Spreading the idea that everyone has a gender identity

[Macareaux]

Mermaids has quite a reach. Influencing consumer groups.

The ease with which schools, workplaces and other organisations are being brainwashed is quite astounding

@Elletorro but I couldn’t enter youth clubs or be sent to a youth prison. No one would ever agree with how I ‘identify’ no matter how strong my ‘feelings’ were as it’s biologically incorrect.

Isn’t that what trans rights origionally were, so that men/women could dress in a certain way without being ridiculed for their appearance.

Pre 2010 only a transperson with a GRC could use single sex services. But the U.K. needed to acknowledge those who transition but don’t get a certificate

Beachcomber sorry about your comment deletion, I thought the longer one was quite good, and cannot for the life of me remember on what possible grounds it was deleted.

A later comment though (about the word 'gender'):
I think it has become a word that feminists should stop using because most people don't realize that we are using it to describe a system of social order. I prefer to use "sex caste" as coined by Sheila Jeffries because it is a much clearer term

Feminists did not invent it (it was in use before the second wave), however, the second wavers used "gender roles", which at least partially illustrated what was going on. More recent feminist analysis has gone further, stressing that 'gender (stereotypes)/gender roles' are in fact, a hierarchy, with female-born people on the bottom, and is in fact the primary mechanism for our collective oppression within the system of patriarchy.

Sheila Jeffreys is quite spot on coining 'sex caste', because our limitations in life are primarily based upon which sex caste we are born into (the shit one, according to patriarchy).

I am not sure who you are telling off for using the word. In the current political climate, there are many women now GC that would not necessarily be RFs (but some look like they may go there). But more importantly, patriarchy is actually a 'moving target', they keep shifting the goal posts constantly. So there is never any 'one true way'. But at least in this current political climate, the misogyny is quite exposed - it was harder to fight when they (men) pretended to be nice (and 'just not quite getting it'). As we can see by Labour, currently it is men on the left.

Interestingly when all this first started, transwomen did indeed resort to stereotypes to explain how they felt. But stopped pretty quickly when feminists pointed it out.

It was funny to read at the time though Datun, those stories of "I started on estrogen, then suddenly lost the ability to read maps!"

You couldn't make it up if you tried.

LaSqrrl, I'm not telling anyone off! It was just a thought and one I have voiced here before.

I have no wish to police anyone's language. I just think that the word "gender" has been used to obfuscate and that plain words could be used to help shine a light on exactly what trans ideology represents.

autistic lesbian woman with no gender identity

Sorry I do not understand - you have called yourself a woman. As soon as you say "I am a ..." or "as an ..." isn't that your identity? In my understanding that means you do have a gender identity (a woman) Whether that corresponds to your physical body or social role I have no clue, but you think you're a woman and surely that's all it takes to have a gender identity? If you didn't have a gender identity at all wouldn't you say for example "I have a female body and I operate in scoiety as a woman but I don't think of myself as a either a man or a woman?"

But obviously you don't agree. So what am I getting wrong?

So what am I getting wrong?

This:

"Whether that corresponds to your physical body or social role I have no clue,"

Describe the 'social role' that defines the word woman. Then apply it to a man who identifies as a woman - describe that.

I note who is being pulled into posting and losing their temper...

Wrong trousers - gender isn’t sex!

Woman is a descriptor of biological sex.

I am also a woman without a gender identity. I’m a woman (two bio kids and women’s cancer related genetics clinic appointments to prove it) but I don’t have any sense of gender that isn’t really biological fact.

I’m a gender atheist. I simply do not believe that gender identity is a thing. Obviously I accept that other people believe it and I am happy to respect those beliefs, but faith and fact are not interchangeable (nor are sex and gender).

Sorry I do not understand - you have called yourself a woman. As soon as you say "I am a ..." or "as an ..." isn't that your identity? In my understanding that means you do have a gender identity (a woman) Whether that corresponds to your physical body or social role I have no clue, but you think you're a woman and surely that's all it takes to have a gender identity?

I am a woman - that’s a descriptor of my sex. It’s not a subjective opinion, or how I feel. It’s a physical, measurable, objective scientific fact. I am a woman - an adult human female, where female is ‘of the class that bear live young and produce ova.’ It’s not an identity, it’s a reality. I’m six months pregnant, there is not a person in the world who can tell me I’m not a woman.

A gender identity - whatever that actually is, I’ve still never had a good explanation - is a matter of feeling and opinion. I’ve never felt I ‘identify’ as a woman. I just am one. I’ve never had anyone be able to explain to me how a woman is supposed to think or feel.

Society certainly has a lot to say on how they think a woman should talk, behave and act. But that’s all crap I largely reject. It’s not innate in me, it’s not a physical measurable part of me. I do t have an identity. Perhaps some people feel they do like some people feel they have a soul. However that’s a faith based position and belief defies proof.

In short - I AM a woman
I have no gender identity because I don’t believe that gender is innate and I reject most of the crap that society pins on women.

Why on earth is my identity being called into question? I am an adult human female. Therefore due to my sex I am a woman. I am vulnerable to pregnancy. I menstruate. That is not an identity. It is biology. My identity is as above. Please respect it. Sheesh.

'I don't think of myself as a either a man or a woman' - please don't put words in my mouth. It's vile. For me, sex is about biology. Therefore, due to my awareness of reality, I am a woman. It isn't about how I think of myself. it's about having xx chromosomes and 3 children. Did you mean to sound like such a rude concern troll?

'I don't think of myself as a either a man or a woman' - please don't put words in my mouth.

I am sorry for that, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth. I meant to set out what I understood and how I would express it myself, so that you could clarify where your understanding and/or your use of language would be different from mine.

Thanks to Bowlofbabelfish, bettydumonde and Datun for explaining.

and thanks to superloudpoppingaction for explaining too, in the post before.

I am Jane.
I feel have the same identity as that person over there who I know nothing of.
I will give our identities the same name, to show that we are the same.
-is this possible? No. You cannot know another person's feelings or identity. The label is meaningless.

I am Jane.
That person over there used a word to describe themselves.
They have a clear idea of the exact meaning attached to the word.
I will use the same word, yet with an opposite meaning to name my own identity.
We now both have the same identity.
-no. Using the same word with different meanings attached does not confer similarity. Communication is about conveying meaning and mutual understanding. A parrot can use human words but has no comprehension of their meaning.

There is no way for a group (gender means group) to possess a shared identity other than by means of agreeing the definition and characteristics of that group identity and proving that each member possesses them. And even them members may not 'identify as' or 'feel' or even 'declare' their identity. They will simply be identified (recognised) by others to fit the right description.

I don't "identify as" vegetarian, I am. I do the thing... I invite you to go to a religious worship "identifying as" yet DO that which is opposite to the beliefs/actions and see how accepted you are..... I don't believe that religion, vegetarianism, etc are innate things. They are the things we are socialized or become do to our innate characteristics. We alll make choiced based on those I guess core values and those are later expressed through the things we do. Gender is not about doing man or woman it's about social control.

My gender resistance is called "radical feminism". It gives me a toolkit to analyse the world and my own reactions to it.

For example, I hated cooking when my mother tried to teach me cooking but I was interested when my ex-bf taught me. On reflection, I realised that internalised misogyny was at the root of my initial hatred: I had dismissed cooking as "women's work" and therefore beneath a professional woman in a male-dominated job like myself, and my ex-bf validated it as a thing men do and therefore not beneath me. Further reflection had me realise that my "I'm not like other women, I'm more like a man, and what men do is OK for me to do but what women do is not" attitude was pure misogyny, turned outwards in a denigration of other women as somehow less than me and inwards in denying myself permission to do wifework survival work unless a man validated it first.

It was a startling and deeply unpleasant realisation. Without an understanding of internalised misogyny, I would have carried on trying to be some kind of honorary man, and failing because women only get honorary man status when it suits men.

No one is an "identity" anything. Gender Identity is a US cultural phenomenon being exported around the world. The purpose of this export is to demobilise legal "sex" and create a worldwide legal framework for cross dressing males to be legally recognised as male and/or female.

Transsexuals knew what they were before Gender Identity appeared over the horizon like a huge shitstorm of gibberish.

It also makes it clear that having a gender identity at odds with your sexed body is a disorder, not a normal variance.

Why are mental health professionals describing the disorder? Don't you disapprove of that?

It's a text book from a while ago (Abnormal Psychology) and the term has been replaced by Gender Dysphoria now. Instead of cross gender identity being seen as a type of pathology, it is the dysphoria that it causes that is seen as the disorder. I was just using it to illustrate that gender identity as a concept has been used in psychology and psychiatry for a long time.

I have very mixed feelings about that because surely if you have some sort of condition that means you can't function well without prescription medication and surgery, then that means you have some sort of disorder? And it's framing it as a lifestyle choice. OTOH it does depathologise the whole spectrum of gender nonconformity and cross sex identity and expression. I think I tend towards the former at the moment though.

To have an identity about your gender you must first be able to define your gender.

Gender means group.
A group has shared characteristics.
Else it is not a group.

The only reason gender identity is referenced in psychology or medicine is because it is conflated with sex, which does have an objective definition.

Apply logic to this and it all evaporates.

Gender group: female
Gender group: male

what are their characteristics? How do they differ?

Excellent post metro - I have been through similar stages myself.

Ruthless self awareness is hard, but liberating.

@SarahCarer it is unscientific to say that gender identity isn't a thing. It is an observable phenomenon
How is it observable, except by asking people? That's not observation.

"Huge shitstorm of gibberish"? I think I love you, Picasso

It's a text book from a while ago (Abnormal Psychology) and the term has been replaced by Gender Dysphoria now. Instead of cross gender identity being seen as a type of pathology, it is the dysphoria that it causes that is seen as the disorder.

Transvestic fetishism is listed in the DSM too. Again you are conflating "transgender" with "gender dysphoria" which isn't true.