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

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

Hi bertie I think if you are going to suggest I am guilty of confirmation bias (it's a valid point). Then you have to accept that you too are guilty of confirmation bias.

At least I've shown you some of the reasoning behind my thinking. I'm not going to show you the 60 years worth of research into fetal hormone levels and sexual behaviour because, there's absolutely loads and there's not a hope of putting it all across on an Internet forum even if I had the time and energy to do, which I don't

There is still absolutely loads that is unknown about human sexuality and gender identity. It's an extremely interesting research area.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

But basically it boils down to whether you see gender as a form of self-expression

I don't see gender identity as a form of self expression.

I think it just means that a person feels female / male (or gender fluid or asexual or whatever) and wants to be treated as such (correct pronoun).

[BertieBotts]

Oh yes of course. I didn't say that I'm immune to confirmation bias. I don't find much of the research very compelling TBH so it's difficult to call. But for me the idea that an activity, colour or style could be linked in any way to biological sex is ludicrous so I lean towards the rad fem perspective because it makes more sense to me. I'm not expecting you to persuade me or make an argument to me - ultimately I can always look into the research myself, which I have dipped into from time to time.

Ultimately that is all we can do - make sense of things in a way that works for ourselves. It's just a shame that we feel so attacked by others in the process.

[BertieBotts]

But feeling one way or another is internal or self expression. It's not somebody saying hey, you're blue. Stay in the blue corner. It's you saying I feel blue, I know I am blue, why are people calling me red?

Perhaps self expression is not the right word but the point is whether you feel gender comes from the self or whether it is something which is extrinsic.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

Perhaps self expression is not the right word but the point is whether you feel gender comes from the self or whether it is something which is extrinsic

I think gender identity is mostly down to biology. Similar to sexuality it's the way your brain was formed in the womb.

[emmaluvseeyore]

I recently came across a really interesting blog (gendermom.wordpress.com) written by the mum of an American child who was born a boy but transitioned to a girl at a young age. I think it would be good for a lot of you to read it. It primarily focuses on the mum's journey learning about gender identity. You will see that it is nothing like a 4 year old pretending to be a cat or a boy wanting to wear dresses just to get attention!

[NiNoKuni]

Glossy has written another timely blog

Testosterone. Oestrogen. The hypothalamus. Oxytocin. Left and right hemispheres. MRI scans. Look, here’s some stuff that sometimes, when you squint a bit, looks different in one group than it does in another. So there. Except, as has been pointed out a million times, evidence of difference is not evidence of gendered difference. There is no “wifework“ section lighting up the female MRI scan. Believe me, we’d know if there was.

Not everyone identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth, hence some brains just “are” female. Except this demonstrates, not that gender is innate, but that dividing people into groups based on perceived reproductive potential tells us nothing about their personal preferences, desires and needs.

[BertieBotts]

Okay When, fair enough, but I disagree. I don't think gender has any biological basis at all. To me it sounds as ludicrous as stating that different races have different characteristics, aside from shared culture (environmental, not biological) and propensity to different medical issues (entirely biological).

Emma I will read it but I don't promise to agree with the conclusions formed from that person's experience.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

bertie fair enough we disagree.

Not really sure why gender identity makes you think of people saying different races have different characteristics (can't see any link at all personally).

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

nino if you squint a bit a testosterone and oestrogen levels they look a bit different?

A bit different? Totally disingenuous.

[BertieBotts]

Humans love to categorise. That's all.

[NiNoKuni]

Well, as I said before, I have excess testosterone (for a woman) and I'm still a woman. I don't think it's anywhere near as neat and easy as hormones. I don't believe anyone has ever pointed to a part of a woman's brain and gone 'hey, that's conclusively the bit that makes them like pink/make up/being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen' ('evidence of difference is not evidence of gendered difference').

We're talking about the radfem concept of gender as a system of oppression, where masculine things are dominant and powerful and feminine things submissive and weak precisely because this benefits men (the dominant gender) and oppresses women, keeping them submissive and (sexually, reproductively) available ('wifework').

Radfems, and Glossy above, say that genitals don't and shouldn't prescribe a gender-based pink or blue box for you, so abolish the boxes. Trans people say that they want or 'feel like' the other box. The two viewpoints can't meet in the middle.

There may or may not be a biological cause of transgenderism, I don't know, I don't think anyone does. I only have my own experience (which includes, by the way, living with a pre-op transperson). I used to think it was hormones/womb stuff too. I don't anymore. Like Bertie, the radfem analysis makes more sense to me.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

nino humans are really complicated and although hormones clearly do have an affect on humans behaviour and physiology. There will be other factors involved too.

The brains sexuality (fancying men or women and feeling like one sex or another) seems to be fixed in the womb.
Eg you can't "cure" a gay man by giving him more testosterone. I'm all likelihood all you will do is increase his sex drive.


I can get on board with some gender stereotypes oppressing women/girls,

Clearly occupations that have traditionally been male dominated are seen as superior to occupations that are traditionally female.

This needs to change, I'm totally on board with that.

[BertieBotts]

Is sexuality relevant to this discussion? Happy to discuss if it is but it seems to be clouding the issue. I'm totally on board with sexuality being a spectrum and not something which is "curable", neither desirable to be "cured", and I do believe that most people with a strong sexual preference are that way from an early age. However this does also seem fluid, if you look at ancient societies such as the Greeks for example, there was far more homosexuality then than there is today. This is more of a vague idea though, I don't want to side track into an argument.

I'm not sure sexuality is relevant to gender, though, anyway.

Slugs I don't think that agreeing with one aspect of radical feminism has to make you a radical feminist. I don't know that there's much point in worrying overly about categories anyway, but sometimes it's useful to put a name to a POV as it prevents having to give a lengthy explanation each time. I think you can be radfem on one issue but libfem on another, for example.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

I think you could argue there is a link between sexuality, gender identity and physical sex.

I think you probably get different numbers of men declaring themselves to be gay at differing point is history - due to societies attitude at the time.
Eg there are probably more openly gay men in the UK now than 100years ago.

[Queeltie]

The concept of gay being an identity, is a cultural idea. It is not a universal one across history or cultures.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

Ok so the concept is modern, culturally we do seem comfortable thinking of sexuality as a spectrum. Fair enough.

Not sure what that means in practice, I always thought it was pretty well established that if a man said he was homosexual it wasn't possible to change it.
(And as Bertie said nor would it be right to).

[Queeltie]

I think sexuality can be changed. But that doesn't mean it should be.

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

Hi buffy

Purely whether or not a person says they feel (identify as) male or female.

Obviously this would need to be a long term thing. The kid in the article is just four bless him. No one knows what he will feel when he is an adult.

[BertieBotts]

But isn't that the worry? That kids are having treatment for this pre-puberty. If nobody knows how he will feel until he is an adult shouldn't this kind of treatment be delayed? I understand that going through puberty when you feel you ought to be the wrong gender must be hugely distressing, but also this has lifelong consequences. We don't let twelve year olds get tattoos or body piercings, both of which are ultimately removable. How can we allow twelve year olds to make a decision to block puberty?

I have been reading the blog emma linked from the beginning and while I am hugely reassured that the mum in question HAS reassured her child that it's possible to like girly things and still be a boy and appears to have gone through every possibility before settling on the conclusion that her child is indeed transgender, the puberty issue comes up again. She's clearly conflicted about it herself but does also believe that medicating to prevent puberty and steer it in a "girl" direction is the right thing to do.

In fact it has opened up a new angle for me which I admit that I hadn't considered. Most people do want an easy life for their children and will steer them towards an easier path if they can because they don't want to see them struggle. So I accept that it must take an extremely strong reaction against that instinct, and quite a large amount of distress from a child to keep on insisting that they are not a boy, or a girl.

And there was an interesting point made about the hyper-feminine way some transwomen present, in that every time her DD wore trousers people would latch onto it and point out "Oh look, she is a boy really". Which is something I had wondered about that argument (that transwomen perform a caricature of women).

But, again, TBH this is just more proof to me that we need to smash any notion of anything being masculine or feminine when it is causing so much pain and suffering, rather than being proof that gender identity is an innate thing.

It's not the child wanting to wear a mixture of dresses and trousers which is causing the distress here, is it? It's other people's reactions to that, and what they have decided it "means".

[WhenSheWasBadSheWasHorrid]

I agree there is an issue of "what is a woman"

Purely from a biological point of view

• the Olympics has been unable to come up with a clear and defined test / definition of female. And the Olympics doesn't care about what's going on in someone's head only their body.
  

Obviously the "mind of a woman" is going to be even more complicated.


i disagree that unless you can clearly define the variable there isn't any point reporting it.
Pain is subjective, different people report different levels of pain. And you have to take the persons word for it when they tell you how much pain they are in. (I wish my bloody midwife had listened to me when I was in labour but she insisted that as I was only three cms one hour ago it couldn't hurt that much - I gave birth 15 minutes later (sorry got diverted).