Is there any such thing as gender identity?

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Here is an article by Alex Byrne, Professor of Philosophy at MIT:
What is gender identity?

Byrne concludes, in part, as follows:
' If there is some kind of “gender identity” that is universal in humans, and which causes dysphoria when mismatched with sex, it remains elusive. No one has yet found a way of detecting its presence, and verifying that it is causally responsible for dysphoria .'

In fact, it seems, there just is no such thing as gender identity in the way trans ideologues intend. Some, noticing lack of anything like it in themselves, nevertheless allow that others may nevertheless suffer from its presence. I think this mistaken, factually and strategically.

The existence of gender identity is foundational for much trans ideology. Its importance can be deduced from its inclusion in Humpty Dumpty’s Stonewall's glossary entry on transphobia, 'including denying ... gender identity ', as part of orthodox trans dogma.

The foundations of trans ideology are built on the quicksand of gender identity. Pointing out the shaky nature of these foundations cannot but assist in demolishing the whole edifice of this ideology before it does any more harm to women, children, and wider society in general.

Of course those who believe in gender identity should not be discriminated against or disadvantaged in any way because of such belief, any more than should believers in guardian angels or invisible human auras. It does not follow that such beliefs themselves should be given any credence. Nor, a fortiori , does it follow that social policy or law should be based on any such beliefs.

There is no such thing as gender identity.

Or, perhaps science progresses is there now some way of detecting its presence, contrary to Alex Byrne's assertion?

@Sophoclesthefox

It's similar with other gender identities

And yet we spend aeons debating what it is to be a woman and exactly no time at all debating what it is to be a man.

Weird, that.

Your second paragraph doesn’t make any sense. You’re basically saying that when a person says “I don’t have a soul”, they’re saying religion doesn’t exist. This doesn’t follow at all. I don’t believe I have a soul, but I honestly couldn’t give a marmalade sandwich if everyone else believes they do. They are free to, I won’t stop them. I don’t have a gender identity and it’s bonkers that you’re telling me that I do, when your aim in even engaging with this debate is presumably to defend people’s rights to define and name their own gender identity!

You are in a complete logical tangle. And as a PP said, you’re suggesting that women don’t know our own minds, which typically doesn’t go over well in feminism. Believe you have a gender identity all you want, but you can’t compel me, and you certainly can’t do it using shoddy logic.

"I don’t have a gender identity and it’s bonkers that you’re telling me that I do"

So you would find it equally bonkers to tell people who do have a gender identity that they don't by, for example, claiming that gender identity doesn't exist?

"you’re suggesting that women don’t know our own minds,"

Which is like telling trans people they don't know their own minds by suggesting that gender identity doesn't exist.

I have never said that gender identity doesn’t exist. People are welcome to believe that they have gender identities, in exactly the same way as they are welcome to believe that they have souls, and they will hear no objection from me.

This is butchery of logic and I can't bear it.
Substiture gender identity for "believe in God" in your "logic" statements.

"God doesn't exist and it’s bonkers that you’re telling me that he/she does exist"

So you would find it equally bonkers to tell people who do believe in god that god doesn't exist, for example, claiming that God doesn't exist?

You don’t even understand what the gender critical position is, do you?

"you’re suggesting that women don’t know our own minds,"

Which is like telling trans people they don't know their own minds by suggesting that gender identity doesn't exist.

No! We are telling trans people that Gender Identity is a personal belief. We know you frickin well believe it.

The analogy I have heard is this.

We all have multiple personalities; it is just for most of us, our multiple personalities are all exactly the same, so we don’t notice them.

Well that’s unprovable, isn’t it?

The same with a gender identity that you don’t notice because it matches your sex. If it is imperceptible, how can you prove it is the norm to have one?

Dad joke

Asks the question am I a woman, then that's my identity

Unfortunately The answer for me depends on what woman is

If it's "am I class baby grower " then yes

If it's anything else , I am not sure. I would suggest not, as I am no different in any other way to any other man

This is butchery of logic and I can't bear it

It really is.

I’m sure that logic is, like, totally a tactic of the alt-right by now.

@FifteenToes

Surely if the brain studies Shizuku refers to are such strong evidence of the biological basis of gender identity, they should be useable as a diagnostic tool to determine once and for all who really IS transgender and who isn't? No more worry about self-ID, whether to have SRS and how much counselling to have first, suspicions of men wanting to get access to female spaces etc. If you think you have gender dysphoria, you just go to the doctor for a brain scan and they can tell you that you're actually the opposite sex to your appearance. Hell they could even do this with newborn infants and start raising the transgender ones as such before they're verbal or know anything about it.

I always wonder with these claims of self reported psychological phenomena being really biological: If such a test were available, would you be willing to say to all the people who thought they were transgender but the test showed otherwise: "It's clear that you're not trans, you just thought you were. We will have to look elsewhere for the reason for your discomfort".

If not, why not? That's what happens when you go to the doctor with chest pain and blood in your phlegm to find out if you have a biologically defined disease like lung cancer. If sufficiently rigorous tests show no sign of cancer cells, then you don't have cancer. You may well have symptoms similar to the symptoms of it, but you accept that they don't indicate it.

And what kind of scientific method is it that says biological evidence can prove when something does exist as a biological phenomenon, but the absence of any such evidence can't prove when it doesn't?

In reality of course, there is all the difference in the world between producing supportive biological evidence for a condition that is still nonetheless defined purely by subjective self-report, and actually defining the condition biologically (with all the rigor of testability and honesty about negative outcomes that that entails).

And brains are plastic, and develop and take shape differently over a lifetime in reesponse to different experiences and learning. So simple measured differences in brain function actually say very little about what is nature and what nurture.

As you’re back, shizu, any thoughts on this post?

If my position is wrong, and gender identity is more than a belief, and your position is correct, and it is a biologically evidenced fact, then what should we do with this knowledge? What should the next area of research be?

It is subjective. It isn't a thing, an entity, an object, it is a psychological process, an experience a way of relating to self.

We don't dispute that it is an experience some people have, just that it is something not everyone experiences, not a way everyone relates to themselves.

Not a tangiable thing.

Not a thing to base laws and legislation on.

An inperceptable experience isn't an experience at all.

@LibertyMole

The analogy I have heard is this.

We all have multiple personalities; it is just for most of us, our multiple personalities are all exactly the same, so we don’t notice them.

Well that’s unprovable, isn’t it?

The same with a gender identity that you don’t notice because it matches your sex. If it is imperceptible, how can you prove it is the norm to have one?

Sorry that in response to liberty

It is subjective. It isn't a thing, an entity, an object, it is a psychological process, an experience a way of relating to self.

We don't dispute that it is an experience some people have, just that it is something not everyone experiences, not a way everyone relates to themselves.

Not a tangiable thing.

Not a thing to base laws and legislation on.

An inperceptable experience isn't an experience at all.

Yes I agree entirely Ad.

@FifteenToes

Surely if the brain studies Shizuku refers to are such strong evidence of the biological basis of gender identity, they should be useable as a diagnostic tool to determine once and for all who really IS transgender and who isn't? No more worry about self-ID, whether to have SRS and how much counselling to have first, suspicions of men wanting to get access to female spaces etc. If you think you have gender dysphoria, you just go to the doctor for a brain scan and they can tell you that you're actually the opposite sex to your appearance. Hell they could even do this with newborn infants and start raising the transgender ones as such before they're verbal or know anything about it.

I always wonder with these claims of self reported psychological phenomena being really biological: If such a test were available, would you be willing to say to all the people who thought they were transgender but the test showed otherwise: "It's clear that you're not trans, you just thought you were. We will have to look elsewhere for the reason for your discomfort".

If not, why not? That's what happens when you go to the doctor with chest pain and blood in your phlegm to find out if you have a biologically defined disease like lung cancer. If sufficiently rigorous tests show no sign of cancer cells, then you don't have cancer. You may well have symptoms similar to the symptoms of it, but you accept that they don't indicate it.

And what kind of scientific method is it that says biological evidence can prove when something does exist as a biological phenomenon, but the absence of any such evidence can't prove when it doesn't?

In reality of course, there is all the difference in the world between producing supportive biological evidence for a condition that is still nonetheless defined purely by subjective self-report, and actually defining the condition biologically (with all the rigor of testability and honesty about negative outcomes that that entails).

And brains are plastic, and develop and take shape differently over a lifetime in reesponse to different experiences and learning. So simple measured differences in brain function actually say very little about what is nature and what nurture.

You could in theory use it to confirm many cases. Hopefully they will be able to do that for trans kids one day which will enable them to go straight to cross-sex hormones at the start of puberty rather than delaying with blockers.

But not necessarily in every case. No one knows the cause of type 1 diabetes for example. If they find the cause in 90% of cases, they won't assume the other 10% don't have it - they will just start looking for additional causes.

Brains are plastic in many ways, but there is no evidence that they are plastic with regards to gender identity:

www.endocrine.org/advocacy/position-statements/transgender-health

"Considerable scientific evidence has emerged demonstrating a durable biological element underlying gender identity.1, 2 Individuals may make choices due to other factors in their lives, but there do not seem to be external forces that genuinely cause individuals to change gender identity."

So you would find it equally bonkers to tell people who do have a gender identity that they don't by, for example, claiming that gender identity doesn't exist?

Again, this is another 'all or nothing' statement that actually reflects YOUR position and not many people posting on this board.

Sure, gender identity may exist.

It can be neither defined even adequately so that everyone can work out if they have one or not, nor can it be proven.

The point is, why is someone's gender identity (that may or may not exist) taking priority over the rights legislated for the protection of women and girls against sexist discrimination due to their sexed bodies. (and for good measure: their bodies that are formed around the production of large gametes, whether those organs have functioned, are functioning or will in the future.)**

If there were no conflicts at all in those provisions, including safe single sex spaces, sports, education and employment opportunities and health requirements, we would not be having these conversations at all.

[**ridiculous that we need to qualify our sex with this definition in 2021, but here we are because there are some people who feel they can use the word female in ways that make the word absolutely meaningless - which, from what I have read, seems to be the aim]

@AdHominemNonSequitur

It is subjective. It isn't a thing, an entity, an object, it is a psychological process, an experience a way of relating to self.

We don't dispute that it is an experience some people have, just that it is something not everyone experiences, not a way everyone relates to themselves.

Not a tangiable thing.

Not a thing to base laws and legislation on.

An inperceptable experience isn't an experience at all.

"It is subjective. It isn't a thing, an entity, an object, it is a psychological process, an experience a way of relating to self. "

You mean it's like pain.

But not necessarily in every case. No one knows the cause of type 1 diabetes for example. If they find the cause in 90% of cases, they won't assume the other 10% don't have it - they will just start looking for additional causes.

we are not talking about identifying a cause, we are talking about diagnosis. If the brain studies you mentioned showed what you claim they show, it should be possible to use them to contribute to a diagnosis.

Why would a condition that is treated medically using hormones and surgery not have a measurable, observable means of medical diagnosis other than self-declaration?

Pain is measurable

Even in carrots apparently

"It is subjective. It isn't a thing, an entity, an object, it is a psychological process, an experience a way of relating to self. "

You mean it's like pain.

as has been pointed out before (it was a few pages ago, you may have forgotten), pain is measurable and observable. There are specific physiological reactions to pain that can be detected and measured. A person's subjective reaction to pain is only part of it.

We don’t make laws that divide people up into “pain sufferers” and “non pain sufferers”, then assign people to one or the other of these categories whether they think they’re in pain or not, though, do we?

And while we don’t know the cause of many diseases, we can measure signs and symptoms. If your blood sugar is normal, you don’t have diabetes.

Your position on medicalising flies in the face of self-ID, by the way. Is this an issue, do you think?

Pain is also perceptible.

@gardenbird48

But not necessarily in every case. No one knows the cause of type 1 diabetes for example. If they find the cause in 90% of cases, they won't assume the other 10% don't have it - they will just start looking for additional causes.

we are not talking about identifying a cause, we are talking about diagnosis. If the brain studies you mentioned showed what you claim they show, it should be possible to use them to contribute to a diagnosis.

Why would a condition that is treated medically using hormones and surgery not have a measurable, observable means of medical diagnosis other than self-declaration?

"we are not talking about identifying a cause, we are talking about diagnosis."

If certain brain patterns case a female gender identity in most cases, it doesn't necessarily mean the same patterns will be seen in all cases.

If they can find homosexuality in brain scans, would you like to see scans being used on asylum seekers who claim to be fleeing persecution for being gay?

www.irishtimes.com/news/study-finds-gay-brain-differences-1.824499

@gardenbird48

"It is subjective. It isn't a thing, an entity, an object, it is a psychological process, an experience a way of relating to self. "

You mean it's like pain.

as has been pointed out before (it was a few pages ago, you may have forgotten), pain is measurable and observable. There are specific physiological reactions to pain that can be detected and measured. A person's subjective reaction to pain is only part of it.

And being trans shows up in brain scans. What's your point?

I also have no doubt that those who feel they have an internal sense of gender ID are being honest.

The dadjoke post was interesting.

Firstly you need to define woman before you ask the question. Most people in the world understand it's an adult human female (or their language equivalent).

Next bit is where it gets interesting.

Are you a woman (gender ID)?
No (I don't have a gender ID).
then you are not a woman.

Thus the category woman -encapsulating women's rights and all the issues for women and girls everywhere- is for people who feel like a woman inside.
People not of the group should not interfere with what the group see as their priorities and how to change things.

Thus women with no internal gender ID must 'sit down' when women's rights are discussed. Also non binary girls (fastest growing group) and so on.

Bingo! Lots of cunty people with troublesome views silenced.

Clever.

Brains makes no odds anyway.

Maybe there are brain differences. Others can discuss this better than me and have discussed weaknesses in the studies upthread.

It doesn't matter though as this is about bodies.

Why would we separate the world based on brain scans of gender?

Especially as there are so many genders.

If certain brain patterns case a female gender identity in most cases, it doesn't necessarily mean the same patterns will be seen in all cases.

I think I called this response a few pages ago

How do you know certain brain patterns cause the gender identity issues if not all trans people experience them?