Gender identity and sexual orientation: is there a 'scientific' consensus?

[bathsh3ba]

Whenever I hear anything about gender identity or sexual orientation at the moment, I feel a bit like I'm falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland where nothing makes any sense. I'm in academia and I work with feminists who are very pro trans rights and who say that LGBT rights in general are going down the pan at the moment. Having always been straight and never really known anyone who was either gay or trans, I tend to keep out of discussions out of fear I'll say something wrong. I should add here I've never studied feminism/gender theory or anything like that.

So I'm going to admit to my own stupidity and ask if people can enlighten me or direct me towards books that might enlighten me.

From what I can remember (I'm in my late 30s), when I was growing up, sexual orientation was very much presented as being the way you were born. However now I hear some people saying it's a choice and I read a Guardian article saying that this was a deliberate campaigning choice when campaigning for gay rights because if it was a choice, you could be told to change your mind. What's the current consensus, particularly when there seem to be so many more sexual orientations than I've ever heard of (e.g. pansexual, sapiosexual, asexual).

In a similar trajectory, I knew that some people had gender dysphoria but the idea of non-binary seems a new one on me. Is there a consensus that trans people are born in a different body to the way their brain thinks they are, or is that also seen as a choice?

Sorry if these are really basic questions but I feel like I need to know the answers to form a measured opinion!

It's a basic part of critical thinking and analysis that you consider the source. Someone who wants to sell you drugs, holding up a pamphlet that says the drugs they sell are the answer to all your problems, is someone to take with a huge pinch of salt.

OP - here's one of the best videos on the topic of gender identity ideology - Rebecca Reilly-Cooper's talk.

She digs into how organisations describe the concept, and tears the circular logic apart.

There is some underlying science - sex-typical behaviour does exist, and gender dysphoria does exist, but the overarching concept of "gender identity" is a philosophical/religious thing, rather than science. It doesn't offer a model that can be tested - it just posits that "people say they're women because they have a woman gender identity". That tells you nothing.

Existing studies that do show things tend to be telling you things about homosexuality, or gender dysphoria. But now that you don't need gender dysphoria to be trans - it's anyone who feels like saying they're the opposite sex - we're no longer talking about the same population, so existing studies don't really apply

I don't believe the mass of male prisoners suddenly claiming to be women are doing it for biological reasons - they're doing it because it now offers them a move to the female estate. If Shizuku is going to deny that, and wants to claim they really have a "female gender identity" then that's very bad news for the safety stats for such males in the general population. I wouldn't recommend it. It would mean we have to treat such "female identity" males with even more caution than normal males.

@bourbonne

It's a basic part of critical thinking and analysis that you consider the source. Someone who wants to sell you drugs, holding up a pamphlet that says the drugs they sell are the answer to all your problems, is someone to take with a huge pinch of salt.

Yes, you may consider the source, but you would also consider the evidence actually presented, which in this case is well referenced.

Many scientists and scientific organisations do seem to have a consensus view that gender identity has a biological origin. However, whenever I've looked at the evidence for this it has seemed pretty thin, and it is hard not to think that a lot of these individuals and groups have taken this position because it is the socially 'correct' view rather than because there is robust evidence in support of it.

There is also a consensus view that sexual orientation is innate. Again I'm not sure to what extent this view is strongly supported by evidence, as the belief that sexual orientation is a choice has been seen as deeply bigoted and reactionary view and so I can't imagine many scientists have seriously investigated this as a hypothesis.

However, in the case of sexual orientation there is the "real world experiment" provided by the various gay conversion therapies that have been tried by various groups over the years and which generally have a low rate of "success". That at least suggests that sexual orientation is not something that is chosen or easily changed.

I'm not sure if there is anything comparable that could be pointed to in favour of the existence of a fixed gender identity.

What do scientists even define a gender identity as?

The 1991 study by Simon LeVay speaks to a small area of the brain called INAH3 which probably has a function in erotic target (whether you are gay or straight) and futher studies Swaab have tried to look at that in relation to gender identity but the methodology was a bit dodgy and the trans people were all opposite sex attracted (same gender attracted) so it was inconclusive.

www.academia.edu/8428562/A_sex_difference_in_the_hypothalamic_uncinate_nucleus_relationship_to_gender_identity

What is very conclusive from all the studies is that humans are either male or female and if development is not disordered, sexually dimorphic with the hormonally mediated sex typical charateristics arranged on two normal distribution curves (one for each sex), with some male/ female overlap of sex characteristics at the extremes, so very likely that some men exhibit typically female characteristics and behaviours and vis versa. This is what gc feminists have always said. That masculinity and femininity is correlated with but not definitive of sex. Primary sex characteristics (pre puberty e.g genitals/ brain structures) are also dimorphic and there is no overlap (unless things go wrong developmentally i.e. DSD's intersex) it is hypothesised but not really tested, that maybe pre pubertal onset gender incongruity is a biological developmental variation of the brain in the same way that DSD's are of the genitals and reproductive tract.

As this is ideologically driven though, it is getting harder and harder for scientists in relevant fields to test any hypotheses because they get hounded out (see the Deborah Soh book - the end of gender)

@WeeBisom

What do scientists even define a gender identity as?

It is undefined beyond a psychological definition or a decription of the symptoms of gender dysphoria when it doesn't align with your sex. A way to describe how you feel about your gender. An internally held belief A personal inner perception. It is a theory. Closest i've seen to a scientific explanation is Sandra Berns schema theory. healthresearchfunding.org/sandra-bems-gender-schema-theory-explained/

AdHominemNonSequitur yes, I've noticed in various papers that no attempt has been made to control for sexuality. I remember reading one paper that was supposedly giving some earth-shattering revelation about transwomen, and noticing that all they'd done was prove same-sex attracted males had different things going on in [brain area] than straight males.

This is a bit of a strange thread.

"Gender identity" is a complete incoherent mess of a concept, largely circular, in some ways a religious idea of a soul, and shifting meaning all over the place. You can't have science about a thing when nobody even knows what we're talking about.

As far as gender dysphoria goes, the science is summerised well in this article: gender dysphoria is not one thing.

4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

Summary: there are three types of gender dysphoria.

1. Childhood onset, which includes being very gender non-conforming from early childhood. If not affirmed, most of these children desist by adulthood and turn out to be gay.

1. Autogynophelia-related - this is only in males. They tend to be boyish boys, but from an early age they generally have a secret desire to be a girl, and upon puberty it becomes clear that this has a sexual component. Over time this can turn into a fervent belief that they are, in some sense, female and a desire to alter the body to try to make it more like that.

1. Adolescent or rapid onset, largely in females. This is a new thing, and numbers have skyrocketed, and so it is now the main form. Teenagers who have it tend to show no sign of it in early childhood, and after consuming huge amounts of gender ID propaganda, they become obsessed with the idea of really being a boy.

There seems to be a lot of reference to male/ female brains on here.

The issue is bodies though.

One body type is larger, stronger, has the (assumed or actual) ability to impregnate, and is of the type that has for as long as we know, taken the dominant role in society.

The other body type is smaller, weaker, and has the ability (assumed or actual) to be impregnated. This is the type that has been opposed by the first type around the world for as long as we know.

In some countries some protections for the latter have been put in place (in law but often not in practice).

Brains are a distraction. And a very complicated and contentious subject.

Quite. We have chosen to implement safeguarding to protect the more vulnerable bodies from the more dangerous ones, because it's easy and effective, the bodies being clearly distinguishable.

The proposal that we should keep the separation but instead base it on people's self-report of a nebulous concept is 3 layers of ridiculous. Self ID for safeguarding or competitive classification is an oxymoron; the nebulous concept doesn't correspond to the reason for the separation; and noone can even define the nebulous concept - even its proponents insist there are more than 2 classes yet they want to maintain 2-class separation.

"Gender identity" is a complete incoherent mess of a concept, largely circular, in some ways a religious idea of a soul, and shifting meaning all over the place. You can't have science about a thing when nobody even knows what we're talking about.

Agree. Various studies are asserted to prove that gender identity is science, (I’ll leave others to question their relevance) but even taken at face value they just raise more philosophical and ethical questions.

Why link brain traits to sex at all? A 6’2” woman and a 5’4” tall man may have heights that are unusual for their sex in the U.K. , but that has no impact on their sex. Women and men just have a broad range of possible heights.

If you are going to start classifying people according to their brains, you are setting parameters that some people won’t meet despite needing rights or services because they are gender non conforming or dysphoric.

These studies often seem to be quoted to support an older view that certain traits are more acceptable because they are innate, but increasingly people are claiming trans/queer identities - pansexual, non-binary - despite being heterosexual and gender conforming.

The science quoted and the ideology proposed are not coherent.

despite being heterosexual and gender conforming.

Want to edit this to “despite having always had heterosexual relationships and appearing to be gender conforming”.

For OP and others thinking of developing a balanced view on gender identity and so on, here is a nuanced but fairly accessible piece from Alex Byrne, Professor of Philosophy at MIT:
What is gender identity?

This is philosophy not science. But I suspect it is clear by now that the philosophical issues around the concepts of gender, identity, gender identity and so on do require a bit of sorting out before we can start on the science, so to speak. Byrne is good for that, I think (even if I do not agree with everything he says).

How about criticising the evidence they present rather than just the organisation's supposed politics.

What evidence?

You also have to ask questions about the inherent inequalities in the concept of changing gender.

‘Cross dressing’ is included under the trans umbrella and in the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, but the concept does not apply equally to men and women.

Women still face penalties purely for being female.

You can’t divorce social expectations of gender from the concept of gender, because gender is ‘the changing social and cultural expectations of how a man and woman should behave’.

There is no overall scientific consenus. There is some evidence to suggest that sexual orientation is innate. Because it's a highly politicised issue - e.g. the 'born this way' narrative - not enough quality research has been done. Keep in mind, also, that the current definitions of both 'trans' and 'queer' are very much umbrella terms for a wide variety of behaviours and identities, and not what scientists, say, 20-30 years ago, would have been looking at - they would have explored transsexualism and homosexuality.

Sexual orientation has historically ('homosexuality' and 'heterosexuality' were coined in the 19th century) been understood as relating to the sex of the person one is attracted to, so a lot of the newer identity labels are changing the meaning and implications of this.

Similarly, the 'born in the wrong body' narrative that was used by trans activists up until extremely recently (as in, last year) is now deemed problematic; it's all about inner feelings and you are whatever you say you are. There is an inconsistency in insisting that there is medical evidence that supports a transgender identity while also insisting that there be no medical 'gatekeeping' or 'testing'.