Please help me untangle why gender is such an issue

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I see myself as an old-school feminist, I believe that people should have equal opportunities regardless of their sex, and if people do not want to conform to gender stereotypes then more power to them. In fact I reject a lot of gender stereotyping as it’s socially, not biologically, prescriptive to me and I don’t think gender scripting should be pandered to.

Where I get muddled is trying to understand why trans people seemingly want to change their gender. In doing so, aren’t they conforming to societal notions of what it means to be a “woman” or a “man”? Why isn’t this just biologically based rather than socially, as to me the social aspect can be a load of bollocks?

E.g. I would love to ask a M2F trans why they “feel like they are more female”. Is it because they prefer pink, long hair, feminine clothes, traditional womanly traits? If so, why not stay a biological man and do these social things anyway? Is it fear of peer rejection? I don’t see why they have to just conform to gender stereotyping, basically, and wish any sex could just wear and do what they want without being pigeonholed into “genders”.

I’m concerned all this talk over gender is just reinforcing potentially damaging social stereotypes of what it means to appear male or female.

Highly complex, nuanced
Yet people the world over know if they should see a doctor if they don't get a monthly bleed or wet dreams by th time they are 16, and they all automatically know which to ask about. Funny nuance that.

@Positrans

Explaining what gender identity feels like to someone who doesn't have one, is like explaining what red looks like to someone who was born blind. I'm not really sure there's a way to do it.

Sometimes people get it if you ask them to imagine their brain transplanted into the body of the opposite sex, so would you feel like a woman inside a man's body or a man? But completely agender people may still not really get that.

I’ve been reading this thread as it’s a question I’ve been wondering for some time so that I don’t end up being offensive one day without realising and don’t have anyone in real life at present who experiences this, I like your analogy to try and help with the explanation.

@Positrans if my brain were transplanted onto a males body how would I feel? I don’t think I’d feel different, at least I don’t think I’d do anything differently. My personality would surely remain the same? (My likes/dislikes/hobbies). My DP and I share household tasks, hobbies throughout my life have included surfing, quad biking, hiking, swimming, painting, sewing, studying etc. Those, I see, as my personality and not to help describe whether I’m male or female. So then I’d go onto other things like my appearance well, I’m a plain looking person jeans and a jumper mostly. As long as I’m comfortable. I don’t own a hairdryer or any styling tools. I own make up but never wear it, it’s probably bloody out of date. I have equal friends of male and female and I do the same past times with each. My DP shaves more than I do. So I suppose I’m highlighting all the things that are ‘stereotypically’ female, some I do and others I don’t. Does this mean I’d identify as agender?

What is it to feel Female?

Positrans there isn't any need to impose a binary on sex - sex exists as a binary as biological fact.

If you're happy to accept others beliefs on their gender identity, are you also happy to accept that these can exist alongside the biological facts of sexual difference and legal frameworks around sex?

That is, that the acceptance of an internal sense of gender identity or agenda is separate from the external, shared biological reality of sex?

I don’t agree that men and women are exactly the same except in body. I remember reading about a study where they tried to raise a a boy with a damaged penis as a girl and (didn’t tell him he was a boy) because they believed gender was a social construct rather than innate. The boy exhibited stereotypically masculine behaviours and interests, became suicidal and after finding out he was actually a boy changed his name and decided to live as a man. Obviously that was just one case, and it’s not really ethical to experiment like this on a large scale.

I’m a lesbian and I much prefer the company of women over men for romantic and platonic friendships, I’ve had relationships with men and women and I can tell you there are huge differences between the two other than just physically, in fact the physical difference is the smallest difference imo. People might assume all this is down to social conditioning, but I disagree. This is just my view of it, but I think my gender was something I was born with, and that is normally aligned to sex, except in some individuals where it goes wrong.

There can hundreds, thousands or even one for every person - it's doesn't matter.

If it's something concrete that isn't a soul then it's actually personality.

Gender identity is linked to biology - science suggests that it has a biological cause.

See above. Personality.

Positrans

Please could you just clear things up by posting links to robust scientific studies that demonstrate the evidence backing up your claims.

It seems strange to me that it is mostly trans identifying people that have a gender identity and the rest of us are agender (autocorrect didn’t recognise that as a word)

Elsiebear90 men and women are men and women because of their bodies.

You can't be either without a sexed body.

I think people who say men and women have differences beyond nurture and sex are extrapolating from their own experiences way to much, and following a line of reasoning that says I better get that mastectomy

If woman means more than biology I am not one

Thanks guys.

How can you feel like you are a woman without defining woman by way of stereotypes. What is that identity based on? Rachael Dolezal felt she was black, was she?

Of course, but I don’t think the only difference between myself and a man is my physical body. I don’t think the only reason I am feminine is because of a coincidence or because I was raised to be this way, and that if you were to transplant my brain into a man’s body that I would be happy to live life as a man once I got used to it because really I’m no different.

At this stage in your life you have had decades of socialisation , of course you might find it strange being transplanted . Because all the external cues and expectations would change.

Do you really think your inner self would change? Would you like different things?

And being feminine isn't the same as being female or woman ( in my book)
You don't have to be feminine to be a woman and you don't have to be a woman to be feminine

I think my gender was something I was born with, and that is normally aligned to sex

So what is it? How do you define female?

I don’t agree that men and women are exactly the same except in body. I remember reading about a study where they tried to raise a a boy with a damaged penis as a girl and (didn’t tell him he was a boy) because they believed gender was a social construct rather than innate. The boy exhibited stereotypically masculine behaviours and interests, became suicidal and after finding out he was actually a boy changed his name and decided to live as a man. Obviously that was just one case, and it’s not really ethical to experiment like this on a large scale.

If you're interested in the David Reimer (Joan/John) story, I'd recommend reading about what went on. It was far more than someone raised as a girl having their "true" "gender identity" come out. It was many years of abuse by an insane doctor with parental unwitting collusion:

www.healthyplace.com/gender/inside-intersexuality/the-true-story-of-john-joan

"He would show us pictures of kids, boys and girls, with no clothes on," Kevin says. John recalls that Dr. Money also showed them pictures of adults engaged in sexual intercourse: "He'd say to us, 'I want to show you pictures of things that moms and dads do.' "

But alone with the children, he could be irritable or worse. Especially when they defied him. The children were particularly resistant to Money's request that they remove their clothes and inspect each other's genitals.

But the children did not enjoy these enforced activities, which they were instructed to perform sometimes in front of Dr. Money, sometimes with as many as five or six of his colleagues in attendance. But to resist Money's requests was to provoke his ire. "I remember getting yelled at by Money because I was defiant," John says. "He told me to take my clothes off, and I just did not do it. I just stood there. And he screamed, 'Now!' Louder than that. I thought he was going to give me a whupping. So I took my clothes off and stood there, shaking." In a separate conversation with me, Kevin recalls that same incident. " 'Take your clothes off - now!' " Kevin shouts.

Tragically, this is part of David Reimer's emerging gender identity:

But it made a difference to her peers. That fall, Joan had transferred to a technical high school, where she enrolled in an appliance-repair course. There she was quickly dubbed Cave-woman and Sasquatch and was openly told, "You're a boy." But it was her inclination to urinate in the male posture that caused the greatest friction between her and her schoolmates. The girls barred her from using their bathroom. She tried sneaking into the boys' room but was kicked out and threatened with a knifing if she returned. With nowhere else to go, Joan was reduced to urinating in a back alley. By December, she simply refused to go to school.

Yes, but femininity is usually linked to being female, obviously some women are very stereotypically masculine (going against societal pressures) and aren’t trans, but I don’t think me being a feminine female is a coincidence or social conditioning etc and that if I was raised to behave like a stereotypical man I would do that happily and have stereotypically male interests. I think my personality is linked to me being female, rather than a result of being socially conditioned and that I couldn’t have been raised to be different and behave more “manly”.

*could have

Elsiebear90 the idea of transplanting your brain into a man's body is beyond science fiction. Male and female hormones are released by the brain, which control how bodies develop and exist.

Every cell in your body has XX chromosomes.

Your memory has all the memories you have of being female in a female body.

The majority of “male” and “female” hormones are produced by the sex organs, not the brain.

That thought experiment would instead have to be that at birth if your brain were swapped into the body of another baby of the opposite sex, would you grow up feeling yourself to be in the wrong body. It's not an idea that goes anywhere.

If you are simply female you are free to be a 'feminine' female or a 'masculine' female without any pressure to change your body to match a stereotype. If you say feminine males are actually females and masculine females are actually males you're forcing everyone to conform to stereotype.

The brain triggers the release of the hormones from the sex organs in the sexed body.

I said brain in the context of your talking about transplanting your brain into a male body.

I’m concerned all this talk over gender is just reinforcing potentially damaging social stereotypes of what it means to appear male or female.

Got it in one.

Society doesn't give much status to effeminate men and butch women, particularly lesbians serve no purpose to men. Unless they act as incubators.

You think that you are the way you are because of something fundamentally female in you, yet you don't know for certain, there is nothing beyond sex that you have in common with every other woman. and the evidence of other people says that this is not a universal feeling or belief.

However to support transideology you have to have that belief.

positrans
I am in my fifties and have never met a single person with a “gender identity “ aside from a trans identifying person.
Not one of the women I know or have known has this mysterious inner identifying-with-womanhood feeling. They just are women, of all personalities and interests.
This “Agender” thing is nonsense. It is rather like non-binary, in that everyone is non binary , so it is a meaningless term . i am not agender, I am female. I like some traditionally feminine things, and some traditionally masculine things, and a lot of other things, just like everyone else.