obviously done out of inter phobia caused by gender stereotypes- not enough of a boy to function as a man.

Unfortunately, the ideology that you buy into would 100% support this. They are the ones who are into chopping bits off children who don’t conform exactly to gender stereotypes. Haven’t you ever listened to the tapes of parents describing how they ‘knew’ their kids was trans? It is all about non-conformity to gender roles.

The modern trans movement is more like that doctors from the 70s than they would like to think.

I went to a training course for the voluntary sector who have embraced this gender ID malarkey in a big way Nearly everyone had their pronouns on their zoom name tag & introduced themselves as 'Hi I'm X, I work for Y & I identify as Z'

I was tempted to say 'Hi I'm Click & I identify as a plant' but the big boss was also on this zoom call so I decided not to. I just said my name & job title & refused to give into the gender ID labeling.

Ok so 91% of 1620 anonymous votes makes me think maybe IANBU. 🤔

Thanks all for the interesting discussion so far.

I filled in a form recently that asked if ‘I conform to the gender I was assigned at birth’? Hello?? I wasn’t assigned a gender at birth! My sex was observed to be female, surely? Yes, newsflash, they look at your genitalia.

Women is born, not worn. I’ve never owned a pair of high heals, I never wear makeup or nail polish etc. so I utterly reject gender stereotypes that try and put men and women in certain boxes according to behaviours or clothes etc. But I am 100% woman.

filled in a form recently that asked if ‘I conform to the gender I was assigned at birth’? Hello?? I wasn’t assigned a gender at birth! My sex was observed to be female, surely? Yes, newsflash, they look at your genitalia.

According to the Chief Statistician of Scotland.
" it is important to only collect a specific item of data from
someone where there is a clear need for this, to minimise the burden on an
individual and to comply with the legal requirements under the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR). In addition, data that is used for operational decisions
is required to be able to be provided to an individual and rectified. So those collecting
data for operational decisions need to take steps to make sure it remains correct."

Organisations ask about sex so that they can monitor possible pay gaps, discrimination against women, health and safety issues where one sex might be disadvantaged etc. They may also ask questions regarding other groups with protected characteristics if it was considered necessary. However, as the group with the protected characteristics in this instance are those intending or undergoing gender reassignment why is the question about conforming to the sex "assigned at birth? No organisation needs to know that 100% of their female workforce are happy to be female , in the case of an all female staff with no trans identifying individuals. The question should be as it might be for the disabled group, do you identify with having this protected characteristics".........add in group from equality Act" and should only be asked for specific reasons, eg diversity survey.

Any organisation asking the question above is asking for data they are not entitled to hold.

I think it is an interesting discussion. But I really wish they didn’t try to box people into gender identities based on some stereotypes.

The worst (I think) is that is seems to be based on looks. Especially young girls (but increasingly young boys) are so focused on looks anyway. I wish there was a bigger acceptance for people dressing however they liked, especially men wearing more stereotype defying clothes.

Something that struck me is that everyone seem to focus on gender as looks and behaviour. This also seem to be something many women not only rejects but feel that they are able to reject.

Thank hear much less about how people view gender as looking after the children and doing housework. And I am yet to hear about people who view gender stereotypes in terms of who looks after elderly parents. This is also something that most women do not think should fall on them, but these roles are harder to reject.

I don't think I have a gender identity, I don't even understand what that is. However, I do have a gender which other people foisted on me in my childhood (parts of which I continue to perform for social approval) because I was born with a female body.

The idea that gendered socialisation (as an 'identity') is something you 'choose' seems nuts to me and actually pretty offensive tbh since for women that's always to be a 'nice' and 'people-pleaser' often for the benefit of men and certainly for the benefit of the patriarchy.

My sex is female and I am a woman because of that. I have never identified as anything really. I have hobbies, interests, personality traits and behaviours that are generally considered to be male and some that are considered female. I have been what used to be called a tom boy my entire life. I did wish I was a boy and often pretend to be one when I was a child, I stopped pretending to be one but still wished I was a boy in my teens until aged around 17. No one 100% fits masculine or feminine stereotypes. I resent being told I am not a proper woman for not fitting in the rigid boxes that women and girls are supposed to fit in, I am no less female/woman than a woman who presents much more feminine in her dress style and her likes and interests. I believe 'non binary' to be the default state but I think labelling yourself non binary/gender fluid etc and forcing the label cis on others based on your own personal opinion of who and what they are is ridiculous. To label yourself and others this way you have to spend a lot of time naval gazing and stick others into boxes to make yourself unique and special. The only times I have actually felt female have all involved biological processes, often pain and bodily fluids and often fear of someone who is male. I felt female when my periods started and my breasts started to develop and i did not like it, I feel female each and every time I am harassed by random men when minding my own business, I felt female when a man was forcing his male genitalia into my female genitalia against my wishes aged 19, I felt female when a few years later i was walking home one evening alone a man on the opposite pavement walking in the opposite direction stopped and we both stared at each other. I was wearing a short dress and sandles and I went ice cold, I was around 500m from home and I knew what he was going to do, I ran as fast as I could, key held between my knuckles, I could hear his footsteps behind me. I was relieved to turn the corner and run into a group of orthodox Jewish men. The man chasing me immediately turned and ran in the opposite direction and the Jewish men escorted me the rest of the way home. I felt female having fertility treatment due to male factor infertility and having to have multiple invasive procedures done to my genitalia, I felt female when I was pregnant and my body changed and I felt the baby. I felt female during labour, especially when they used the ventous with no pain relief and then forceps with episiotomy. I felt female bleeding post natally and breast feeding. I felt female when I realised I had a prolapse and my internal organs are literally falling out of me through my vagina. I felt female when the male gynacologist I was sent to dismissed and belittled my concerns then roughly and painfully shoved a rubber pessary inside me to hold my organs in place. I felt female becoming pregnant again then miscarrying, I felt female becoming pregnant a third time but having to go through tfmr, I felt female having that needle pushed through my abdomen to stop my babies heart, I felt female feeling his body sit heavily at the bottom of my abdomen after he died, I felt female having the midwives push pessaries up my vagina to induce me, I felt female labouring to bring my dead son into the world. I felt female when a few days after my breasts became engorged and leaked milk for a baby who isn't here. I felt female when I bled for 10 weeks after having my dead baby and no one would listen to me and help me, I felt very female when it took my male partner getting angry and constantly ringing the hospital to actually get seen and scanned and treated for retained placenta. They wouldn't listen to me the woman bleeding and in pain, only an angry man who got fed up of how his partner was being treated. All of that is how I KNOW I am a woman and not a man. They happened to me because of my biology not because of how I do or do not identify.

I'm very sorry that your son was so unwell and didn't live Tigger85

Tigger85

I am so sorry you have had to go through all of that. I think that is why so many middle aged and older women find this female gender identity almost offensive. All those things you have been through are intrinsically linked to your sex.

I think that younger women may not be able to envision the emotional (and physical) toll the reality of being a woman can take.

[quote jj1968]@DeaconBoo Some trans people want to abolish gender. Contrary to some people's assumptions trans people have a range of different opinions and sometimes even disagree.[/quote]
But if you abolish gender, won't transgenderism cease to exist? How can you be transgender if there is no gender?

But if you abolish gender, won't transgenderism cease to exist? How can you be transgender if there is no gender?

In a world with sex but without gender, a transwoman is male and a transman is female.

In a world with gender but without sex, a transwoman is a woman and a transman is a man.

So yes, there are some trans people who wish to abolish gender but IMO it's not the main aim of the political trans lobby - Stonewall etc. It seems to be sex they want to abolish, not gender.