Gender Identity - what is it?

[Wakame]

Gender identity, simply put, is a person's innate sense of their own sex. Now, if you are one of the minority who either don't have, or are not aware of their gender identity, then this can be a difficult thing to understand. You're like a person who was born blind trying to understand what red looks like.

However, don't let that put you off - we can't see electrons either but we know they exist because they are suggested by science. So what science is there to suggest that gender identity exists? Well here's one for you:

There is a birth deformity called "cloacal exstrophy" which involves severe malformations of the lower abdomen. In the past boys born with this condition were often given a "sex change" shortly after birth and were raised as girls with no knowledge of their male past. Despite this, a large percentage go on to express a male gender identity.

That innate knowledge of their own sex is gender identity.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421517/

One thought experiment you could try is to imagine what it would be like if an ingenious neurologist transplanted your brain into a man's body. Would you now feel like a man, or would you feel like a woman inside a man's body? There's no right or wrong answer and if you are genuinely "agender" (without a gender identity) then the experiment is not going to tell you anything. However, for some people, it's an experiment through which they start to understand.

It's a thought experiment so it's not about current medical science, however, the boys with cloacal exstrophy kind of did have their brains transplanted into apparently female bodies, so it's a good analogy. And as you can see, many of them felt like boys in female bodies.

Most of you will of course, dismiss this. That's OK - doctors and scientists don't doubt the existence of gender identity, and you'll make little progress until you acknowledge it.

(From the Juno Dawson thread on datalounge)

You have to be very very privileged to prioritise subjective feelings so highly.

A point that needs to be repeated.

This one is a little mean, but nonetheless astute.

Anyway, it occurs to me that if we XX people can tell XY people from other XX people rather easily (something I presume is an evolved function for the twin survival purposes of breeding and safety) then it follows that XY people can do the same - although perhaps XY people are less used to tuning into it, as they are less reliant on it for survival?

I wonder if the internet-selfie age is a big enabler in how this climate has gotten so enormous and toxic. After all, women and transfolk have been ticking along just fine for decades with just a ‘gentlewomans’ agreement.

The insta era, however, has allowed us, all of us, to visually present carefully constructed versions of ourselves and have those versions validated through being ‘liked’ and ‘favourited’. I’ve made a conscientious effort to minimise my participation (I know some people who use apps like ‘facetune’ to the point where they appear to have no nose), in part due to having two daughters (similarly, I stopped dying my hair when my niece was born with the same colour) but I am aware that it’s really easy to make myself look about 25, and a stone lighter on instagram with minimum effort.
In reality, I am almost 42 and wearing men’s sweatpants.

When selfies first became a thing, I kinda liked them. Candid photos rarely show us the people we are in our heads, so selfies were more like the people we saw in the mirror, the 2d us that is standing tall breathing in. I thought that was an interesting phenomenon.

Now I’m starting to think selfies are the mechanism that made this happen.

Trans culture has always had an emotionally charged investment in photography - I remember the private dressing services that were advertised in the classifieds in the 80s, incredibly expensive dressing up sessions, often facilitated by ‘Argies’ (aka RG’s or ‘Real Girls’) culminating in souvenir Polaroids to take home. Passport Booths were utilised in a similar manner (back in the day when you got 4 different shots on proper film). It makes sense - photography is a preserved fragment of time, and if you only got to be ‘you’ occasionally, preserving those occasions would probably help a lot.

So fast forward to now, where we have this carefully-constructed self image insta culture and it’s easy to see how the history of trans visibility, coupled with dysmorphia and the generally increased isolation/ reduced face to face interaction for almost everyone in the west, results in an over-investment/attachment to the insta-self and an emotional need to protect/project that image.

One of my husband’s friends is an incredibly beautiful transwoman, who passes pretty well in photos, but in person does not, because her height marks her out as ‘unusual for a woman’. That unusualness draws the eye and invites more scrutiny than you would normally use on a passerby.

DH’s friend isn’t interested in any of the TRA stuff and just wants to live her best life flying under the radar as much as possible, but for those who are less content with their lives, the disconnect between the online world, where you are indeed, a beautiful ‘woman’ or hot ‘chap’ and the real world, where you are regularly clocked must be quite jarring.

Of course, this is not an experience that is unique to transfolk - as I said earlier, my ‘25-on-the-internet’ is 41 in the street, but I don’t have any need to be recognised as 25, I’m not dysphoric, I’m pretty ok with who I am and how I look, even in these rather rank sweatpants.

So I find myself, philosophically musing, that people who are living their best lives in an online world, where they are able to construct a self image that is free of scale (and thus the tyranny of being too tall/too small) and free of whatever it is that mammals use to accurately discern XX/XY (smell?) shored up by a co-dependent community of followers/validators must be incredibly frustrated that they cannot take their selfie-selfs out in the real world, without having their bubbles burst.

Hence the rise of phenomenons such as no platforming established academics/ shutting up women’s voices with the dogmatic insistence that ‘transwomen are women’.

I wonder if the rise in popularity/desire for ‘facial feminisation surgery’ is an actual manifestation of trying to make your real self more like your selfie-self?

And perhaps the other side of the same coin is an awareness that you will never be able to pass in real life (that pesky XY smell) so instead you construct an online selfie-self that excuses you from needing to - ie, transwoman with full beards, utilising the exact same ‘transwomen are women’ dogma?

Do you think I could convince a university to let me research it as a PhD? 🤔

Some really interesting points Betty. I definitely think social media has ramped up self obsessive and narcissistic behaviour.

@Wakame

I would like to engage with your post on that assumption that you're doing the same. I would appreciate a reply, please @ me because I might miss it otherwise.

You have provided a fine definition of gender identity, an innate sense of ones own sex. As other people have pointed out tho, that means that your gender identity always accords with your actual sex, so that a body who as a baby is modified so that he would appear to be a girl will grow up with an innate sense that his body is wrong and he is in fact a boy.

It does not follow from that that it is possible to have a gender identity which doesn't match your birth sex. That could be true, but its a separate supposition that you have provided no evidence for.

It's important to note that sex reassignment (as was done to the boys in this study) doesn't actually change your sex. They still had XY chromosomes. Their livers were still physiologically male. Their skeletons were still male. Their body functions were male. Their hormonal levels didn't cycle the way that a woman's begin to during puberty.

Don't you think it's possible that what was identified in this study was not some mysterious 'gender identity', but merely the ability to accurately perceive one's sex regardless of surgical alteration and hormones?

For example, if I was somehow unable to perceive my body visually, or by touch, and was never told my sex, I could still deduce my correct sex by noticing how my body's rhythms fluctuate on a monthly cycle (times of relatively high performance and low performance). That wouldn't indicate that I had a 'gender identity' which just happens to correspond to my sex, it would indicate an ability to subjectively internally perceive my actual sex.

In fact, as the boys in this study continued to perceive their correct sex regardless of surgery, doesn't this undermine the whole concept of sex reassignment as a treatment for people with dysphoria? How could it cure them when people generally maintain the ability to internally perceive their sex regardless?

What does your definition imply for gender fluid and non-binary people? Or "demi-boys"? Do you suppose it's possible to receive half of an 'innate sense' or to have that innate sense reverse completely on a daily or hourly basis? Or do you discount those people's gender identities? Genuine question, I hope you will answer.

In addition, your definition of gender identity seems to rely heavily on body dysphoria which is not widely accepted in the trans community. It is possible to be transgender without having any issues at all with the sex of one's body. So it's not really a full definition as it doesn't cover the majority of the current use of the term.

I offer a counter definition:

Gender identity is the belief that the mind is a sexed characteristic in general, and a belief in the specific sex of ones own mind. It is the belief that it is possible for a person's mind or personality to be 'female' or 'male' (or 'both' or 'neither'). That might accord with their body sex (cis) or be opposite (trans), fluctuating (fluid), or something else entirely (non-binary).

This is a belief which is in contradiction with accepted neuroscience - that the brain is not an especially sexed characteristic and that it is malleable. That doesn't make it an 'invalid' belief, many belief systems do contradict observable evidence (e.g. belief in the soul) but they are legitimate belief systems.

Importantly, you can't have a 'gender identity' if you don't believe that the brain or mind is a sexed characteristic so gender critical people are never 'cis', but people who accept gender identity as a concept and believe their gender identity 'matches' their sex are 'cis'.

Would this definition be acceptable to you? If not, why not?

@jellyfrizz - Absolutely.

@Wakame - I expect that if my brain were ingeniously transplanted into a male body, that when it rained I would feel wet and cross, when I had drunk too much I would feel happy and reckless, that when people were rude to me I would feel upset and that when people were nice to me it would cheer me up.

I could hypothesise about how I might feel with regard to pink frilly things, who I might fancy and how that desire might be manifested, whether I would be more or less likely to start a fight or not - but I have absolutely no way of establishing whether that hypothesis is right or not, because, like 100% of the human beings who have ever lived, I've only ever been the sex I was born with.

Btw - my mother spent 40 years as a doctor working in children's and women's health - child development, contraception, examination of rape victims, etc etc etc - is a woman, has given birth three times and assisted at lots of births, including that of her grandson, and has lived through a period of massive change regarding the place of women in society. I don't know of anyone who has a greater right to comment on what it is to be a woman.
"Of course transwomen aren't women!" she says.

Smiths, I think your mother might like this:

Thanks Betty (and I do like your musing above about selfies; it's part of our hyper-individualised culture, I think: "you can be anything you want to be" which links into consumption as identity and the individual as self-defining, independent of the society they live in.

To be absolutely fair to my mum she is less terfy than some: she believes absolutely that there are innate psychological differences between men and women and that, therefore, it would be possible for a man to be born with female-type psychology. She just doesn't think that such a person would "really" be a woman; they'd be an atypical male, irrespective of how they chose to live.

I refuse to even use the word gender in parlance any more.

It's a mealy-mouthed pile of ambiguous bollox co-opted by those who seek to obfuscate for personal agenda.

Language should be precise. The entire purpose of language is to communicate. Not confuse.

It's disappointing that Wakame hasn't come back to even acknowledge any of the points put to them. To be fair, everyone has given them a lot of work with but still... I'm genuinely interested in what they have to say.

It's disappointing that Wakame hasn't come back to even acknowledge any of the points put to them.

Wakame up before you go-go didn't.

I suspect the tide went out for Wakame.

So a baby boy, after having genital surgery and growing up with female socialisation, will still develop into an adult male? Nothing can stop biology. Was that your point?

Oh don't worry. I'm sure @Wakame will start a new thread on another poor study soon enough. We may as well just copy and paste our questions across really.

I'm not in the least bit surprised at Wakame's non engagement. That's how they do their thing. They plop total bollocks on a brand new thread, we forensically demolish the bollocks, they make a couple of smug, 'knowing' comments while stroking the big fluffy pussy on their lap, and then their attention span ends and they wander off to plan their next spectacular gotcha moment.

I picture Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever, but with the attention span of a goldfish.

I picture Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever, but with the attention span of a goldfish

Nail. Head.

Reminds me of someone else.

Wakame up before you go-go.

@Bloodmagic.

"You have provided a fine definition of gender identity, an innate sense of ones own sex."

Thank you. The first point to make is that the post is aimed at the many people on Mumsnet who state that gender identity doesn't exist, or paradoxically state they they have no idea what it means. It is also for all those people who confuse gender identity with gender roles. This is fairly basic stuff to have a handle on if you are going to debate trans issues. What I am pleased about is that quite a few contributors here do seem to be willing to accept that gender identity exists. I think that's progress.

"As other people have pointed out tho, that means that your gender identity always accords with your actual sex... It does not follow from that that it is possible to have a gender identity which doesn't match your birth sex. That could be true, but its a separate supposition that you have provided no evidence for."

We already know that it is possible to have a gender identity that doesn't match the sex you were assigned at birth given the fact that trans people exist. The question is not "if" it happens, but "how" it happens.

"It's important to note that sex reassignment (as was done to the boys in this study) doesn't actually change your sex."

I agree - that's why I put "sex change" in inverted commas. I never changed sex - I was always female - that's why I transitioned. Trans people tend to prioritise the mind over the genitals when determining someone's sex..

"They still had XY chromosomes."

So do CAIS women - human sexual development is rather more complex and nuanced than XX and XY:

www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyond-xx-and-xy-the-extraordinary-complexity-of-sex-determination/

"Their skeletons were still male."

Male and female children's skeletal structure is more or less identical, which is why archaeologists have such a difficult time sexing children's remains. The key differences happen at puberty under the influence of sex hormones. This boys in the study were on estrogen. This is why trans girls who transition with puberty blockers etc develop a fairly typical female skeletal structure.

"Don't you think it's possible that what was identified in this study was not some mysterious 'gender identity', but merely the ability to accurately perceive one's sex regardless of surgical alteration and hormones?"

What were they perceiving? Their liver function?

"For example, if I was somehow unable to perceive my body visually, or by touch, and was never told my sex, I could still deduce my correct sex by noticing how my body's rhythms fluctuate on a monthly cycle"

These boys were without gonads - their hormonal cycles were artificially induced.

"In fact, as the boys in this study continued to perceive their correct sex regardless of surgery, doesn't this undermine the whole concept of sex reassignment as a treatment for people with dysphoria?"

The boys gender identity was immutable as is the gender identity of trans people. The object of transition is not to change your gender identity, but to match your body to the gender identity you already have. That's why transition is so effective:

whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/%20what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people%20/

"How could it cure them when people generally maintain the ability to internally perceive their sex regardless?"

You are mistaking gender identity for an ability to perceive the sex of your body rather than an ability to perceive the sex of your core identity. The boys in the study had no way of knowing they were physically male, their knowledge of their sex was innate and separate from genitalia etc. And as we know from trans people, even if you are fully aware of the shape of your genitals, and the sex you were assigned at birth, this has no effect on your gender identity.

"What does your definition imply for gender fluid and non-binary people?"

It's an interesting question. One thing that the science suggests is that gender identity doesn't have a simple aetiology. So imagine, for the sake of argument, that gender identity was distributed across say 6 regions of the brain. If your brain developed 3 regions in the male range and 3 in the female range, you could possibly expect a non-binary identity. We will see how science unravels that one.

"or to have that innate sense reverse completely on a daily or hourly basis?"

I suspect that if your gender identity is balanced in the centre, it's quite easy for your perception of it to fall either side from time to time. But again, we will have to wait for the science on that.

"Or do you discount those people's gender identities?"

Not at all - I fully support them. Nor do I discount those people who seem either to not have a gender identity or have an inability to perceive it (agender) many of who are on this forum. It's only a shame that so many of the agender people here have made the leap from "I have no gender identity" to "Therefore no-one has a gender identity".

Also, gender identity can be quite a difficult thing to unravel - it's not always absolutely clear. May trans people for example know their is something wrong at the age of 3 or 4 and that it is something to do with boys and girls, but it can take a long time for the penny to drop. You can see an example of of this in a real life cloacal exstrophy case here:

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3191600/The-agony-learning-ve-raised-wrong-sex-rare-condition-meant-doctors-weren-t-sure-sex-Joe-born-support-Princess-Diana-finally-accepted-girl-came-shattering-discovery.html

Apologies for posting a Daily Mail article.

"In addition, your definition of gender identity seems to rely heavily on body dysphoria which is not widely accepted in the trans community."

I work with trans women. I can assure you that's not the case.

"It is possible to be transgender without having any issues at all with the sex of one's body."

That's not quite true - it's more a case that there are some trans people who are not troubled by their body being in opposition to their gender identity. That's also OK.

"This is a belief which is in contradiction with accepted neuroscience - that the brain is not an especially sexed characteristic and that it is malleable."

It is certainly true that although there are statistical differences between male and female brains, there is also a huge overlap. However, we are talking about a very specific property of the brain - gender identity. We certainly know that there are brain anomalies in trans people as you can see from the 26 peer-reviewed articles linked to here:

www.cakeworld.info/transsexualism/what-is/brain-similarities

And that is just up to 2015. Or to get an overview of the scientific consensus based on just a few of those studies, see this Scientific American article:

www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-something-unique-about-the-transgender-brain/

"Importantly, you can't have a 'gender identity' if you don't believe that the brain or mind is a sexed characteristic"

Gender identity is not a matter of belief - it is a matter of observation. The cloacal exstrophy boys didn't need a complex analysis of current thinking in the neuroscience of brain sex - they simply observed that they felt male despite no physical or social evidence to support that observation.

"so gender critical people are never 'cis',"

Most gender critical people appear to be agender, and are therefore not the "c word" which I am not allowed to use.

So that leaves the question of how trans people occur. Evidence at the moment is pointing quite strongly to genetics:

www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/4592/presentation/578abstract

And here's an interesting one. As I am sure you know, CAIS people are born with vaginas (and sometimes wombs) despite XY chromosomes. So we know that it is possible for an XY foetus to develop a typically female physical characteristic. Some CAIS people seem to have an issue with the AR gene:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#AR_mutations

It's not the only cause, and it's not a simple cause, but interestingly, trans women have also been found to have anomalies on this gene:

www.cakeworld.info/transsexualism/what-is/transsexual-genes

Of course, that's not the last word, and I am not suggesting the question is solved, it's merely one example of one possible cause for a person's gender identity not matching the sex they were assigned at birth. We will see how the science progresses, but so far, none of it seems to be moving away from the observation that there is something biological going on behind gender identity.

"I'm not in the least bit surprised at Wakame's non engagement."

Well firstly, I run a business which also involves quite a lot of international travel, so my time is very limited and there are a very large number of comments. I try to pick out key ones when I have time.

Secondly, as you can see, a lot of the comments are fairly horrible - both to me personally, and to trans people in general. I am trans and I work with trans women so I know the level of suffering involved and spending too much time here does have a consequence for my mental health. So I dip in when I feel up to it.

This bit:
Trans people tend to prioritise the mind over the genitals when determining someone's sex

is the problem, really, because very few other people do.

However 'female' one's inner view of one's mind, if the body is readily perceived as male by others, their reaction will be to a male person.

I'm sure that's hard on the sincere.

Wakame, I'll leave the dismantling of the 'science' to others, but I did want to address the poor old me tone in your second post there - you frequently post the same inaccurate tripe and disappear without ever returning. We've all got busy lives, even the ones who aren't jetsetting. If we can't come back and defend the reams of stuff we post, we can expect to get called out on it.

None of the critique of your posting history or style or content has anything to do with your trans status, and the fact that you and others like you take criticism as a personal attack based on your trans identity is precisely why people hand you your arse on a plate so often and think you are phenomenally self absorbed as a group.

Trans people tend to prioritise the mind over the genitals when determining someone's sex

Since there is absolutely zero scientific consensus on what the mind actually is then this is not the soundest base for legislation is it? We go on medical/scientific definitions of sex, which are objective. Not on feelings, which are fickle, subjective and invisible.

The comments are not horrible to YOU. They are rebutting, critiquing your words and opinions.
No one gets a free pass to proclaim whatever they want without critique. Especially not here. When it gets into personal threat territory (as I’ve actually had on here under a previous name directed at me) you can talk about attacking you. Until then it’s words on a screen, critiquing your (poor) grasp of basic science and your anti-woman stance.

There is a definite move in universities away from real debate and exposing young people to ideas from across the spectrum towards telling them what to think, no platforming and #nodebate. This leads to a fair set of people whose only come back technique is to accuse their opponent of bigotry/start crying.

That gets you nowhere in the real world. It might work on the Twitter or the cesspit that is the Grauniad comments section, but it doesn’t fly on mumsnet. Because we see you.

Wakame:
It is interesting that you state that, for trans people, the mind is more relevant for determining sex than the body. I suspect this is a source of much of the debate and confusion. You don't seem to endorse the idea of 'sexed' brains, in the sense that women have 'female' brains while men have 'male' brains. You correctly point out that there's a huge amount of overlap and diversity in the brain, such that it's not easy to categorise brains as 'male' or 'female'. But you then go on to say that one part of the brain (mind?) definitely is sexed, and THIS is the determinant of one's sex - the part of the brain that generates gender identity. So females will have a 'female gender identity 'generator in their brain (which will result in them feeling a certain way, and believing a certain thing), and males will have a 'male gender identity' generator which leads to them feeling a certain way and believing certain things.

So what makes us male and female isn't chromosomes or our sexed bodies - it's actually a tiny part of our brain, which generates a 'female gender identity' in some people and a 'male gender identity' in others. Sex DOES exist for you - it is just reduced to a tiny part of the brain. This is a revisionist definition of sex, because sex is taken to be a mental state or a brain state - what does 'sexual reproduction' mean if 'sex' refers to a bit of the brain?

If this is true, though, (and I think it's a highly contentious claim given how the brain works) then you still need to give an argument or a reason why we should switch from the bodily concept of sex to the mental concept of sex. Given that female bodies are sadly vulnerable to sexual attack, and given that female bodies have special needs that are distinct from male bodies, I don't see any good reason why sex segregated areas should be segregated by mental states and not by bodies.