What constitutes your identity?

[Z0rr0]

The dictionary definition is 'the fact of being who or what a person or thing is'.
To expand: The definition of identity is who you are, the way you think about yourself, the way you are viewed by the world and the characteristics that define you.
[In maths an identity is 'a transformation that leaves an object unchanged'.]
Wikipedia says: Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and/or expressions that make a person or group. One can regard the categorizing of identity as positive or as destructive. A psychological identity relates to self-image, self-esteem, and individuality.

I'm asking this because both Radcliffe and Redmayne have talked about JKR's comments 'invalidating trans identities' or having their 'identities questioned'.
Someone on here said something I thought was brilliant the other day:
Many misgender trans women, say that only women who were born female have the right to identify as female, and so on.
Since when did anyone have the right to identify as anything?
I need sex based rights regardless of my identity. If I could just identify out of being female, I wouldn't need sex based rights.

I think I would argue that how someone identifies is slightly different to their identity. I'm thinking about 'identity theft' or 'secret identity'.
My identity is built upon my name, my heritage, my childhood background, my family, my experiences, my beliefs, my skills, my behaviours, my appearance etc. All of those are informed by my gender.
I can't imagine anyone saying anything to or about me that would in any way invalidate my identity.
Am I missing something?

My identity is, in part, shaped by being viewed as a woman from birth and treated as such. The same is true for a trans identifying woman (transman, for clarity). For a transwoman it's the opposite, their identity is shaped by being viewed as a man.

I'm really sorry all that happened to you @Dances. I do think the things that happen to us in our childhood can inform our identities. I know my parents divorce when I was six has contributed to who I am today.

I've been pondering on this too and agree with the comparison to white privilege.
I think the things we identify strongly with are the things that are hard won or took some suffering.
My sex
Motherhood
My job (it's one of those lifelong, long hours from a young age, vocational kind of jobs)
Heterosexual doesn't really come into it even though my relationships have had a huge impact on my life because I suppose it's the expected default.
At a friend's wedding (they're lesbians) one of the speeches described how the bride did something a lot of the people there had never had to do. She'd had to confront her sexuality, come to accept it, stare the consequences of it right in the eyes and commit to it at an age where most people wouldn't have had to do anything like as difficult or personal in regards to the same. Where I'm hetero I got to kind of grow into it. She had to face it full on.
I can see why her sexuality forms part of her identity more than mine as it meant more to her personally and changed how she was treated by others.
Regarding gender - I said before I don't feel particularly gendered and I went through a period of intensely trying to reject my female sex/gender but I didn't identify as another as such, I just didn't want to be what a woman was. I imagine if I'd have had to sit in numerous doctors' offices, explain to friends and family (and possibly lose relationships), jump through legislative hoops, suffer bullying and accept lifelong consequences through confronting my gender it would be a stronger part of my identity and feel more 'invalidating' to have it questioned because it took hard work
I don't identify as white because being white where I am is easy and again, the default. I've been treated differently because of it and had the privilege not to notice as it's been favourable. The level of a black person's melanin shapes their life too, but in ways that are more likely to be unfavourable. They had to acknowledge this and the reasons behind it sooner than I ever had to confront my white privilege.
I wonder when people feel 'invalidated' it's because their hard work/suffering/personal effort/meaningful experience is being denied.
Would it be a complete stretch to say it's a tiny bit like why Holocaust denial is so utterly abhorrent? Apart from it being factually wrong its denying millions of people their history of suffering for who they are and the effect that has had on them as people.
I feel I need to state clearly that Holocaust denial is NOT the same flavour as saying TW aren't women.

I wonder when people feel 'invalidated' it's because their hard work/suffering/personal effort/meaningful experience is being denied.

Yes, I'd agree with that.

You know that thing where they oh-so-patronisingly tell us that they're not threatening our womanhood at all by redefining the word? I was thinking about this last night, and I could truthfully say it feels like they're invalidating my womanhood.

I was bullied a lot for not performing 'girl' adequately; I thank my feminist foremothers every day for paving the way for me to both accept myself and demand acceptance for myself as a woman purely on biological grounds. My understanding of myself as a woman is very much tied not only to my biology but also to the understanding that stereotypes do not make the woman.

So when they sever "woman" from biology, and tell us it's transphobic and wrong to tie biology to womanhood, and that the social construction - which I failed abysmally at and rejected long ago - is the true definition... That's quite literally chucking me out of the woman club in order to make room for men.

Trying all my life not to make my childhood abuse define me

Right there with you, Dances.

That's very sad. I would never want that for anyone.
Which makes me think the vast majority of TRAs are not actually trans people. They're just men shouting at women and using trans as a cover. Because I can't believe if that was your life, you would turn it around and perpetrate it on women. If you know abuse, I can't think you would inflict it on other vulnerable people, would you?

Maybe there is an element of resentment too? That we were born female, live as females are accepted as females, and that’s what they wanted for themselves? And now they feel that we are saying they can’t “join us” and we’re not accepting them as “one of us”? So that’s where a lot of the hatred comes from? I think they’re focussing on the wrong thing though, they’re trying to redefine what it is to be a woman to fit who they are, when they should be trying to make it more acceptable to be a trans woman and have pride in that they are indeed different to biological women, the same way I have pride in that I’m not heterosexual, rather than trying to redefine what heterosexuality is to include myself. I hope that makes sense?

Thanks @BarbieandKenBruce. That's a good point. And I can see that for trans women or men who had experienced anguish and struggle to become their true selves that being told they're not could feel invalidating.
However I think again, for me, it would depend largely on who said it. But maybe if you're not confident or secure in your identity there is more power behind it if anyone said it.
I think as a rule life is not supposed to be comfortable or easy. I think our bid to make it both those things has what's fucked the planet.
The struggle is all, and if you achieve your goal no one can take that away from you with their words.
So again I struggle with this 'erasing their identity' stuff.
Life is a struggle for most people for many different reasons. And that does inform your identity. But then how can it be erased purely by opinions?

I think that's spot on @Elsiebear90. Many older transsexuals say exactly this. Be trans woman or a trans man and forget striving to be something you can never be, purely by forcing your will on others.
I think we would all be 100% behind that. I would march for that.

Trying all my life not to make my childhood abuse define me

The thing is, your childhood abuse isn't who you are - it doesn't come from within - it's what was done to you.

I never "identify as a csa survivor", I generally say I had the misfortune to be a girl living next door to a man who was overly fond of little girls, and let others draw the relevant inferences. It was done to me, it will always be part of me, but it's not who I am.

I can certainly identify with HSTS male people; they were bullied and dehumanised for failing to perform "boy", just as I was for failing to perform "girl". They don't identify with the social construction of man, just as I don't identify with the social construction of woman. There's a definite sense of kinship there.

I didn't identify as another as such, I just didn't want to be what a woman was.

This is just what the old-school transsexuals used to say. It wasn't that they identified as women, it was more a case of not identifying with what they'd been taught it meant to be a man. But rather than putting in the necessary work to expand the bandwidth of masculinity (as it were), they tried to be accepted as women instead.

Women have been doing that necessary work for a very long time. Part of it is the insistence that we are women regardless of personality or presentation, and that we are not lesser non-women by dint of our nonconformity. This is absolutely fundamental to feminism. And now it has been reframed as bigoted, phobic, and just cause to rape us and set us on fire.

I have to say I’ve never seen a surgically created vagina myself Well I'd advise you not to go and look. What those surgeons take money for - and the complication rate and the dead tissue and the faecal bacteria and the internal hair growth - whatever anyone might think of a man who decides to call himself a woman, nobody deserves to be taken advantage of by immoral quacks. The surgery is horrendous, the outcomes are largely horrendous and I feel so sorry for trans people who had "the surgery" hyped up as the answer to all their problems when in fact it's the start of a load of medical and pain issues.

That aside, I'm a bit confused by where this thread has gone - it seems to me you are agreeing that lack of external validation hurts the individual's ego more if they feel it's something they "fought for". The problem with that is, like pain thresholds that differ massively from person to person, what some people consider as fighting for something really isn't much effort at all.
I'm trying to avoid the word, but snowflake is too apt. How can some straight girl really have fought for her demigirl otherkin ey/em pronoun existence? How can some grown man who watches too much anime and porn and calls himself a catgirl - what struggle has he had? His mum didn't buy him enough energy drinks?

It's like all the perverts coopting "queer".
Anything other than lights out once a week missionary heterosex is now "queer".
Never mind that us actual homosexuals hate being called queer and hate being lumped in with furries and gimps.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that some identities are based in reality and some aren't. If we validate delusional ideas we are being morally dishonest.

I agree @FlyingOink and I think this is where the debate becomes problematic because people like the trans woman described above, trying to live as a woman and older transsexuals who have been living as a woman for decades and facing abuse from ignorant people have never been a problem for women. We are in general accepting and understanding of vulnerability and happy to help them feel safe.
But now there seems to be this flood of angry males demanding to be called women and demanding we centre them and hand them women's rights or risk invalidating their identity, we are faced with a discussion on who are 'the real trans women'? We can't judge or draw the line at some and not others so now those trans women who have long been accepted are being cast out because the TRAs have made everything toxic, tossing their forefathers so to speak under the bus.
But the people you describe do not sound anything like the woman colleague whose struggle was described before. They sound like chancers trying on an identity like cosplay.

If we validate delusional ideas we are being morally dishonest.

Agreed; and in the context of transgenderism it's also sexist.

A male person doesn't identify with manhood and can't bring himself to perform it sufficiently to stop him getting his head kicked in = medical problem, everyone very sympathetic.

A female person doesn't identify with womanhood and can't bring herself to perform it sufficiently to stop her getting her head kicked in = no one gives a shiny shite, except actual feminists.

Women (females) with gender dysphoria aren't permitted to call ourselves women on the grounds of our biology, even though this is fundamental to easing the dysphoria. Because this doesn't allow men (males) with gender dysphoria to alleviate it through calling themselves women.

In short, women are denied what we need to heal, so that men can have what they need to heal.

Sexism in a nutshell.

those trans women who have long been accepted
I often find myself thinking in terms of fake trans and real trans, or bad trans and good trans, where the latter categories are HSTS, post-op (not that I condone surgery) and "just trying to live their lives" and the former categories are the AGP men and catgirls.
The thing is, the Gender Recognition Act and the nonsense of changing birth certificates, and of legal sex changes, was brought about by those HSTS transwomen. Stephen Whittle, a transman, got married to a woman under those laws before it was legal for two women to enter a civil partnership never mind marriage. The "good" group are just as likely, politically, to throw women under a bus. They're perhaps just less likely to be predatory.

And were they really all that accepted? Because women assumed they were homosexual men, they might not have complained about them, but do we know they didn't make some women decide to leave a space and never return? We've never asked women how they feel.
And the idea of "woman" as costume continues.
Effeminate homosexual men should be supported to be gay men. All the other "old school" transwomen are just polite autogynephiles.
"Be nice" we are told. Of course, we should all be nice but it should be by choice. Being nice on command is just submission.

Who opened the door for stubbly straight men with obvious erections and wonky wigs? Other men. The "nice" ones.

We can all feel sorry for someone being bullied but that doesn't mean we need to play along with their delusions, or to change the law to accommodate those delusions.

Yes flying oink I agree, I'm just trying to be empathetic. I could try and write a thoughtful response but all I can come up with is your personal suffering doesn't mean you can behave like a dick and screw over other people.
But then TRAs would probably say that to me if I tried to explain how VAWG plays a part in my defence of same sex spaces. Urgh. I'm tired.

A female person doesn't identify with womanhood and can't bring herself to perform it sufficiently to stop her getting her head kicked in = no one gives a shiny shite, except actual feminists.
Have you noticed they keep transmen and non-binary girls as far away from feminism as they can by terrifying everyone with "TERF = Nazi" and making girls in binders apologise for their "male privilege"?

And were they really all that accepted?

Obviously I can't speak for all women, but I suspect I'm far from alone in having accepted them as effeminate homosexual men who were a bit sensitive about the fact of their maleness.

Being nice on command is just submission.

Yep. It's also part of the 'woman' stereotype. Which I reject and actively resist, so if they want to play silly buggers then I feel like I ought to point out that expecting it of me is 'misgendering' me, which as we all know is the crime of the century.

"Needing someone else's approval, or their acquiescence, to make you feel 'valid' suggests to me that you're insecure in that particular belief about yourself. That you need external confirmation of it to make it 'true' for you. It doesn't seem psychologically healthy, and probably means you're being dishonest with yourself somehow.^

^This.

Have you noticed they keep transmen and non-binary girls as far away from feminism as they can by terrifying everyone with "TERF = Nazi" and making girls in binders apologise for their "male privilege"?

Yep. Because the whole edifice comes crashing down when those girls find feminism and realise the problem was never their bodies, it was the society they grew up in.

If I were twenty years younger I'd be encouraged to declare myself a transman, and (knowing what I was like at that age) I'd grab the opportunity with both hands.

It turns out women like me only get two options when it comes to "gender identity", and the distinction rests on whether we deny our bodies (transman) or accept them (terf).

I'm just trying to be empathetic
I get that. I don't want to see anyone bullied for being different.
I guess if I'm being honest I don't want to see some of those differences, like MAPs and fetishists. I think they are harmful and should not be allowed.
But harmless difference, like dressing how you want to - yep. People should not be bullied for that.

Having been turned down for job after job after job in my youth for being butch, I also understand why, when faced with something they don't understand and find a bit embarrassing, people just reject it. Why hire a shaven headed dyke as a receptionist when you could get a girl who looks like a girl? Who wants to be the first, and be known as the office with the weirdo?
Maybe it's the same with racist hiring policies. Maybe it's an unwillingness to put one's head over the parapet rather than hatred. Cowardice rather than antipathy.

I know I've had to work twice as hard as my male colleagues and harder than my female colleagues too. I get that trans people will have the same struggles. I know my Black and Asian colleagues have similar struggles because we've discussed it.
But I'm not trying to change what words mean or take anyone's rights away. Gay rights never included claiming to be straight. So at that point my sympathy ends.

If I were twenty years younger I'd be encouraged to declare myself a transman, and (knowing what I was like at that age) I'd grab the opportunity with both hands.
Likewise

Obviously I can't speak for all women, but I suspect I'm far from alone in having accepted them as effeminate homosexual men who were a bit sensitive about the fact of their maleness.
Yes and I felt that way too, but who asked the elderly Muslim woman what she thought?
Also despite being a big fan of LGB as a group and very pro the joint "gay rights" effort, gay men aren't all lovely. I've been groped more by gay men than straight in my life, and until fairly recently I'd told myself it was harmless (even if it made me feel humiliated and angry).
Gay men are men, and although some of us might have felt that they posed no threat (because we understood gay men existed and had experience of them) there will have been groups of women who are only aware that there is a man present. Plus those with trauma who react viscerally to unexpected men regardless of what their mind is telling them.

"It feels quite narcissistic and at the same time quite fragile"

Sounds like my ex's ego . Funny that having a fragile ego, and a selfish/self pitying outlook, is actually more of a male trait imo, but so many of these "feminine" men seem to indulge in it. The idea that weak=female pisses me off no end, as mentally women are often stronger, and more mature? Much as many men might deny it. I've also read so many studies saying men aren't "emotionally mature" until their 30's or later. Could that be connected, too?

I guess if I'm being honest I don't want to see some of those differences, like MAPs and fetishists.

I'll put my 'csa victim' hat on for a moment and say that accepting "MAPs" as a normal part of human diversity that shouldn't be judged or discriminated against is incredibly invalidating.

But I'm a woman, and they're men, so no one gives a shit (except, as usual, the actual feminists).

I applaud your courage, Flying. I've been wishing I had the guts to stand up and be a shaven headed dyke for a very long time!

This, exactly. 'Preferred pronouns' - how other people talk about you when you're NOT THERE - are the perfect example.

The police force dealing with my MTF ex are NOT bothered about being PC in private when hes not present.

I explained my fears of being labelled transphobic for getting the wrong pronouns, as he would constantly change his mind and then kick off if I got it wrong (bare in mind I have several friends who switch between presentations and I never get them wrong. Likewise my friend who changed her name due to wanting to separate herself from her former life. Never slipped up a single time.)

The man on the phone said it's none of his business which terms we use in a private conversation, the only thing that matters is me and the officer I'm talking to know who we mean. Then continued using his male name and pronouns.

He assured me no one on his team will be being had by any of that nonsense

Forwarded them exs new Facebook where hes claiming the police discriminated against him just to highlight how as soon as you question anything hes done you're a transphobe.

They arrested him for assaulting me multiple times and forcing me to sell my body. Nothing to do with being trans. The lower ranking officers have been using the pronouns he wants on emails and when hes present. They havent discriminated against him at all. He was praising them when they believed his shit and arrested me last year.

Milotic
That's sounds hellish. Hope you get a resolution soon.

TyroSaysMeow
Thank you but it's not really courage if I can't do any different.

I found this and thought it was apt: happy-homosexual.tumblr.com/post/620878627755655168/marxism-himboism-marxism-himboism-its-no
It’s no coincidence that this utter disregard for the biological foundations of sex and female oppression has developed in synchrony with the proliferation of alternative medicine, vaccine hesitancy, climate change denial, New Thought, and anti-science in general.
The culture of transcendental narcissism, block lists, and echo chambers constructed by TRAs even mirrors the toxic positivity propagated by proponents of New Thought, prosperity theology, etc.
“Money, health, love, or success; envision what you want and you shall acquire it. The laws of the universe, God, etc., revolve around and conform to your individualistic desires, not the other way around. Never contemplate negative thoughts, or you will suffer negative consequences for them and give the universe the power to move your goals out of reach. Pay no attention to the concerns of negative people or realists, and avoid them in your daily life.”
“Envision yourself as a woman and you shall become her. Neither the natural nor the social world have meaning or power/influence over you. Reality is defined solely by your desires and individualistic feelings of intuition. Never doubt yourself. Never allow anyone else to doubt or question you, either. You are right because you say so, period. Do not read or interact with ideas which conflict with your desires, lest you risk becoming disillusioned and losing sight of your goals, your happiness. Stay safe; block and avoid anyone who holds such dangerous ideas.”
Both employ the same fundamental approach. The intent is to distract marginalized people from critical perspectives and erode class consciousness by enticing us with easy answers and a false sense of (personal) empowerment, as well as to instill within us a sense of guilt or fear regarding disobedience.
From user "marxism-himboism"