So ... Does this indicate that you CAN be 'born the wrong gender'?

[Garrick]

www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/im-girl-meet-twin-boy-6348318?

Summary: Twins Alfie and Logan, 4yo, are both boys. Logan has insisted on wearing girly clothes, doing girly things, and that he is a girl since the age of two. His mother, who sounds brilliant, reports him wishing his willy would fall off.

I'm somewhat flummoxed. When I were a lass, little boys like this were described as camp (behind their fathers' backs) and, as far as I know, mostly grew up to be camp and fulfilled their rightful destinies. Rather like Ugly Betty's brother.

But this is what some transwomen say they felt like as children, isn't it? And I have rubbished it because I find it hard to believe in gender as an innate feeling. I'm not sure whether I think little Logan proves me wrong

What happens if it turns out that large numbers of people - or large numbers of women - don't have an internal gender identity. On whatever basis it is eventually decided it is measured or described.

I am at a loss with much of this as I don't have any idea what it is supposed to mean. And I know lots of others on here are in the same boat.

Depression is fairly common, though, isn't it, and treating it doesn't affect others therefore it's fairly accepted that if somebody's asking for help with depression, they probably have depression and it's worth treating them. Most likely the only reason anti-depressants aren't available over the counter is the potential for suicide, the (theoretical, not so much there in practice with the NHS) need to monitor patients' overall wellbeing and the option of exploring other options e.g. talking therapies in stead of or addition to medication.

So I don't think it's really comparable. Also not quite the same but I think closer - talking about neurological issues like ADHD and ASD. We don't have a blood test or a brain scan (I've been doing a lot of research around ADHD recently so I'll stick with that as an example) - if you take hundreds of brain scans of ADHD patients and control patients and compare them, there is a clear difference between the two groups, but it's not visible on an individual level because there is far too much overlap. So the brain scan is not (currently) any use in diagnosis.

Likewise, there are self reported symptoms but in the process of diagnosis, they don't just go by you saying oh yes, I'm really scatty and I can't watch a whole film in one go. They will also ask to speak to others who are close to you, in order to build up a fuller picture. They will take examples e.g. from school reports, or a pattern of job dismissals, etc.

If you are diagnosed and you want to try medication, then the dose is carefully monitored. You are monitored after beginning it in order to see how it is affecting your life and whether it needs to be changed, up, down, or to a different kind of medication.

Of course there are many people who also do not believe ADHD exists and I am sure they could argue that the diagnostic criteria is woolly and subjective. However, medication and therapy does seem to help a lot of patients.

Google time!

"Your gender is the foundation of your personality and indicates how you choose to express yourself. Which Identity do you actually represent?"

I am agender, apparently.

Makes a change from being male

And yes, pop quizzes are shit, but, you know, I have literally no idea what it means and it's interesting to see what others think it means.

That particular quiz was quite interesting with a few off the wall questions, it mainly focussed on mode of dress though.

I suppose at least if there were some proper definitions, I could take the quiz, and so could everybody else, and stacks of women would need to tick the "other" box for their hospital equalities information, and we'd still need a word to describe the group previously known as female, in order to talk about the particular situations they face which are entirely linked to their biology. The taleban don't give a fuck what the gender id in your brain is, they only give a fuck what's in your pants, and we need ways to discuss that.

Is there a link Whirlpool?

In the alternate reality where we all do a pop quiz on gender and declare what our identity is, we don't actually know there is such a thing as gender identity equality.

We have no idea how many people are each gender, so we can't possibly know at this point if any of the gender identities are treated worse than any of the other gender identities.

We know females are treated worse than males in general, because we've been recording and studying inequality between the sexes for ages.

"we'd still need a word to describe the group previously known as female, in order to talk about the particular situations they face which are entirely linked to their biology. The taleban don't give a fuck what the gender id in your brain is, they only give a fuck what's in your pants, and we need ways to discuss that."

Yup. This is so much more than a "which toilets?" issue.

Google I did the first one

Thing is all of these quizzes are silly and it feels a bit like making light out of what is a very serious big deal for lots of people. I guess the other option is that it's a "thing" at the moment and so lots of people are trying to understand what it's all about and where they fit in and that's OK.

Most of these (not exactly rigorous!) things seem to hinge on gender stereotype though. Which I guess is why it comes up. I do think that some people think there is a certain amount of disingenuity (sp) going on when people say they don't know what it means or feels like, but it's not, really. What may be an obvious and clear sense of something in one person's mind may not be present at all in another's - I mean that's perfectly reasonable isn't it.

I do know that I don't feel at odds with my body, but I don't feel particularly connected to it, either. It's just a housing for "me" and I don't "feel" a particular sex I just feel like a person.

Of course many many women and girls are deeply uncomfortable in their bodies, so there's that as well.

There is a social definition of what depression is. You can't self report that you have depression if you think depression is a blue bicycle stored in a shed. You have to be self reporting symptoms from the agreed current definition.

Yes -- and, the thing is, no-one has yet defined 'wrong sex/gender' as, say, depression and schizophrenia are defined & revised.

Let's time-hop to a few years hence, when there is a suitable questionnaire developed by trans people and the relevant experts. To benchmark the criteria for special treatment, medical and legal, this questionnaire would have to be tested on the population at large.

And this where I suspect we might have a problem.

I'm one of the many women who doesn't recognise a gender identity in myself. In fact, I bridle at the very concept of gender and the ways it restrains people based on their reproductive equipment. I am quite sure that huge numbers of (cis) women & men lack a gender identity.

So, passing over questions about whether I preferred tea sets or tractors as a child (neither, and had both) and feel more myself in a dress or trousers (neither, but mostly wear trousers), we might get on to more searching issues such as whether I'm happy with my sex & gender. Well, not really; "used to it" would sum that up. Have I ever wished I were the other or another sex? Yep, often! Have I ever resented my genitals & reproductive equipment? Hell, yeah! They're often messy and cause pain. How did I feel during puberty? Scared, angry and confused; doesn't everyone?

This is a strangely rambling post, to be sure, but perhaps my imaginary diagnostic test will help to show how you can't evaluate a human condition from a single perspective. Also, that pretty well all such evaluations must, by their very nature, be pinned on social constructs.

I am very familiar with BDD and can empathise with the idea of someone suffering sex dysphoria but I can't begin to understand gender dysphoria because I don't understand gender identity at all. I also don't understand why someone may have dysphoria about their nose, for example, but they aren't encouraged to have a nose job and become their 'true self'.

I've only seen wooly definitions of 'gender identity'. The most I can gather is it is an internal feeling and it is not related to stereotypes - though at the same time the need to dress and act a certain way (and play with certain toys in the case of children) comes up a lot. I suppose you could say that we don't have the language to describe it, but then if we are going to change laws and the meaning of 'woman' on the basis of it, I feel like we really should have a clear definition.

I can imagine that men may feel more connected to a gender identity because being masculine is seen as a much more important part of being a man, whereas you don't have to be feminine to be accepted as a woman. So I see this as more of a social thing then a biological one.

Sorry I don't know if anything I said makes sense. Having family dramas at the moment and my mind is elsewhere and I've had no sleep.. Sorry if you've read this and feel like you've lost 2 minutes of your life.

Heh Playbuzz says: You are a Pangender! It's not that you don't identify with being a male or a female, you actually identify with both... maybe even more so than the average person. You like to challenge the idea of the usual gender roles, and you definitely fit the mold of non-conformity in this realm of labels and their associated identities. The word "Pan" itself actually means "every", making you all inclusive in the method in which you express your gender identity through behavior and physical attributes. Why do you have to be one or the other? You don't- and that's what your happy with!

Playbuzz isn't far wrong

Demented, I completely got your post. Hope things sort themselves out soon

I got ciswoman - it's quite funny really. I'm possibly the only person left on this thread who isn't offended by the cis thing.

That might well explain why you aren't offended by it, mightn't it!

I was going to say...

Maybe it will turn out that feminists / radfems turn out to be much less likely to have an internal gender id than the rest of the population. I mean, the discrepancy between how I felt inside (me) and how others treated me based on my external appearance (female & with accoutrements considered to be very "feminine") is why I became a feminist in the first place, before I even found out what the word was and said "yep that's me" when I was about 15.

Certainly there are more than one group here who are utterly failing to communicate in a useful way, and taking it very badly. Many women on here feel that their entire identity is under attack - if your sex is your gender and your gender is how you feel inside then most of us are not female. Which, given that most of us are feminists and many of us are because of the way we've been treated because we're female.... Well you can see where the problems arise.

We are being told, actually you are not women. We are. And it's a massive headfuck and I'm not sure that it gets us anywhere useful.

I got cismale even though I said I was anatomically female.

Well, Playbuzz is getting a round of applause so far

... and I'm only offended by the cis thing because of the semantic/pragmatic difficulties referred to many times upthread. I'm not offended by being (more or less) aligned with my biological sex, I'm offended by being told "woman" needs a prefix to distinguish it from "women" with XY chromosomes.

It feels like somebody else changed their name to the same as mine, then insisted I should call myself "Another [My Name]". And that wouldn't even have the same medical & legal implications as cis; it's just insulting.

I think the language around these discussions is becoming unnecessarily complicated.
I wonder if people don't take some of the discussions seriously because they sound quite pseudoscience-y in places. Out of a bad self help book.
Without beig facetious I am still not sure what identifying as female means; nor a cis-woman. I understand what in principle the words mean but it is confusing with all the jargon.

Apart from demented, Garrick! cismale indeed lol

I don't like the cis thing as it means that my internal gender identity aligns with my biological sex. So it means that other people are telling me that my internal gender id is female. I don't understand what it feels like to have an internal gender id let alone a female one. All I know is gender roles and stereotypes and female = shoes and chocolate and so, you know, piss off. Not that there's anything wrong with those things but my whole life people have been trying to put me in a box marked "feminine" and I really really don't like it because I don't fit very well. Well, externally I fit well, but my personality, my likes and interests and so on, they don't.

This is one of the main points of feminism isn't it? Don't tell women what they can and can't do, what they should and shouldn't like, don't put us in a box and tell us we're emotional and then pay us less money or say we aren't allowed to work at all or whatever. Same goes for men their gender roles are very narrow too.

Obviously people like me have a huge problem with all of this.

And feminists need to be able to talk about women and girls in a meaningful way.

I've got an image in my head of demented checking herself in case she has the worlds tiniest penis somewhere about her person.

i really hope no one is bothered by my stupid sense of humour. That quiz is obviously daft

It's bonkers, though, Ken - in my opinion. We all understand what a transwoman is, including the many significant variations within that. Not a single poster on this thread minds transwomen being who & what they, variously, are. We all seem quite in favour of self-expression.

What many of us do mind is the forced conflation of 'transwoman' with 'woman'. Personally, I mind quite ferociously that some transactivists want to take this to the extent where the biological realities of being an XX woman must be excluded from the meaning of 'woman'.

It seems rather likely that this conflation arises from a conflation of biological sex with gender. And we have some posters here who seem new to the idea that sex doesn't equal gender, or vice versa.

This last is obviously a tricky topic, as gender isn't a fixed or clearly defined thing - and again, this can be a very new thought to people who haven't given much time to gender politics.

Hence, the language is the issue. Because language reflects concepts, and the way it's used reflects societal assumptions.

Did that make any sense at all?

I've done it 3 times now to make sure I checked the correct box and I've got cismale each time. Funny as I didn't think my answers were particularly masculine.

I didn't say I dress like a man or anything

This is one of the main points of feminism isn't it?

Too bloody right.

Demented's outcome has confirmed my previous opinion that Playbuzz spits out random answers At least it's more interesting than the ones that give everybody the same outcome! (My vocabulary proves I'm 68 - as is everyone else who takes that quiz ... )

Oops, cross-posted Demented You have looked in your pants, haven't you??!

Oh ... Clear your cookies before doing it again! (Or just give in to being a Real Man )