Believing in gender is a bit like believing in God

[Flowerypot]

New to this forum so apologies if I'm wording things clumsily.

I've been thinking about how to articulate how I feel about sex/gender without explicitly saying trans women aren't women, women don't have a penis etc. Lots of stuff has come up at work on this recently and we're a very 'be kind' organisation - lots of pride stuff, trans colleagues, colleagues with trans kids talking openly about that.

Does anyone else feel about gender how they feel about believing in God or religion? It's a concept not rooted in scientific fact - it's just something people believe in, right? And you can respect that but no religious beliefs trump protected characteristics etc

For example at work they're encouraging us to state our gender as well as race/ethnicity and there is no option to state 'none' like there would be with religion and I think there should be. The best option is 'other' but that doesn't really work for me.

Not sure what I'm asking really. Grateful for any thoughts!

Well, perhaps if it was treated like Zoroastrianism, say, or perhaps Rastafari? Would that be OK?

More seriously, what I meant was that, in state schools (such as my grandkids attend), teachers are not allowed to say that religious tenets are true, just that some people believe them (and that whether the teachers believe them or not).

I'd agree there's no need for RE in schools. That's another argument. For now, though, since we have the concession that religion is not taught in ordinary schools as fact, that would be a start regarding gender thingumibobs - as a kind of compromise, like.

Exactly this. My belief in God places no requirement on you to believe in God as well, or to at least pretend that you do.
That's the difference, gender ideology requires that non-believers change their behaviour and language, religion does not.

@fihawo Im not sure where you got the idea that teachers in state schools are not allowed to say that religion is true or a fact. They very much do do this in CofE schools (and I imagine Catholic ones too). Remember that in huge areas of the U.K. you literally have no choice but to go to a religious school, especially at primary level.

I think this is the point. It's perfectly possible for people to live as they wish. I think it would be prejudiced to object to someone on the grounds that they are extremely gender non conforming or have made personal choices about their body, as a well informed adult, which do not affect anyone else. What they think or feel about their sex or 'gender' is their own business as long as they conform to exactly the same expectations as everyone else e.g. males staying out of female spaces. The problem is 'gender ideology' which is being forced on society in an authoritarian manner whether we agree with it or not.

There are a lot of rather arrogant assumptions being made by PPs, and I am fed up of them comparing gender ideology to religion. It is more comparable to a fashion cult or social trend.
God does exist, whether atheists like it or not. Jesus was a documented historical figure, and we have the eye witness accounts of His resurrection, from the disciples, which St Paul recorded after interviewing St Peter in Rome. And remember, St Paul was originally a hostile witness, en route to persecute Christians before encountering the voice of Christ on the road to Damascus.
Many of the 2.3 billion Christians alive in the world today have had direct encounters with the presence of God. I am one of them, having been a rabid atheist until my thirties.
Gender ideology does not make sense, in that it is entirely predicated on stereotypes. No man can ever “feel like a woman”, as he has no terms of reference for that, and will never have the intracellular biology that is the only thing all women have in common. To compare that with the perfectly rational worship of God, is utterly inappropriate.

Yes it's a religion, complete with creed, mantras and a male priesthood ably assisted by eager-to-please nuns.

As an apostate from Irish Catholicism, I am struck by the way the new religion has had Ireland down on its knees so quickly.

God does exist, whether atheists like it or not.

Well, that's news to me...

That's interesting. Proof please.

Lots of people feel that's the case.

i understand what they mean, but I don't entirely agree. You can make a metaphysical case for God, many philosophers have and do. Empirical evidence isn't the only way to know things.

I don't really think, though, that you can make that kind of argument for gender ideology. Possibly you could call it a psychological model, but even there you need to show some kind of relation to reality.

Berates others for arrogance, states as a fact 'God exists'.

😂

Interestingly (and unfortunately) this thread seems to have taken a similar turn to one that got shut down yesterday.

In the opening post it stated that trans people don't exist. Those words were written in bold.

I contributed to say that I didn't believe in gender identity but I could not see any benefit in a conversation about whether trans people exist or not. If I recall my words, I said something like that at best it was pointless and at worst, offensive. In a similar way that, while I don't believe in God, I can't see any benefit in having a discussion about whether or not God exists.

There is a nuanced difference but it is an important one. For anyone who believes in God, God exists. For anyone who believes in gender identity, being transgender is real and trans people exist.

The analogy still holds IMO. However, the above perfectly illustrates how it's not helpful to challenge someone else's belief. Far better to talk about the impact of that belief. Thankfully we don't have any/many laws in the UK linked to religious beliefs (I suspect primogeniture stems from the importance of man over woman as decreed by God etc but that's a far cry from mandated head coverings Iran) but if we did, lots of feminists would challenge them.

Apologies, possibly ambiguous...

When I say "in the opening post", I'm referring to yesterday's thread that got shut down. Not this thread.

Oh wait, I missed this bit because I was too busy clutching my sides -

To compare that with the perfectly rational worship of God

The sheer brass neck is admirable.

Thankfully we don't have any/many laws in the UK linked to religious beliefs

And yet we do have many organisations that operate as though belief in gender ideology is a given.

Indeed. This is another reason why the analogy works for me.
However, I'm always careful to consider the fact that there are people who do believe in gender identity. I'm not interested in challenging their belief. I'm interested in stopping adolescent girls (primarily - those like my daughter) and boys feeling that they need to change their bodies to match their belief that they have a gender that differs from their biological sex. Second to that, I'm interested in challenging the wider impact in society on sports, sex segregated spaces etc.

I can do all of that without directly challenging someone on whether their belief is true. Biological sex is a fact; gender (identity) is a belief. The universe existing is a fact, its creation being done by God is a belief.

The laws in the UK dictated by religion are an inconvenience. It's annoying that supermarkets close at 5pm on Sunday.

Any organisation captured by gender ideology has potential to cause real harm to women and girls.

The laws in the UK dictated by religion are an inconvenience. It's annoying that supermarkets close at 5pm on Sunday

Possibly not for people who work in supermarkets. The point of a sabbath was to allow even the lowliest workers to have a day off with their family. Not everyone has the luxury of a 9-5 office job.

"no religious beliefs trump protected characteristics etc" - except religious belief is a protected characteristic...

I think it's a good analogy but for me it's more a philosophical debate than a religious one. You could say that anything, including the way we talk about biological sex, is a social construct. Because we have decided, somewhere along the line, what biological sex is and how we define it.

But the important part for me is that biological sex would exist even if we didn't have any way to describe it. We would still have males and females, because that's how reproduction works. It's the basic building block of human life. Gender wouldn't exist if we didn't talk about it or have the socially constructed norms that go with it and change across cultures.

I definitely don't think gender ideology is a religion. Religions have so much complexity, depth and history. For me it's a question of how, in a liberal society, we can all coexist with different views. By and large we manage to do this with religion in the UK. We can celebrate our cultural heritage, religious traditions and history while evolving to accommodate people with different beliefs. It's all about respect, curiosity and compromise. The fact that we can do this with such a fundamental thing as different religious beliefs and atheism makes it all the more ridiculous that so many people have been totally captured by the superficial idea of gender and are pushing it in an authoritarian way without seeming to have any self awareness of what they are doing.

It’s more than ‘an inconvenience’ when the school in your village is allowed to legally discriminate against your child because they happen to be Jewish (or any other non-CofE religion).

The analogy entails the notion that atheists think believers don’t exist as people. This is as absurd as suggesting that the recognition that humans can’t change sex means denying the existence of people who believe they have. This TRA existential/genocidal trope is a blatant falsehood.

For apostates OTOH, challenging the religious belief of their families, communities and authorities is absolutely fundamental to their existence and lived reality. To dismiss their challenge as ‘unhelpful’ denies their human right to disbelief, and condemns them to the permanent spiritual friction of complying with things - not petty things, but the reality of what it is to live and die - that they do not believe in.

I'm sorry. I really did think that in England everyone had a choice to send their children to a non-religious state school where religion was only taught as "Some people think there's a god ... " (etc.)

I stand corrected. How awful to have to gainsay what teachers tell your children! The thought makes me shiver, to be honest. To have to tell a child, "No, Miss Jones is right about five times seven and the capital of Denmark and so on, but is a bit silly about that god nonsense and ghosts and that." Dreadful.

What happens if you subscribe to a non-christian religion and the only school is CofE (or even worse, catholic)? Are there Islamic schools which children of atheists and agnostics are forced to attend in the same way?

My own children weren't brought up in UK, so we never had to have the ridiculous 'RE' stuff at all . And those of my grandchildren who now live in England are at ordinary non-religious state schools where 'religion is fact' is anathema.

My sympathies ... equally to those such as you having your children indoctrinated contrary to your own beliefs into religion of the old sort and those undergoing the new trans indoctrination of gender etc.

Yes. Nobody thinks believers don't exist as people, any more than anybody thinks trans people don't exist as people. Either of these would be silly.

People - like Helen Joyce - who say transwomen don't exist only mean no-one exists who has changed sex or who has a gender identity of the Stonewall kind.

That seems as true (to some of us) as saying people who have a guardian angel spirit looking after them don't exist. Gender is like religion in this way, specifically.

(And saying neither is equivalent to advocating genocide!)

think it a bit different to faith in a god as it is a belief about yourself rather than in another being. I don't have a gender identity myself but can accept that others do and that it feels real to them.
Am I an atheist or a believer in your eyes?

Agnostic.

Yes. Nobody thinks believers don't exist as people, any more than anybody thinks trans people don't exist as people. Either of these would be silly.

People - like Helen Joyce - who say transwomen don't exist only mean no-one exists who has changed sex or who has a gender identity of the Stonewall kind.

That seems as true (to some of us) as saying people who have a guardian angel spirit looking after them don't exist. Gender is like religion in this way, specifically.

(And saying neither is equivalent to advocating genocide!)

This.