I do not believe in gender identity.

[SernieBanders]

There are two sexes: male and female. Occasionally, that matters.

There is no such thing as an innate gender identity—no internal essence that makes someone more inclined to wear dresses and sip wine, or football boots and down pints. Those are cultural stereotypes, not proof of some mystical gendered soul.

The idea of gender identity is sexist, misogynistic, and regressive. It reinforces outdated norms instead of challenging them. Women do not need an inner feeling of womanhood to be women. Men do not need a gender identity to be men. Sex is real. Stereotypes are not.

I hope with the flurry of cultural changes, legal challenges, scientific findings and executive orders in the last ~12 months, more people feel able to stand up and be counted, and say - No More.

I've put YABU.

I grew up knowing I was a boy. I always have been. However back in the 70s this didn't exist, you called a tomboy, which I absolutely was.
I towed the line, I've had 2 children and seperated from father's that I didn't find attractive.
I had a brief lesbian affair - I didn't find that attractive.
From my earliest age, I've been attracted to gay men. If you think back to late 80s early 90s when people were being outed, my friend at school (yes school, early teens) used to tease me saying I knew they'd be gay because you fancied them!

I always dressed very androgynous, I'd get invited to gay clubs by women, but I wasn't there for them!

Would I have changed if I could? I don't know, and there's no point speculating now I'm a fat 50s with 2 adult children! I've been single for over 10 years. It's not going to work.

I always knew I was a boy. It was about clothing - well it was to me if Mum would buy a dress and I wanted the spiderman tshirt. Meltdown. I always got mistaken for a boy. I was told by classmates, you'd be quite handsome if you were a boy.

A poster posted (duh 🤣) you love who you love. Well I do, but my loves are out of reach.
I'm a gay man in a horrible woman's body.

So @SernieBanders what do suggest I do? Bearing in my age 🤣

It wasn't * about clothing.

Just nearly took my whole self down 🤣

That's an article about DSDs. People with DSDs are still either male or female. And they tend to be very upset by implications that they're some kind of "other" sex.
Rarely, a baby is born with ambiguous genitalia (never two complete functioning sets) and testing is needed to diagnose which DSD they have and what treatment they might need. They're still male or female, but with differences in the way their reproductive systems developed.
XXY, XYY etc (which have been known about for many decades) are genotypes, not sexes. This has been done to death.

you're not a boy, you're female. You have no idea what it feels like to be a boy. So you can't say "I grew up knowing I was a boy" because you aren't one, and you don't know how they feel.

A Spiderman T-shirt does not make you a boy any more than a ball gown makes you a girl.

You like more typically masculine, cultural, things, so what?

I believe in male and female sex. And personality is fluid/varied/spectrum

@JanglingJack
I was also a Tomboy who insisted on short hair, refused to wear dresses, only wanted to play with the boys etc. But I am female through and through. How do I know? Because I've got XX chromosomes.

It frightens me that, if I had been born 50 years later, I might have been pushed down the "Trans" route.

I agree. Sex is biological. You're either male or female and that can never change no matter what personality traits you adopt or clothes you wear, etc.

Even individuals with dsd are genetically either male or female. There is no 3rd sex.

Gender is simply your personality where some traits are seen as more girlish (feminine), whilst other traits are seen as boyish (masculine).
Having lots of so-called feminine traits does not make you a woman or female. It's your chromosomes that do that..ie, not having a Y chromosome.
Trans and gender id is regressive and harmful to woman's rights.

I do believe some people feel like they're not in 'the right body', but this is a mental health issue, and should still be treated as such, as is anorexia.

There is no 3rd sex.

Asimovs "The Gods Themselves" is a brilliant stab at imagining 3 sexes.

The inhabitants are of two types: the dominant "hard ones," whose bodies are solid and of a fixed shape, and the more fluid "soft ones", whose bodies are mutable. The latter have three sexes with fixed roles for each sex:

So one conclusion is that so far the only place non binary sex selection has been found in the universe is in the realm of imagination.

Intersex also is a medical abnormality and not a new sex

Four leaf clover.

I really believe that sex and sex differences have been erased way too much, and gender massively overstated. However I disagree that gender identity does not exist. How can you possibly know that? How are you so sure?

What do you mean by this sorry?

No one is saying that gender identity "doesn't exist". Anything you can conceive of "exists". Including a competent civil service, honest politicians, and an all-you-can-eat diet.

However take away the observer, and these things cease to exist. Whereas the biological sex of an organism exists whether you are watching or not.

I think at some point in the past, someone ate too many brownies, and caught a pop science programme that only half-explains things which was talking about quantum mechanics and Schrodinger's cat. Possibly distracted by a squirrel, they sort of imagined that scientists were actually saying you can't determine someones sex until you observe their context. Or something like that (science is hard, they would say). However that was enough to bluff their way through a degree course where the theoretical is accentuated over the actual.

Still, it's made a lot of work for lawyers. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out there is a secret cabal somewhere churning this drivel out to ensure they have plenty of work.

Gender Identity is a philosophical belief. Therefore, anyone can have that philosophical belief. It is not based on any biological grounding, except that that human exists. Any person can believe that they are anything.

However, laws and policies should not be made where this identity should be considered material reality. In other words, no person should have to believe that a male person who says they are a female person, is a female person. That example reflects post modernism to the extent that something is what a person says it is.

No people should also be led to believe that taking cross sex hormones and anyother drugs and having surgeries 'make you just like the other sex or nullifies your sex'. And no person should ever feel that they need to have these treatments to fit their belief as to how their body should be.

There most definitely should not be the expectation that another person should change their language to support another person's philosophical belief as to their identity. No body should be forced or expected to use the wrong sex pronouns or to say a male person is a girl or a woman and vice versa. What other group in society has to power to enforce this expectation?

Tell me what it is please.

Have you seen one in the wild?

So what? I don't think that a plant has anything to do with human sex?

It's possible a point may have bounced off you.

Sorry can you re-explain the point please?

Its inconceivable to most of us how otherwise perfectly sane rational humans can be manipulated into believing the most ridiculous and impalusable things.

Way back when I first heard of the "gender" stuff I came across a seres of videos made by a man "Patrick" who was a desister, and uploaded on You Tube. This would have been around 2014/2015 I guess. He was a multi lingual (he recorded the videos twice in both English & German - neither being his native language), clearly a very intelligent professional well off man.

He spoke movingly in 3 videos in English, about his personal experience of being a gay man who came to believe he was transgender.

What was so shocking to me back then, that really stayed with me a decade later, is doctors and surgeons told him so-called "gender affirming medicine" would actually change his sex - and he believed them!! This intelligent articulate man really believed that these doctors were going to turn him into a woman by giving him cross sex hormones and cutting his genitals off.

He was absolutely brain washed by gender ideology and medical doctors that he was going to change his sex - not his gender but his sex.

He had cross sex hormones, and was about to have irreversible surgery when he "woke up" out of this fog and realised he was a man, would always be a man, etc.

He was absolutely shocked that he had allowed himself to become so vulnerable, so needy, so open to suggestion that he had gone down this route of self harming, and the extent that he had been manipulated and lied to by doctors and medial professionals who should have been helping him, who he trusted to help him.

Gender ideology harms and many vulnerable people are manipulated by it.

The videos didn't stay up on YT for very long - occassionally I search for them in case he uploads them again - I expect he received terrible harrassment for talking about his own experience so openly, or maybe YT deleted them for the thought crime of "transphobia". 10 years ago talking about the gender bollocks publically, online, was expreely difficult and you were likely to be cancelled.

A good test of whether I was making sense is if someone else could explain it 😀

This isn't my day job.

I did to be honest because there have been absolutely hundreds of thread on this topic and it’s so boring. I do agree with a lot of what you are saying but it’s such a small group of people. There is such hyperbole on mumsnet about this topic and everyone on mumsnet is so anti trans that I don’t see the point of this post . Is it just to check that everyone still agrees with you ?

There is such hyperbole on mumsnet about this topic and everyone on mumsnet is so anti trans

This managed a chuckle. Following hyperbole immediately with 'everyone on mumsnet is so anti trans' 😂

Those who believe in gender identity can coherently explain it as well as what exactly is 'anti-trans'. (Not very).

@Cornflakes123 so do you think women and girls should have the right to single sex spaces?

Do you think male people should have the right to undress and shower with my teenage daughters (17 & 13)?

People fundamentally misunderstand this point.

1 'transwoman' in a woman's prison can cause misery to all the other women incarcerated with him.

Self ID, designed for a 'small number' of men, in reality gives any man who wants it access to woman's intimate spaces - because we can't police them any more.

Do you just not understand this? Or do you not care? Do you think that this only affects lower status women, not women like you? I find those women who cant be bothered with this stuff tend to be pretty privileged.