The basic illogicality of internal "gender identity"

[Dolorabelle]

I was reflecting on something a man I know (not a friend) who has subsequently transitioned to transwoman said about 'gender identity.'

As a man, he was staunchly anti-feminist, and also pretty anti-women - not a very likeable person , socially difficult etc but he was adamant about having an understanding of gender identity and mansplaining it to me, when faced with the standard understanding of the distinction between sex (biological) and gender (socially/historically constructed roles).

Anyway, he tried to explain it like this: "It's an internal sense of being a man or a woman." Well, yes, we've heard that before ...

But it got me thinking:

This was a man who was clearly uncomfortable in a masculine gender stereotype.

So - without ANY actual knowledge of women, he simply assumed that as he was so unhappy & uncomfortable as a man, he just must be a woman.

HOW DOES HE KNOW?

I'm still obviously rolling this over in my mind a couple of years later (he's since had some medical transition - I suspect just the DD artificial boobs* insert, not the "bottom" surgery).

It's the most illogical and totally BINARY thinking I've come across. I've been gender critical since before it was a thing - I agreed with Germaine Greer about the admission of a transwoman to a women's single sex college at Cambridge way back when.

But I still can't get my head around this. As women, I think it's a pretty common experience to struggle with socially constructed (and constraining) gender roles of femininity - there's no essentialist reason why the ability to bear children, for example, necessarily makes us generally more "nurturing." We might love & care for our own children , and not give a toss for anyone else's.

But when I was 13 and realised that life and the world was totally unfair on women, I didn't immediately think "Oh, crikey I must be a 13 year old boy then" I struggled both personally and politically with patriarchy. I became a feminist. I changed & challenged myself.

So this man - now transwoman, but (so I don't get deleted) he was definitely a man when we had this conversation - just decided that although he could do things to challenge the masculine stereotypes, that wasn't it. Because he didn't like being a man, he must necessarily be a woman.

It's just bonkers in its illogicality.

*I hate this word for breasts, but in this instance "boobs" is appropriate.

Very interesting thread and I completely agree OP. Not much rational thought is required to see that ‘gender identity’ doesn’t make any sense. How does a man know how other men feel inside, let alone how a woman feels? So how can they possibly say they ‘feel like a woman inside’ when they cannot have the faintest idea of how a woman feels inside? Hell, I don’t know how other women feel inside I can only say that I personally have never had a ‘woman feeling’ and my only identity is as a unique Hunan being. But I wouldn’t presume to say that other women felt like this. How would I know?

And ‘identifying’ as a woman? What does that mean? Unless a ‘female gender identity’ can be defined and described then what am I identifying with? I can’t identify as an ‘oogymaflop’ if an ‘oogymaflop’ doesn’t exist.

In The Daily Telegraph there is a series of articles by a man (still describes himself that way) who is transitioning to be a woman. In an early article he said he always suspected he was a woman because he was emotional, cried in films, likes fashion and interior design. In another words a set of the crudest gender stereotypes that you can get, presumed to be ‘what a woman is’. Being an emotional man who liked interior design was not, it seems, permissible.

I don’t believe in gender identity. It makes no sense. I don’t know what drives some people to want to transition but I think the answers are more likely to lie in rigid cultural stereotypes for the sexes than in any internal gender sense

It’s so depressing that leaders of the woke movement like Nicola Sturgeon, don’t seem able to think this through..

I’m looking to find a way to reach Canadian parents who are curious about the lessons being taught at their kids’ school around gender identity. It would be great if they could have a platform on which to exchange ideas about it.

I always find the most interesting conversations on Mumsnet FWR.

But when I was 13 and realised that life and the world was totally unfair on women, I didn't immediately think "Oh, crikey I must be a 13 year old boy then" I struggled both personally and politically with patriarchy. I became a feminist.

And that meant working and reading and thinking, hammering out ideas and philosophies, defending your beliefs, trying to behave authentically. Not the easy path, but richly rewarding.

Thank your lucky stars (as I do) that you weren't born 13 years ago and now being gently encouraged to escape that messy female future, because your independent mind shows that you're really a boy.

@QuixoticAmsterdam

I’m looking to find a way to reach Canadian parents who are curious about the lessons being taught at their kids’ school around gender identity. It would be great if they could have a platform on which to exchange ideas about it.

Your best bet would be to start a new thread.

I do think that one of the reasons that more young people are presenting to "gender identity services" is because they're being taught that people have such a thing as a gender identity.
So if they don't feel that they have one, they think they must be different, and start wondering - are they non-binary? asexual? trans? If they don't have a strong "gender identity" of girl, are they a boy?
I can't imagine what it would be like to have a gender identity, or to have a strong feeling of either being, or not being, a woman or a man. I can understand that some people might have such a feeling. But if I was taught that everyone had that feeling, I'd wonder what was wrong.

And like previous posters have said about religion, I accept that other people have religious beliefs/feelings/experiences that I don't share, and I don't ever try to argue against that, but if someone insisted that we all do in fact experience religious feelings I'd be confused. And if the state mandated that we had to act as if the religious belief was fact, that would be a concern.

I truly don't understand identity, really. Maybe I'm just dumb. I don't have 'identities'.

I have things I am. My nationality, my age, my sex, the fact I'm a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend- and things I can see - the job I do, the ways in which I spend leisure time. There are many observations I can make about myself in the world. But beyond that? Idk. What is 'identity', let alone 'gender identity'?

Men are trying to tell me not only that they are women, but that there's this little self living in their head? This little woman-self?

It makes no sense. I only understand GD as 'person observes discomfort and distress focused on their primary and secondary sexual characteristics'. Beyond that, it makes zero sense to me.

I do wonder if my lack of identifying with identities is normal or abnormal. The only things I can understand as 'identity' is being a fan.

None of it makes sense to me, really.

Exactly. I don’t have ‘identities’ either, just facts eg my sex, my ethnic background, etc.

All I can think is it’s a feeling. For example, I feel younger than I am. But - that to me is a ‘realistic’ feeling because I’ve lived through the previous years of my life so I know what it is to be 25, 30 or whatever. But ‘feeling like the opposite sex’ is something different because a person wouldn’t know what being the opposite sex felt like. It just sounds like identifying with stereotypes, which is why I think the whole Gender Identity thing is depressingly regressive.

By definition, someone can’t feel like someone they’ve never been and never felt the feelings of. Added to that, women all feel differently so there’s no ‘woman feeling’. The feelings are only ‘woman feelings’ because they’re being felt by a woman.

@BreatheAndFocus

Exactly. I don’t have ‘identities’ either, just facts eg my sex, my ethnic background, etc.

All I can think is it’s a feeling. For example, I feel younger than I am. But - that to me is a ‘realistic’ feeling because I’ve lived through the previous years of my life so I know what it is to be 25, 30 or whatever. But ‘feeling like the opposite sex’ is something different because a person wouldn’t know what being the opposite sex felt like. It just sounds like identifying with stereotypes, which is why I think the whole Gender Identity thing is depressingly regressive.

By definition, someone can’t feel like someone they’ve never been and never felt the feelings of. Added to that, women all feel differently so there’s no ‘woman feeling’. The feelings are only ‘woman feelings’ because they’re being felt by a woman.

Exactly!

Actually, I do believe "gender identity" can exist, as a psychological phenomenom (in particular, when it results in gender dysphoria). And it's worth talking about. Because it's mostly fundamentally toxic. And something people should ideally free themselves from, not embrace!

The way I understand it, "gender identity" is based on strongly internalised gender stereotypes and (in the case of trans people), cognitive dissonance, because their "self" (likes, dislikes, thoughts, feelings, personality...) does not align with the stereotypes that they attach to their sex.

For instance, a submissive man... strongly believing that male = dominant, and female = submissive. Unable to reconcile their temperament with their sex. In theory, there's 3 ways to solve that dilemna:
A) change your temperament
B) change your body
C) change your pre-conceptions!
For me option C is the only sensible and viable one (even if that also involve challenging social norms), but clearly some people struggle, and may fruitlessly try A for a while, before settling for B...

... I think it's really sad. And I find the current medical approach disgusting.

There are many theories as to why more young people are CLAIMING a trans identity here, but none of them fit the data very well. First, the vast majority of people who claim such aren't even the least bit gender dysphoric:

sillyolme.wordpress.com/2019/07/19/how-many-trans-folk-are-there-really/

So, if they aren't gender dysphoric, what are they? This may seem strange, but they are mostly people who are appropriating the identity so as to be perceived as "cool" in certain well off (advantaged) socially privileged and politically liberal venues. Actual transsexuals, especially "early transitioning" (HSTS) have been at ever growing loggerheads with them for the past decade:

sillyolme.wordpress.com/2017/04/16/getting-lost-in-the-crowd/

It's not about "gender" or 'identity', sexuality, or patriarchy, etc. its about being part of the "cool kids club" (which, as an actual transsexual kid, having been viciously beaten multiple times, bullied, treated as a pariah, disowned by family, intermittantly homeless, etc. well... you can image how silly this seems to me and those like me).

The fact is, actual transsexuals (both kinds) are being shouted down by the ever growing chorus of non-gender-dysphoric "trans" (who aren't trans at all)... and even villified as "truscum"... and the latest sillyness being that they are paradoxically claiming that the very word that best describes us, "Transsexual" is a perjoritive !!!

sillyolme.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/the-silent-transsexual/

I don't think anyone here would be having a problem if there were a few sincere people who were just quietly living their lives and doing their best and being part of the world

Since time immemorial this has happened. A few vanishingly rare trans people have used the ladies toilets only. Possibly a few, like a handful used or tried to use changing rooms, crisis centres and the like.
This was no problem at all, because the chances of you meeting one were slim, very slim. They were for the most part quite respectful and chances were they were terrified that women would create a scene, chuck them out, turn on them. No it wasnt at all nice for those women like me who have trauma from men. But we could put it aside for the few men that we in fact felt sorry for. And were unlikely to meet.
Then came the current situation which is uncontained, uncontrollable, and is all about keeping women on the back foot. So just why have women as a class risen up and said NO? Hmmm I wonder if it has anything to do with the sheer numbers of trans now? The fact we know more about it and dont want to be someones fapping material? The sheer audacity of demanding access to spaces they do not belong in?

But but women never say no, we are conditioned from birth to be pleasing and pleasant and comforting and helpful etc. So why now after all this time are we saying no? Cant quite put my finger on the answer.