Could you get on board with this definition of gender identity?

[SarahCarer]

If sex = biologically male or female and
Gender = the sex based role society expects us to perform
Gender identity = instinctive complicit performance of a sex based role

Not everyone complies instinctively to any sex based role
Not everyone complies instinctively to the role normally imposed on their own sex
Feminism enlightens us and we can overcome our complicity, and resist.

Feminine traits in psychology include nurturing, high empathy, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Perhaps some boys and girls do have higher levels of these traits innately. It isn’t necessarily the case that boys who display these traits do so because they’re less instinctively prone to copying.

Traits like nurturing to some extent are instinctive. We’re not entirely blank slates. It could be that when girls show caring and empathy for others, and want to nurture small animals and children, that is natural and instinctive behaviour for everyone. It is then only boys who have been conditioned out of instinctive behaviour, through strong social pressure.

Or maybe not. But it is a very high level of conjecture to claim that we’re all completely blank slates and the extent to which we each individually display gender roles is solely down to proneness to participate in imitation, which is essentially your claim OP.

I tend to think that some personality traits are innate, and that those traits are then either positively or negatively reinforced during a child's upbringing, which will have a huge impact on how obvious the traits are by the time the child becomes and adult. I think we've all known the sweet gentle boy who was bullied for it and learned to conform, and the assertive girl whose personality was gradually crushed as those around her tried to force her to conform too.

Yes, angry kittens. That’s what I see happening.

I am not saying performance of a particular sex role is instinctive. I'm saying the copying/co-operating with it is. So how that role will look will depend on the culture around them and the level of categorisation. But not all children are born with the same level of that instinct, which is essentially a social instinct.

I honestly don't know why you're pushing this hypothesis as if it's the answer. If it were simply innately differing levels of awareness of/urge to comply with gendered conditioning, do you not think someone else would have worked this out by now?

I suspect there are probably a few overlapping and perfectly good working explanations for the phenomenon which involve a constellation of factors, and that these don't get bleated about or indeed accepted by transactivists because they're less palatable than the ones they prefer to try to spread as the answer.

In simple terms - as far as I can tell, the explanation of the trend as a whole probably involves a big mess of mental illness, personality disorders, standard teenage angst, rebellion and searches for identity and tribes and potentially much, much more... and the involvement of a genetic factor beyond any involved in giving rise to the previous factors is probably negligible, in my view.

Not instinctive. Unconsciously and/or consciously is more like it.

Some behaviours we unconsciously copy; and some of those we come to be aware of and some we never do; and some we feel pressured to copy eg leg shaving/ make up but would rather not.

Instincts are based on basic emotions (good or bad), and tuned by experiences.

I agree with AngryAttackKittens that some personality traits are innate and familes/ society etc exaggerate or crush them depending.

Also with Jamieandwords re nurturing. The conditioning starts young.

sex = biologically male or female and
Gender = the sex based role society expects us to perform
Gender identity = learned compliance with and performance of a sex based role

It's not instinctive. Instinctive behaviors are things like yawning and laughing. Instinctive behaviors by definition aren't learned they are intrinsic. It is a learned of conditioned behavior and unconscious belief.

Perhaps some boys and girls do have higher levels of these traits innately. It isn’t necessarily the case that boys who display these traits do so because they’re less instinctively prone to copying.

I don’t think that is what OP is saying. What she is saying is ( I think!) is that all boys and girls are diversely laid out on a personality spectrum like a scatter graph.

However as social animals both boys and girls instinctively copy the category they belong to. Part of this is a system of micro rewards and punishment (raised eyebrow when a boy knits, praise when he is physically strong) but part of it is the desire to copy others in his designated category.

So the blue and red dots on the scatter graph start to clump themselves together.

The behaviours themselves aren’t innate but the desire to keep in with your group and not rock the boat is.

Those who feel the pain of that pull-push social mechanism are those whose personalities don’t line up with the gender traits society has assigned to the biological sex they belong to.

That isn’t what the OP has said. OP has said it feels natural to some people because it is instinctive to copy.

I would argue that people nurture on instinct, a core ‘feminine’ trait according to psychology and society, and people who do not nurture have usually been brutalised in early childhood.

By taking it back to examples like knitting, that’s shifting on to the minor trappings of gender roles rather than the core personality attributes gender attempts to enforce. One of which, for women of course, is submissiveness.

And the collective pain of being a group trained for subjugation is a far greater pain than being told knitting is not for you.

I would argue that people nurture on instinct, a core ‘feminine’ trait according to psychology and society, and people who do not nurture have usually been brutalised in early childhood.

This.

Far too many people are brutalised as children. Seems like we are suffering from the effects of society-wide personality disorders.

And the collective pain of being a group trained for subjugation is a far greater pain than being told knitting is not for you.

Well I don’t disagree with you there. There are far greater benefits for men who conform to stereotypes of masculinity (confidence, leadership,etc) than for women who conform to femininity (self sacrifice, agreeableness).

Isn’t that why feminism exists? Because our stereotypes are crappier than theirs?!

"Gender identity = instinctive complicit performance of a sex based role"

Interesting. Implies that if the role was to change, the person's gender identity should change along with it.

Problem I see is, a) we want the roles to change and b) not everyone sees the roles in the same way. Is a transwoman who believes to be a woman because of wearing dresses and make up, and 'girly' behavior etc. having the same identity as a woman like Merkel, who wears suits and is patently not interesting in dresses make up and 'girly' behavior?

Personally I do not believe in gender identity. If you identify with dolls great, if you identify with dresses great, if you want to build stuff with your hands and drink beer and fart, great. But that's just your personality. It might overlap with that of others, but in reality everyone will have slightly different 'identities'. Hence we either have 7+ billion genders or none.

Absolutely MrG. The problem is that people believe that men and women's personalities are as binary as their biological sex. That's how this whole thing got so out of hand.

Lots of really interesting points made here. Sorry I'm late coming back to the thread. @imnobody thanks for the link. Yes there are definitely some similarities there with what I'm trying to express. @angryattackkittens I'm sorry if I sounded aggressive. It certainly wasn't intended that way. I am aware that in trying to use some of the language of gender ideologists I may provoke people to baulk initially and push back, as my signalling seems wrong but as I said in my rider, I am highly gender critical. It is the constant reframing/straw-manning which can be wearing but i know that happens when you 'signal wrong'. My main concern in this whole debate is for young women in danger of thinking they are trans and damaging their bodies plus I want to persuade gender ideologists that gender develops socially so they start to take more responsibility for their influence on others.