David Reimer and the case for innate gender identity

[NotTerfNorCis]

I'm sure most people here will know the case of David Reimer. An American boy who suffered a botched circumcision, he was brought up 'as a girl' but became extremely unhappy and reverted to being known as male at the age of fifteen.

It's worth noting that both David and his twin brother Brian were traumatised by the sexually abusive practices of their psychologist, John Money. David and Brian both committed suicide as adults. The damage here went well beyond one boy being raised in a feminine gender role.

However, TRAs are pushing this as proof that gender identity is innate - that David knew he was male even when everyone was telling him he was female.

It seems that David began to suspect he was male between the ages of nine and eleven. Some thoughts:

1. If gender identity was innate, wouldn't David have had suspicions much earlier in life?

2. At nine, he would have had more idea about male and female anatomy. He would probably have noticed that although he didn't have conventional male anatomy, he didn't have female genitalia either.

3. He had an identical twin who was male. If looking at his twin was like looking in a mirror (save for the clothes and hair), he must have realised how 'boy-like' he appeared.

4. By nine, certainly by 11, he may have been noticeably taller and stronger than the average girl. Certainly, he wasn't at all feminine in his mannerisms. His classmates bullied him, calling him 'cave woman'.

5. Although his parents tried to raise him as female, they were religious traditionalists and would have had deeply ingrained ideas about gender. They had after all been forced into this rather than choosing it. Studies have shown that parents unconsciously raise children according to gender stereotypes even if they don't mean to - sometimes, even if they're fighting against it. So they put David in a dress and gave him a girl's name, but in their hearts they knew he was male. They may have treated him more like a boy in some respects, like encouraging him to take risks and play rough, while failing to compliment him on being pretty, passive, caring and vulnerable. That means David would have developed more 'boylike' behaviours.

What do you think? Do David's suspicions about being male prove innate gender identity? Or was it simply a reflection of the fact that he was male?

Cis is not a thing.

Reimer was male and knew it, as did the world around him.

What we can learn from this is that humans can tell sexes apart. It tells us nothing about gender identity because that's a set of made up bollocks peddled by people who want to believe humans can change sex. We can't, no matter how many drugs are pumped into our bodies or how many surgeries we have.

I don’t believe in any kind of separate ‘gender identity’. I think people sometimes, through bullying or other negative experiences, become confused about, or alienated from, their sex.

But genuine question, how would you know? I agree that cis is offensive when used to erase women, but how would you know that it’s impossible to identify as the opposite sex (which is what it is really, sex identity not gender) when you are not one of those people?

'Cis' just means 'not suffering from a mental illness that makes you believe, permanently or temporarily, that you are in the wrong body'.

But genderism teaches that cis means you identify with a gender.

Gender is the set of cultural expectations and stereotypes associated with each biological sex.

This is what feminists have a problem with.

Honestly, when we critiquing the fails of gender ideology we have to use their language to convey meaning and to communicate the inconsistencies in their assertions. This means using words like “trans” or “cis”
If you get offended by these words, then maybe a discussion about gender theory and gender identity is not for you.

“how would you know that it’s impossible to identify as the opposite sex”

Because sex is not something you can self identify. It is a biological reality that cannot be changed. The confusion arises because between men and women, there are more similarities than differences. Society tends to highlight differences because the female sex was second class. But reality is that there is much overlap between the sexes where a great many people exist. These people are not women identifying as men or men identifying as women but what we would call masculine women and feminine men. The problem lies within society constantly trying to push the sexes apart and differentiate between them through gender roles, stereotypes all as a tool of oppression. The sooner we realise the diversity of being within our sexes, and celebrate that diversity, the better.

“some people are simply born with a ‘gender identity that is not aligned with their sex’.”

I would argue that no one is born with a gender identity that aligns with their sex. Gender identity is the degree to which you conform to socially constructed gender stereotypes and gender roles. So, as a baby becomes a child becomes a teen and finally an adult, whether their sex aligns with gender identity is really measure of how closely the person is conforming to gender stereotype and roles. How closely a person confirms depends on their socialisation at a young age.

This is a backlash to feminism because feminism encouraged the socialisation of girls to align with traditionally male gender roles. See? So instead of society telling nonconforming girls, know your place woman get back in the kitchen, or conforming behaviour, it’s telling these girls that they can only behave “male” if they conform their bodies to match the maleness of the gender roles and stereotypes they are exhibiting and pursuing.

“how would you know that it’s impossible to identify as the opposite sex”

People can identify with all kinds of things. A person with anorexia can identify with being obese, an able bodied person can identify with being an amputee, a 5 foot 2 person can identify with being 6 foot, a person can identify with being a kitten. "Identifying with" can exist in the sense it's a belief in someone's head but people can have all kinds of things in their head.

When the belief makes an impact in the real world, for example causing someone harm, either to the believer or to someone else, then this is quite another thing.

But genuine question, how would you know? I agree that cis is offensive when used to erase women, but how would you know that it’s impossible to identify as the opposite sex (which is what it is really, sex identity not gender) when you are not one of those people?

I’m not anorexic, but I believe that sometimes mental health is affected by messages people receive from the world around them. Similarly people experience the belief that they are dead, while they are very much alive. I do not believe that people’s subjective experience is inherently reliable.

As I stated, this is my theory. I consider it a possibility, based on the number of ‘transition stories’ I’ve read which include bullying parents or other close relatives, and the fact that some 80% of children with gender dysphoria desist when they go through puberty.

Sent too soon.

... and many of those desistors realise they are homosexual.

It would also fit with the historical numbers of boys and girls affected. Femininity in males is much more likely to result in bullying than masculinity in females.

@Melroses my dad was adopted at 6 weeks old, removed from his mother at birth and never met his dad. Last year, we met his biological father and, although physically Dad looks much more like his mum, he and his father have uncannily similar gaits, mannerisms, senses of humour, vocal intonations... there is so much "socialisation" which appears to me to be genetic after all.

I agree with @Spanneroo that there is bigger genetic element to our personalities - and to general patterns of personality difference between the sexes - than well-intentioned egalitarian people, including feminists, have tended to claim over the last 50 years or so.

I’m thinking of a female friend of mine with whom I agree on many matters but who claimed in all seriousness as we were each raising our then young children that boys act like boys (eg. tending towards more rough-and tumble play) and girls act like girls (eg. more likely to engage in nurturing play) only because of socialisation. Basically, her view seemed to be that all sex differences aside from the physical are 100% due to nurture and 0% due to nature.

To me, this view seems counter-evidential for a number of reasons, eg.:

• simple lived experience as a parent seeing how young boys and girls (my own plus loads of others) tended to behave, say in nursery groups or in the park where the kids where left to play spontaneously;
• my own personal experience (nothing to do with gender roles) as a child who has never met his biological father but who has had displayed several personality aspects that seem likely to be attributable to my paternal inheritance (eg. much higher educational attainment than anyone in my family from the age of about 5 onwards right to the present day);
• the example of animals, where almost every species displays generally differentiated patterns of behaviour for each sex; basically, it seems very unlikely that humans would be the total exception to the rule in this regard.

Isn’t this the fundamental question underlying the debate in this thread: whether boys and girls, and men and women, have certain general (not absolute) personality and behavioural differences that are not simply the result of nurture or socialisation?

Surely the objection that feminism has towards trans activism isn’t so much that the idea of gender identity doesn’t exist but that it is applied too liberally, resulting in many people transitioning when they shouldn’t.

Depends on the feminist, which reading this thread would clue you in on. I fall into the "there is no gender identity, there's just biological sex" camp.

It's like if I said that I identify as a dolphin. I could argue that I'm super comfortable in the water and a great swimmer and so on, and that I really feel like I ought to have been born a dolphin, but a. I actually have no fucking clue what it would feel like to be a dolphin and b. even if I could somehow read dolphin minds I would still in reality be a human.

how would you know that it’s impossible to identify as the opposite sex (which is what it is really, sex identity not gender) when you are not one of those people?

Are you aware that many FWR posters have stated that in their youth they felt either conflicted about whether they were actually girls or outright that they were boys?

All those reporting these feelings also report that they knew that they were girls, even if they did not feel like girls. There was a very uncomfortable mismatch between their internal dialogue, their self-expression, and what was expected of them by society. All these girls and young women are now adult women, most have embraced femininity to various degrees, some not at all, some are gay, some are het, some are asexual, some have been diagnosed with ASD. All are GC.

And all are grateful that they were children then, and not now.

The think is, any measurement of traits that can be attached to the sex of an individual will appear as overlapping bell curves, as does height, weight etc.

Whereas sex is either one thing or the other.*

So you can't say girls have (**&^) mannerisms and boys have ($%£%) mannerisms and bring them up accordingly because you will have to waste a lot of time with the children in the middle trying to get them to fit one or the other. As well as violating their human rights in the process, you miss out on the female engineers etc and the male carers (or other stereotypes are available).

The existence of different behaviours between the sexes does not mean that displaying that behaviour makes you the sex that is usually seen in, any more than being short makes you female or tall makes you male.

*DSDs are not proof that sex is not binary.

(Rain makes the pavement wet. It does not follow that the pavement being wet means it has rained.)

And boys or girls who fall at a slightly or even very atypical point on the bell curve for their sex are still boys, or girls. Having interests or personality traits that are seen more commonly in people of the opposite sex does not mean that you actually are that sex. If the person is experiencing extreme discomfort as a result of being slightly unusual in that sense then that's not a sign that they need to change their name and rearrange their plumbing, it's more likely to be a sign that the environment in which they live or were brought up enforces gender roles that are too strict, in which case the person may benefit from changing their environment. Responding to a society's discomfort with people who display gender non conforming behaviour by suggesting that the individuals concerned should undergo massive medical intervention and spend the rest of their lives attempting to convince both themselves and everyone else that they are the opposite sex is, frankly, barbaric.

You can't change sex to make anyone fit with perceived behaviour norms, and neither will rearranging their plumbing and hormones make their behaviour fit the new gender role.

Absolutely, Kittens. And this is what we knew decades ago, when some of us were struggling to fit in. But in this generation, as a result of Money's publications, the opposite applies.

Most of the GNC young people I knew back in the day have grown into a comfortable middle age, at home in their own skin. I remain unconvinced that surgery, hormones, and insistence that everyone around them lie to be kind would have been the better option.

I do think it's an interesting question. When we hear a trans woman say they always felt themselves to be a woman inside, most of us on this forum tend to say, Well, how do you know how it feels to be a woman? And we would also say that we don't feel like women, we don't have an internal sense of gender identity, but we know we biologically are women.

What we don't know is how we'd feel if we'd been brought up as the opposite sex. Perhaps the reason we don't specifically feel like women is because the way we are treated matches the way we feel inside, therefore we don't notice it. Perhaps the innate sense of identity only becomes clear if, for example, a boy like David Reimer is brought up as a girl.

But these are big ifs. And I'm not sure they help the trans activist case very much. For a start, the whole point of Reimer is that he really was male, so his innate sense of who he was matched what he actually was. The idea that you can be one thing but feel another isn't backed by any kind of scientific evidence, just anecdote. And in practice these days a very large proportion of people who call themselves trans women don't seem to experience any kind of disjuncture between biological reality and their sense of self - they're simply people who enjoy feminine clothes and make-up. The Telegraph's David Thomas is a prime example, but there are many others.

So I remain sceptical.

Iknow a young (trans identifying) male. I remember watching him flick his hair in very forced looking way while chatting, then later I saw him walk alone down the street. He jumped on and off a wall, and then sort of loped along. It was so very obviously a young man, semi darkness, virtually a silhouette, but unmistakable

Yes, i've witnessed this on a good number of occasions with MTF trans individuals where I live. Maintaining 'feminine' mannerisms is a full time occupation; one lapse of concentration and the gait and masculine physicality bounce back unimpeded. Even if dressed in women's clothes, and wearing make-up, long hair etc.....the instinctive perception says 'male'.

Surely the objection that feminism has towards trans activism isn’t so much that the idea of gender identity doesn’t exist but that it is applied too liberally, resulting in many people transitioning when they shouldn’t

I disagree. I don't believe in such a thing as an innate gender identity. What I do believe can happen is that some people can feel quite extreme alienation from their own bodies, for any number of reasons...always psychological.

Gender ideology leads down some pretty dark paths...especially when it involves children and young people.

But genuine question, how would you know? I agree that cis is offensive when used to erase women, but how would you know that it’s impossible to identify as the opposite sex (which is what it is really, sex identity not gender) when you are not one of those people

Nobody is disputing that some people identify with the opposite sex This has become a fairly standard option in the days of transgender ideology; one of the 'avenues' people now have if they are suffering mental health issues, identity crisis and so on......

The issue is that gender identity depends on belief and faith for its existence. Most people don't believe it, and have no faith in it.

I don't believe in such a thing as an innate gender identity. What I do believe can happen is that some people can feel quite extreme alienation from their own bodies, for any number of reasons...always psychological.

This is what I think. Gender identity is such an odd idea, because I think most of us on here probably feel unease at many aspects of female gender identity - I have no desire to wear skirts or high heels or varnish my nails etc. So it's rather insulting to be told when trans women say that their desire to wear skirts and so on started at an early age and that's how they knew they were female. I do sometimes wonder, though, if there is such a thing as an innate "sex" identity, ie we somehow know inside ourselves that we are male or female. I don't see how you could prove that either way, though.

I also agree about the psychological alienation from one's own body - you see it particularly in teenage girls who are anorexic, or who start identifying as male, because they feel discomfort with female puberty and the unwanted attention from men. I imagine very few girls feel at ease with their developing adolescent body.

I think this just shows gender is sexist and oppressive. Biological reality is what matters, not a load of sexist bollocks.