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

Yup, saying everyone has a gender identity is like saying everyone has a religion, it presupposes a belief that clearly cannot at all be presupposed.

Absolutely. 100% spot on.

@oldcrone "but adds in random stuff about intersex."

The attempt to bundle intersex people into "trans" really annoys me. Most intersex people will identify as either male or female

@TheWrongTrousers You 'identify' as a woman because that's your material reality. Just like you identify as human.

Whether you identify as female or human or not, the material reality is still there. You are just acknowledging it.

Everyone has a gender identity

Everyone knows what sex they are.

Gender identity doesn't mean 'knowing what reproductive anatomy and genetics I possess' does it now.

If it did it would be obvious very quickly that you can't have a gender identity at odds with your sex.

No one has a gender identity any more than they have a multicoloured aura. Or is that it? We all emit clouds of pink or blue gender identity visible only to the spiritually advanced and that's why we must let them tell us what we are.

Exactly...

"Checks in knickers,"

I don't think TRAs would be happy with you finding your gender identity in your knickers.

Gender is between your ears remember?

The reeducation centre is that away ->

I'm not at a loss why many MtF identify as women, NotTerf. Transgender porn is <a class="break-all" href="https://www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2015/08/27/transgender-porn-quickly-growing-in-popularity.html?amp_js_v=a1&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#referrer=www.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2015%2F08%2F27%2Ftransgender-porn-quickly-growing-in-popularity.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">currently the fastest growing sector in commercial pornography. It increased 14% last year, according to one company, and now represents 10% of their whole market.

Anyone in any doubt of the misogyny of a significant proportion of the MtF community should investigate the online communities in which posters make it all too plain that they identify as #transgirls/#girlslikeus because women are - or should be - a stereotypical fuck toy and that being, for example, subject to the kink "forced feminisation" is intrinsically degrading.

Be warned. If you go down this particular rabbit hole you may see some disturbing things. I found what was written even more disturbing than the images. It's reading how women are seen that's particularly horrible

TheWrongTrousers, what you describe is not IMO a "gender identity". It is having the ability to think and therefore have a conceptual idea of mammalian sex and recognise your own sex and that of other human beings.

I know I am female and being female is part of my identity and place in society and in social groups. But that isn't a "gender identity".

It's like being forced to go to church as a kid when you didn't believe, isn't it? And then some keen person starts going on about feeling the presence of the lord and you're standing there all "well this is awkward".

Exactly this! I was raised in a churchgoing household, and I desperately tried to believe in the soul I was told I had. I couldn't find that soul, and for a long time I concluded that this was because I was defective.

I don't see any difference between the congregation who told me whether I could find it or not, I had a soul, and I was wrong and naughty to suggest that I didn't, and the gender ideologues who tell me that whether I can find it or not, I have a gender identity, and I'm cruel and ignorant to suggest that I don't.

Two remarkably similar authoritarian belief systems.

No. The second wave nailed it. Gender is imposed, not internal. You've got your sex, your sex roles and your personality. That's all.

Capitalist Porn masters have Brosocialists by the balls?

That 'forced feminisation' link is a good answer to anyone who says AGP doesn't exist, Prawn.

Michael Cashman in my opinion is sore about the hard times some people gave him in the past, so he takes it out on women by defending the T in LGBT.

Taking out you issues in the past you have with family that forced you to do things you didn't want to regarding their religious beliefs and so forth, isn't really helping create alliances in the here and now, is it?

Saying you have "a gender identity" is a bit like saying you have "an age identity".

I know I'm 45 years old. It's part of my identity and it is also relevant to how society treats and considers me and how other humans interact with me. But I don't have "an age identity" I just know how old I am and my physical appearance gives a pretty clear indication to others which age group I'm in.

(Except age does actually exist as a material reality whereas gender is a social construction so we'd do better to talk about "a sex identity" but that doesn't suit genderist ideology as it is patently ridiculous to assert that your "sex identity is female when your reproductive sex is male".)

If gender is innate, I have a questions:

Why do pretty much all children breach gender roles? There's not a child alive who has flawlessly only ever displayed "gender appropriate" behaviour. I know that trans adults very often detail their childhoods spent displaying or yearning to be allowed to display opposite-sex sex roles. But it's not uncommon at all. It's retconned into being meaningful - and it's not.

All trans adults showed behaviour typical of the opposite sex as children. They turn this round to suggest that all children who show behaviour typical of the opposite sex must be trans.

I'm back and I'm not being pedantic for the sake of it I promise. In our brains we are all forced to respond to gender. Many many people respond by internalizing the expectations of others. This starts from very young and we don't know it's happening. Some people respond by rejecting gender and that affects the way others see them as well but they have to work hard at that too and it is often an active choice. Even those who think they have rejected gender later find they have undiscovered elements still lurking in corners of their minds. If at 11 I had one person in front of me telling me gender identity isn't real and another person from mermaids I am certain I would have sided with mermaids because I knew my gender identity was real. I could perceive it within my mind. That's why I'm so keen on addressing the reality of gender identity and where it comes from and how it works. Trans people are no more mistaken about gender existing in their minds than many many non trans people especially teens who tend to be more highly gendered in their thinking. If we start with that reality we can start to explain how it came about. Patriarchy.

Politically an agenderist movement might be rather useful to us.

It would provide protection from discrimination on the basis of belief and might also encourage non-feminist atheists / materialists to join the fray

That should say tweens not teens

TheWrongTrousers You 'identify' as a woman because that's your material reality.

Yes, probably, for me that is mostly true. Being a woman is my material reality and my social reality, and they line up more or less nicely with my internal sense of reality, which (as far as I can tell) has pretty much come out of those two external things anyway. I see my gender identity as largely a matter of playing the material and social hand I've been dealt. I am pretty sure that if I'd been born physically male and treated as a boy/man by others then I'd identify as a man and with men, and that it wouldn't feel like a worse fit than I fit now with being a woman. (Though of course I can't prove that.)

But I'm not everyone. Not everyone's internal gender identity lines up with external material or social realities. Rather than taking their internal identity from outside these people seem to start trying to change the material reality (e.g. via surgery) and/or the social reality (passing in society as the other sex) so as to approximate more closely to their internal gender identity. And some seem to be better at identifying "as" than "with", which is not surprising since the "with" component comes most easily from shared experience.

When I look at the people closest to me, they're all a mish mash of supposedly masculine and feminine characteristics. I remember reading something a very long time ago about a study which filmed people left with a kitten after they'd been interviewed about their degree of stereotypical gender performance.

The ultra masculine types ignored the kitten. The ultra feminine ones clutched the poor thing so close the kitten struggled. The people in the middle played gently.

The study showed that extremes of gender performance aren't healthy. That definitely resonates with me.

However I can't find the study. I read it a very long time ago and it may have been debunked.

I can't imagine anyone being funded to study whether gender is harmful any more. Now it's not only beneficial, there are people trying to make it compulsory

But it is unscientific to say that gender identity isn't a thing. It is an observable phenomenon

Gender refers to outcomes for women as a class, heavily influenced by society.

It cannot be reduced to how women feel, identify or behave. If women are sent to prison for miscarriage, that is a gendered outcome, based on how society treats women as a class.

SarahCarer you said Gender is a part of all our identities though.

The thing is, everyone is different. It would be impossible to accurately describe all 'genders'.

Why have a 'gender' when you actually mean 'personality'. I think we can all agree that everyone has a different personality. Why constrain people to boxes labelled 'gender'. It really isn't necessary. The only use for it is to make sweeping statements about groups of people that are very rarely true, usually involving stereotypes.

As I've said on other threads - I'm a woman because my biology defines me as one, but I don't conform to the usual 'woman stereotypes'. What would my gender identity be? I'm certainly not a man. If I have to name a gender identity then it is 'lurker33'. No one is quite like me.

Prawn that study was begging the question. They defined masculine behaviours as less caring and then observed the less caring ones behaving in a less caring way

It is an observable phenomenon

Observable how?