Is there any such thing as gender identity?

[9toenails]

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?

@DadJoke

Please can you give me an example of sexism due to ‘gender’, and transphobia due to being trans? And how they are different?

I don’t think anyone is denying anyone’s subjective experience. However that does not then translate into objectively saying they are the sex they want to be. How you feel does not change objective fact.

Clearly, people who give birth have different challenges to those who don't. Some transgender people are in that category, some aren't.

Yes, their sex is female and this is basic intersectionality.

You how however seem unable to accept that the class of people who have bodies of the type that gives birth even exists.

The law already accepts that somebody can suffer discrimination simply because they are perceived to have a characteristic. There is no need to assert that they actually have that characteristic.

[quote MinnieMous3]@DadJoke

Please can you give me an example of sexism due to ‘gender’, and transphobia due to being trans? And how they are different?

I don’t think anyone is denying anyone’s subjective experience. However that does not then translate into objectively saying they are the sex they want to be. How you feel does not change objective fact.[/quote]
I'm not sure if you are being serious. You know the many, many ways in which women are discriminated against, and not just because of their genitals. Job prospects, pay, harrassment and abuse by men for a start. Do you really need a list? Trans women experience this, too.

I'm am also baffled that you are entirely unaward of the even greater levels, abuse and harassment, transgender people experience. Here is an example from the UK:

www.galop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Hate-Crime-Report-2020.pdf

Job prospects, pay

Because

1. gender - which trans ideology promotes. Women have done much to fight gender, but now you seek to impose gender on all.

2. women need specific work place rights because it is expected that they will become pregnant and because most of them (80%+) do. The ‘gender’ pay gap kicks in when women start having children.

See also pandemic disproportionately affecting women’s employment.

You are seeking to promote the gendered structure that promotes sexism while taking away the language to fight for the rights that we will always need.

I'm am also baffled that you are entirely unaward of the even greater levels, abuse and harassment, transgender people experience.

Now that ‘trans’ can include gender conforming people, that is a difficult claim to make. You can’t protect the rights of a class that you can’t describe.

I think all GC feminists will find it useful

I think you’re going to be disappointed.

It’s a terrible article. The answer to “why feminists are wrong when they say they don’t have a gender identity” is because Kim (whoever Kim may be, I’ve never heard of them and google is not my friend here) takes as the starting position the “fact” that being a woman is in itself a gender identity. If you see yourself as a woman, because you are in fact a woman, then woman is your gender identity, as well as, or possibly instead of your sex (whichever is more convenient at the time).

It leaves unanswered the question “what do other people see you as?” which is unsurprising, given the fundamentally individualistic nature of the ideology. The self exists only in reference to the self, not society.

Stacking the deck, basically. It misrepresents the position, and also leaves unanswered the question of what we can do with all this inconvenient material reality of women’s bodies when hand waving it away just won’t work.

Is the author trans, do you know?

and not just because of their genitals.

It is all 100% based on an assumption about genitals.

There is a great article which examines GC claims that they have no gender identity, in particular the claim "I have no gender identity, but I am a woman." I think all GC feminists will find it useful.

I've just started reading that DadJoke, but already I'm finding problems with the descriptions of GC views.

To make sense of IHNGI claims we would have to accept the GC explanation that traditional gender categories, man and woman, can also be defined in the absence of any psychological correlate to them; that we should understand ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in this situation as being labels for something objectively observeable: biological sex.

But 'woman' and 'man' are simply labels for biological facts. In the same way as female and male sheep are ewes and rams. If you want a name for a manly or womanly essence or 'gender categories' which some people claim to feel, you need to find new words for them. 'Woman' and 'man' are already taken. There's nothing 'also' about 'woman' and 'man' describing biological sex, that's all these words do.

This would mean that anyone making an IHNGI claim cannot possess a subjective sense of being (or not being) a member of those categories; asserting the existence of such a sense would just be a way of sneaking a kind of “gender identity” in under another name — remember, all we are saying of gender identity is that it is simply your answer to the question of whether you see yourself as a man or a woman. Biology and psychology need to be fully divorceable for IHNGI claims to hang together: and the idea that this is possible is very striking.

Do you believe you also have a species identity? If you're saying that you think that your answer to whether you are a man or a woman is defining your gender identity, is your answer to whether or not you are human a statement of your species identity? Or could it just be a statement of biological fact?

Some words simply describe biological facts. Wanting it to be otherwise doesn't make it so.

The Hipwell article is interesting, and I am looking forward to reading it closely, and following the links. It's so refreshing to see an article which provides arguments and support for its claims.

My initial reaction, though, is that it misunderstands a GC position, which is that it's not so much that it rejects gender identity has having any existence - as the article points out, we accept other identities despite an apparently equally tenuous relationship to reality, but that it is not a criterion that should be used to define "woman". The reason for this is a conflict with roles in the reproductive process, which is claimed as the reason for discrimination, and providing a reason for specific sex based rights.

I am also not sure that age is an example of deixis, or that the term has been used correctly. However, I come from a linguistics background, and though there's a lot of overlap, it's not the same field as cognitive science.

Still learning. Always learning.

Dad joke

Women are discriminated in terms of pay because they have female genitals and not because of any other thing about them

Yes genitalia and salary should not be connected but they are , that's the whole point of feminism .....To stop things being arbitrarily linked to the genitals someone possesses

But, and I think this is where people can't always cope with the complexity ,

Some things are justifiably linked to genitals , like what medical diagnosis to give someone , what sport category to place someone

And until bad men stop assuming that their genitals entitle them to sex , aka stop rape and assault, then genitals will remain the basis on which we allow segregation for done things like changing rooms

The article fits well into the landscape of queer theory/postmodernism (as I understand it, which isn’t very deeply as I find it too maddening)in that it declines to invest at all in the idea that objective, verifiable material reality exists. Which is a lovely little game to play from your ivory tower, and I’m sure careers are built on it and much enjoyment is had, but back on planet earth, women have to carry on dealing with physically being women.

The disingenuous pontificating has no value for me.

DadJoke:
Byrne is a philosopher who doesn't believe we have privileged access to our own experience. If someone says they are in pain, we believe their subjective experience.

Sure enough. We do, at least if you mean 'we believe them '. (I am not sure what it might mean to believe an experience. (I wonder at the qualifier, too; what sort of experience might be non -subjective?)).

But you seem to think that is something to do with 'privileged access', as Byrne may use the phrase. It is not. You do not know what you are talking about.

DadJoke:
There is a great article which examines GC claims that they have no gender identity, in particular the claim "I have no gender identity, but I am a woman." I think all GC feminists will find it useful.
kim-hipwell.medium.com/three-gender-critical-mythologies-f3666c36d167

Mostly this article consists of raw question-begging interspersed with abuse. But, indeed, it might be useful if you want to see a classic straw man , (although again hidden under layers of abuse). For instance:
'Byrne’s key argument, almost lost amidst a fog of logic-chopping that envelops terminological and conceptual confusions, hinges on rejecting the testimony of ...'

-- Er, no. Byrne's argument does not hinge on testimony. Read the article again if you are unsure.

Perhaps I should stay and argue. But I have other things to do. I will check in, perhaps, next week again, to see how things go.

Meanwhile, in case anyone reading is still unsure about this, please do read the original article I linked to and compare with what DadJoke and Shizuku and co. have to say, and with the content of links they post.

There is no such thing as gender identity.

@OldCrone of course we have a subjective psychological sense of being human.

Man and woman do not map neatly to biological categories - transgender people have always existed and we wouldn’t even be having this discussion if this wasn’t the case.

This for instance is wrong:

they aren’t asserting an agender identity which would potentially place them within the trans community. Instead, we see what seem to be paradoxical affirmations of gender identity stated while renouncing it, such as: “I have no gender identity, but I am a woman” (henceforth referred to as IHNGI claims).

Many people do assert that they would fall within the definition of trans because they don’t have a gender identity, and they simply use ‘woman’ as a sex class in the same way that they would refer to blood type. However sex class has more obvious consequences than blood type.

@9toenails if you think Byrne’s entire edifice doesn’t depend on two tweets “testimony” from transgender people, then you’ve not understood it.

I'm not sure if you are being serious. You know the many, many ways in which women are discriminated against, and not just because of their genitals. Job prospects, pay, harrassment and abuse by men for a start. Do you really need a list? Trans women experience this, too.

Really? They have worse earning and career prospects due to pregnancy and maternity leave as well? Well, that’s me shown.

My nationality is British, whether or not I identify with that or believe that state borders should exist. It’s just a statement of fact. It is possible to change nationality, but a basic knowledge of history shows this may not be something I can control.

Aside from that, many people feel that being British is a fundamental part of their identity. I can observe that their belief exists, without believing that it is always a positive or negative attribute, or that their sense of belief should determine nationality.

There is a difference between saying I am something And identifying as something

I think the difference is easiest explained when you meet people who prefer to say " I have a disability" rather than " I am disabled "

The later defines you , the first is factual

I have the female body , I accept it's nature , but I don't want that to define me

Would you rather that we said we are not women but have femaleness ? The laws around discrimination would apply to people who have femaleness so transwomen would be no further forward

Man and woman do not map neatly to biological categories

Except they really, really do.

All classifications have outliers and exceptions, but reproduction is not a niche activity carried out by people who want an excuse to buy pushchairs. More than 80% of women in the U.K. give birth (regardless of whether they are good mothers/want to be pregnant).

This is not a mark of value, it’s just how a species reproduces. We are not surprised when a woman gives birth. We understand which people play which role in reproduction and what led to the pregnancy. Because of different reproductive roles and the consequences of sex women need rights and protections to participate equally in society.

Meanwhile I have no idea what the common traits are that define gender identity, or why it would be necessary to organise society according to gender identity. Perhaps you could explain?

if you think Byrne’s entire edifice doesn’t depend on two tweets “testimony” from transgender people, then you’ve not understood it.

I thought that Byrne’s argument was not that gender identity doesn’t exist (people have identities and some people relate them to gender), but that with no commonly agreed gender identity traits, it is useless as an organising category,

[quote DadJoke]@OldCrone of course we have a subjective psychological sense of being human.

Man and woman do not map neatly to biological categories - transgender people have always existed and we wouldn’t even be having this discussion if this wasn’t the case.[/quote]
When you say "a subjective psychological sense of being human", what do you mean exactly?

If you mean that we have an awareness of being human, I'd agree with that. This is similar to having an awareness of our sex. I am a woman because I'm aware that I am an adult female human. My awareness of my sex is similar to my awareness that I am human, and not some other species.

And, as we know, trans people apparently lack this subjective psychological sense of their actual sex.

So if they don't have this sense of their actual sex, why should they assume I have a sense of my actual sex?

I am a woman because I'm aware that I am an adult female human.

That's not quite what I meant to say. Obviously I'd still be a woman even if I wasn't aware of anything.

I'm not sure if you are being serious. You know the many, many ways in which women are discriminated against, and not just because of their genitals. Job prospects, pay, harrassment and abuse by men for a start. Do you really need a list? Trans women experience this, too.

So, a transwoman has been terminated from their job while pregnant, dealing with significant nausea while being told by a male doctor that millions of women before me dealt with it, so why was I special. And this was less than 15 years ago.

So, a transwoman then had to try to find work while half term pregnant, only to not be able to find anything due to being so far along. And then having to choose which is more important to their family, career or new baby after recovering from a traumatic birth?

Yeah. How many transwomen need those sorts of protections? They need their own and they need to establish their own.

My true 'pay gap' specifically was brought home to me by my biology.

This continued push to force teaming diminishes the focus needed to adequately uphold the needs of females due to the reality of their biology.

I think that the people who downplay this either have an agenda that is counter to protecting these rights or have not needed these protections.

I would think a significant enough number of those downplaying the need to maintain focus on these protections are probably both, and the reason they may not need these protections is due to being of the sex that does not give birth.

@MinnieMous3

I'm not sure if you are being serious. You know the many, many ways in which women are discriminated against, and not just because of their genitals. Job prospects, pay, harrassment and abuse by men for a start. Do you really need a list? Trans women experience this, too.

Really? They have worse earning and career prospects due to pregnancy and maternity leave as well? Well, that’s me shown.

Hence “not just because of their genitals.” Trans women have worse prospects because of general assumptions made about women. They do not have exactly the same oppression as cis women or trans men.