Question about gender identity

[Aspiringmatriarch]

I've been wondering about something. Many posters on here state that there's no such thing as a gender identity, and it comes down to gender stereotypes and being non-conforming. I don't know if I agree with this or not, but one particular question is bugging me and I'm wondering if anyone can help me clear this up.

Firstly I know intersex is not the same as being trans. However. What about people who are born with ambiguous genitalia and, in the past at least, were sometimes operated on and subsequently brought up as one sex without knowing they were intersex? Some of these people have a strong sense they are not actually female (if raised as female) and vice versa, and only realise the cause of this when they discover they're intersex. Isn't this an example of gender identity being real? Or am I misunderstanding something?

I'm not doubting your sincerity btw. I'm just saying, if you wanting to ask a question, you need to know what the question is that you're asking.

Thank you. I am asking in good faith, admittedly I think I'm both confused and confusing.

Will have to come back to this thread in a little while, thanks for the replies though.

so I think that the hormones in a human male, for example, will be a factor that, when combined with socialization around aggression and entitlement, create what we perceive to be the 'masculine gender'

@FloralBunting I always enjoy your posts and the way you can summarise complex stuff so well - to the point, clear short & sweet!

Thank you

If it's any help, as a lesbian, I can say that for a long time as kid, becoming aware of myself and the world around me, I knew I liked women, and the only representations of people who liked women romantically, and later as I began to understand, sexually, were obviously men. So for the longest time, I identified strongly with male characters everywhere. I had a short back and sides, I was a tall, skinny kid, and I got chased out of the ladies by angry grannies a couple of times when I was about 11/12. I watched boys getting to do all the things I wanted to do and wasn't allowed to. My body started changing and it was utterly hideous, as puberty often is. I remember a conversation with a girl I met where I pretended to be a boy and the feeling was what I suspect the Trans Youtubers say is 'Gender Euphoria'.

But I was simply a lesbian tomboy. It's remarkably easy to accept sex stereotypes as some sort of innate norm. We built whole societies on these ideas. And all we really did was trap people in boxes.

Cheers, Short!

I always recommend Rebecca Reilly-Cooper's presentation on this.

I can't think of anything better to help dig through the morass of circular reasoning behind the concept.

@Aspiringmatriarch

Sounds like an example of sex being real.

I think in the past, the choice often was to go for whatever surgery would be the easiest and most successful cosmetically, thinking this was the most important factor - that if a child looks properly female or male, then the rest will follow, just be being socialised accordingly.
This didn't always work out so well, because surgery can't change genes and suppression/supplementation of hormones (of all kinds) is an inexact science.

I'm probably not explaining myself very well. Maybe I'm thinking of the poor guy who had botched surgery and was then brought up female - but I believe there are other examples. I'm trying to say this is potentially an example of both sex and gender identity, being real. Otherwise in this case the female gender identity wouldn't have been rejected, because upbringing as a girl = female socialisation = female 'gender identity'. But it appears in this case the person's gender identity was male despite being raised female, which to me implies that people may have an internal sense of their sex regardless of how they're socialised. I'm trying to work out whether this is constitutes the elusive gender identity. Obviously being trans is a step further from that as it would mean that person's gender identity (understood as 'internal sense of one's own sex') has developed differently from their apparent physical sex.

The poor kid was male, and although he was castrated and 'brought up as a girl' his male body, which includes his brain, with male genitics, producing male hormones (this was in the 50s I believe so dont think hormone science was as developed as today) was also male.

Nicely put, @FloralBunting.

I don't believe there is such a thing as an innate, ethereal 'gender identity'. Or if there is, I sure as hell have no idea what mine is.
I mean, I know I'm female - periods and childbirth are a bit of a clue.
But I don't know what it means to 'feel like a woman' (or a man) in any other meaningful way.
If anything, I tick more of the stereotypical boxes for men than women, in terms of my interests and preferences. Is that enough to make me a man? No.
But if I wanted to be a man, would it be enough then? I don't believe so.

I recently read the book about David Reimer and the awful abuse he suffered at the hands of so-called sexologist Dr John Money, As Nature Made Him. I highly recommend it.

Money was a blank slatist who believed that any child could be socialised into being male or female if you got to them early enough and strictly enforced rigid gender roles, and performed surgery before the child was cognisent of the truth. I believe that he set the wheels in motion for the nightmare we have now with childhood transition. He was well respected and seen as the go to expert in a field no one else was knowledgeable about. He pumped out lies, for decades, via papers and conferences. He was lauded by medical professionals who took him at his word, and whole clinics were set up to follow his protocols. He was a monster.

I asked pretty much the same question when I first came on here AspiringMatriarch although I never got what I felt was a satisfactory answer from the posters on here.

My personal opinion, although most on here would probably disagree, is that we are all born with a blue print of a personality. You could think of this as being 'boyish' based on stereotypes 'girly' based on stereotypes or somewhere inbetween but this is not gender identity. I'm not denying that we are later shaped by society and our environments but that innate blue print is a huge factor in who we become.

The conflict (gender identity) seems to arise when a child picks up that their developing personality is not 'correct' for their sex, e.g. told it is wrong to be a boisterous girl or an effeminate boy.

In the case of the Reimer twins it is likely that sexist stereotypes were ridgedly enforced on both children as that is what the parents were told to do.

I'd recommend looking up Debra Soh and her book 'The End of Gender'

I wouldn't disagree with that. As I said, I'm not a blank slatist. I think heredity plays a role to, in terms of disposition. I am, annoying enough, just like my father, and that's less likely to be a nuture thing because he abandoned my family and we were estranged for many years. But it's clearly not a gender identity either because he's a man and I am a woman.

Claire Graham's blog has a number of relevant discussions and statistics that might be helpful to the OP:

mrkhvoice.com/

@Aspiringmatriarch

Sounds like an example of sex being real.

I think in the past, the choice often was to go for whatever surgery would be the easiest and most successful cosmetically, thinking this was the most important factor - that if a child looks properly female or male, then the rest will follow, just be being socialised accordingly.
This didn't always work out so well, because surgery can't change genes and suppression/supplementation of hormones (of all kinds) is an inexact science.

I'm probably not explaining myself very well. Maybe I'm thinking of the poor guy who had botched surgery and was then brought up female - but I believe there are other examples. I'm trying to say this is potentially an example of both sex and gender identity, being real. Otherwise in this case the female gender identity wouldn't have been rejected, because upbringing as a girl = female socialisation = female 'gender identity'. But it appears in this case the person's gender identity was male despite being raised female, which to me implies that people may have an internal sense of their sex regardless of how they're socialised. I'm trying to work out whether this is constitutes the elusive gender identity. Obviously being trans is a step further from that as it would mean that person's gender identity (understood as 'internal sense of one's own sex') has developed differently from their apparent physical sex.

I think it's very hard to extrapolate anything about 'gender identity' from the David Reimer case, given the complicating factors such as sexual abuse at the hands of the psychologist who transitioned him, the estranged parents, the twin brother and his mental health, as well as the fact that he discovered that he had had a penis. I mean - where do you start?

Caster Semenya is male.

With a medically noted DSD that is pointed out by undesended testicles.

He was - wrongly - always reported as being a "put-upon" female, or as "a woman" by those with an agenda. It was done to fool people.

I think that this is a good point OP. Here is one paper. The results presented here are very mixed:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421517/?fbclid=IwAR0SzJYu8rSVS0-VoY2SXBTyZ1B-L8TMGk46yx7ZYh-hAw_ASCiduzeTFYc

I think that the mixed findings are interesting. It seems that there are reasonable numbers on both sides - biological males raised as girls who have felt uncomfortable and wanted to revert to being boys, and biological males raised as girls who have been quite happy as girls.

It also seems that there are average behavioural differences that didn't entirely go away when children are raised as the opposite sex.

I've seen this paper presented as an argument on both sides of the gender ID debate.

The fact that a significant number of boys raised as girls were quite happy as such, suggests that there is no innate fixed gender identity - otherwise you'd expect nearly ALL of them to want to be boys (since trans people are reasonably rare in the general population). But the fact that there were also a significant number who WEREN'T happy, suggests that there is SOME nature component in this story, it isn't all nurture.

I think that the behavioural differences means that you don't need a story about any kind of magical "gender identity" - you just have to say that a very stereotypically masculine behaving person can find it hard to exist in society as a girl, and vice versa. And on average, biological boys are more masculine in behaviour - that's what the paper found.

Caster Semenya is not the only male athlete who is being put up for representation in world/nationwide/Olympic races and teams under the guide of them being female.

I saw a documentary about the David Reimer case a good 20 years ago. I think you also need to consider that Reimer, as he was growing up, probably noticed physical differences between himself and girls. Even before puberty, boys have physical growth differences to girls outside genitalia - this is shown in growth charts and in their muscle types, and bone structure. Reimer suspected something was off for a long time and when told the truth, obviously it was devastating...not to mention all the other issues of abuse and mental health.

Very young children can tell the differences between males and females, even when clues stereotypical clothing and hair styles aren't in play, so Reimer would have noticed these physical differences in himself and the gaslighting seemed to have only confused him more.

If we could raise girls and boys in a completely stereotype free world, would we see differences in their choice of play? I think that's an interesting question, but the Reimer case alone can't answer that.

*guise

Girls and boys remain Female and male - regardless of how they are raised.

Nature AND nurture.

Males have different bodies in many different ways than just having penises. Even prepubescent boys are generally physically stronger than girls. After puberty, they are, in general quite a bit larger, heavier, stronger, and hairier than females. Their bones are thicker and they move in notably different ways. They have heavy brows and chins and Adam's apples and large hands. A male raised as a girl would only have to hear his own voice or look at his hands to know the truth--that he is male. The situation with trans women is the opposite of that, not "a further step."

@Aspiringmatriarch

The person is incontrovertibly one sex and they know it, despite being lied to and physically maimed. Why do you think this suggests that there is such a thing as an innate 'gender identity'.

Again I might be explaining badly or missing the point. They know they're not the sex they've been raised as - not because of obvious physical difference but because they're internally not the sex they're being treated as. Is that gender identity? Or is it more like someone thinking 'If I'm a girl, why the fuck do I have an Adam's apple and no periods?!'

No, it’s hormones. Sex hormones.

I wonder about this too. If I woke in the morning in a man's body, after the initial shock and curiosity, I'd go about my day quite happily. I don't have an internal feeling of being either sex.
I do think that some people might have a gender identity. The TRAs who bleat about it so much must feel that they are in the right body for their mind and that they would feel very uncomfortable in the opposite sex body.
My cousin at puberty strongly felt that he was a woman. He's never transitioned for personal reasons but still he's an example of someone with a "gender identity".
I think it's rare and it might be a feeling that's not connected with physical reality. Maybe like some people feel like they should be good looking and spend hours each day trying to meet their expectation of beauty, whereas other people just shrug and get on with it, and let people take them as they find them.
It's an interesting topic and I think you can be gender critical and also accept that at least some people sense that they have a gender identity.

So what?

Say somehow gender identity as a real observable brain patterning is objectively proved to exist tomorrow. Given everything else we know, what should society do in response to this? Should things that were previously decided by sex now be decided by gender identity?

OP I would suggest reading some info on pages of charities for people with DSDs.

There are some individuals who have excellent blogs/etc as well.

It's av sensitive area with a lot of history.

I don't have a DSD. I also don't have a gender ID.

So can't really comment.

If a person says they have an internal gender ID then I think ok. Fair enough.

But in the end. So what really?

I have a friend who is religious. I've always been an atheist. I don't have a spiritual bone in my body.

She says she strongly feels there is a God. I cannot imagine what that feels like. We find each others feelings a bit hard to understand. But we respect that is how we feel.

All good.

Erm.

I suppose. Loads of people get brains scanned.

Turns out stacks of people are agender, non binary, trans.
Some trans people are non binary or not trans at all.

And...? Dunno.

Will it make rape stop?

How will all the people who didn't know they were trans going to feel about having to use opposite sex or unisex facilities? Including. Elderly men and women.

It'd be a shitshow tbh.

The reimer children were sexually abused by their doctor don't forget.

It is a fair while ago and a terrible thing.