What if we rethought gender?

[bonfireoftheverities]

Only 7 minutes long, but I have yet to make it through. Perhaps you're made of stronger stuff.

"How about we challenge the idea that sex is about biology and biology is just fact."

It's probably better to keep other species out of it (snails are hermaphrodites and can self inseminate for example).... Unless you're celebrating the brilliance of the Clownfish rap:

@Annaishere I think (and please do say if I have this wrong) that you have a belief in gender identity i.e. you believe that when someone says that they identify as a woman that this is a valid feeling and should be recognised as such.

On that basis, and in the spirit of a good faith debate, are you happy to share your views on the Clownfish rap. If rap isn't your thing I can send the transcript but IMO it only really words when you hear it said. The rhythm of the spoken word/poetry, the pictures and the pace of it are just as important as the words.

Urgh. Typos:
Missing question mark.
Also, it only really works

I'm happy to start by sharing my thoughts:
On balance it's fantastic and highlights so many issues clearly. I don't like gender identity believers being framed as "loons" (many are very sane people) but I can overlook that for the overall message. Also I'm a fan of spoken word style rap, which helps.

@BonfireLady the song makes a good case with some very real and valid points. Human beings aren’t clownfish. I can’t say I know what to believe about gender identity. It depends on the reason it’s come up as an issue, whether there’s a biological or spiritual rather than social/ psychological basis

Thank you for coming back with that. I have always appreciated respectful debate.

I hope I didn't push you in to a corner with my description of "your belief". Not having a fixed idea on what your belief in it is makes a lot of sense to me. I felt like that about both gender identity and God for a long time. If anyone had tried to force me in to a belief in either direction, I wouldn't have appreciated it. People form their beliefs in their own time. It took about 10 years for me to decide what I felt about God (I'm an atheist but I use the capital G in the same way as Christians do because I'm OK with doing that - my choice).

On the point of social/psychological, do you mean whether or not it's challenging someone's belief that they are a woman (or man, or non-binary etc) irrespective of their sexed body?

Sorry, trying to make sure I understand your viewpoint.

@BonfireLady I mean whether the dysphoria in itself is psychologically and or socially based

Interestingly, I looked into calico (tortie and white) cats to make sure I was informing my kids correctly about ours. Calico cats have some black and some brown patches and also some white. The white hairs are essentially colourless but the other hairs are black or brown depending on which X chromosome is dominant in the relevant cell for hair colour. Hence calico cats are female... mostly. There are male ones but they also have 2 X chromosomes but due to their 'intersex' condition they have XXY chromosomes. I think it's a very apt example to bring to this debate.

Ah, sorry. I've just realised that I asked you these questions at a daft time as I need to head off somewhere now. Would you be happy for us to continue the chat on this thread as and when we get chance? i.e. no time pressure on coming back to each other (and obviously other people may join in) but we try and talk stuff through? I do have a follow-up question but I'll hang on to it for now rather than launch it at you and run before you've had chance to think about my ask/suggestion!

It's extraordinary how far people will go to tie themselves in knots to avoid admitting that gender identity is all about stereotypes. The problem is that gender identity just doesn't make sense and instead of admitting that, they'll just go into these more and more convoluted, contradictory explanations.
Fascinating from a psychology point of view. Depressing from a feminist one.

@BonfireLady yeah, sure

👍👍

Got it. IMO, the two are intertwined. There are so many different jumping in points at different points of life, and it will be different for boys and girls.

From what I understand (I'm going to send in two part because I don't trust myself not to accidentally lose the comment with a fat finger move!):

Part One - young children

Young boys - big social influence, small psychological
Some boys grow up in households and/or cultures where there is homophobia. That's a simple one to make the leap in understanding as to why it's "beneficial all round" if they are accepted as girls instead. Helen Joyce writes brilliantly about "third gender" cultures and Shape Shifter is an example of a detransitioner who talks about his own internalised homophobia because of his cultural upbringing (he transitioned later in life though).
More subtly, some grow up in really liberal households. The parents are very relaxed about toys and clothes not having "genders" and are happy for their boys to wear Elsa (or the latest Disney) costumes or play with dolls etc. Then somewhere along the line it flips and becomes an identity. This next bit applies to girls as well as boys: there is a children's book called Alien Nation which completes this journey of thinking within the pages of the book. It starts off challenging "pink" and "blue" stereotypes and saying that they are wrong/silly. Then children are encouraged to think about who they really are and not worry about that. All good so far. By the end of the book, everything has flipped round and children are encouraged to align themselves with blue or pink (the blue planet or the pink planet) when they were ready. The general advice is that it's fine to be purple (non-binary, on the purple planet) for as long as you like and you only need to make the move to pink or blue when the time is right for you. That's so incredibly regressive.
Once your identity is baked in (your parents have decided to "follow your lead" and let you "live as the opposite sex") you're on a pathway to the psychological drivers kicking in once puberty starts because you'll be going through the "wrong puberty".

Young girls - big social influence, small psychological
The issues that come from the Alien Nation book still apply but it's mess less pronounced because to be on the blue planet, all you really need to do is reject the girly stuff. By contrast, boys need to actively head towards it, which will be more noticeable to those around them. Many girls play with "boys' toys" all the time and wear trousers etc. Nobody would make anything of it and you'd have to make quite a point of rejecting girly stuff for it to become a thing to the point where you get socially transitioned within your family.

Part Two - adolescents

Adolescent boys - reasonable social influence, big psychological
I'm not saying gaming is the root cause of everything but it's a really helpful example to explain what I mean. Many (most?) adolescent boys aren't that sociable in real life. But many (most) play online gaming. In this world, you can choose your avatar and be whoever you want to be. Just like at the start of Alien Nation, the shackles of "gendered" choices are not there. Many gamers will feel liberated by these choices and there is no longer any stigma playing as a girl character. Perhaps Lara Croft and Tomb Raider helped to push the envelope on this back in the 90s?
The Sue and Marcus Evans gender dysphoria therapy book talks about boys who transition wanting to "become what they love". This starts in young boys (so applies above also - the mother figure is an appealing role model to boys who are more effiminate and might grow up gay) but takes on a whole new twist in adolescence. The avatars are pretty sexualised these days, just as Lara Croft was back in the 90s. Big boobs, tiny waist etc. Some boys get turned on by this and for some that do, they start to blend the reality of their (sometimes quite dull/awkward) everyday life with the fantasy of who they "really are". A feeling of liberation. Why not just become that in real life?
Psychologically at this point they are in puberty turmoil and looking for answers.

Adolescent girls - massive social influence, big psychological
This is the cohort for which social contagion is HUGE e.g. groups of friends all "transing" at the same time. Alongside this, many girls are (similar to young girls but with real impact this time) rejecting girlhood. Some don't like the way that their changing bodies now attract the male gaze, some experience sexual attack (and reject their "weak" body e.g. Ellen/Elliott Page, who is also lesbian so may have joined the two together as affirmation of "maleness"), some don't feel particularly girly or attractive in comparison with their peers. The social pressure on what it means to be female at this age ramps up to a fever pitch. We were all conditioned when we were younger to think it was romantic when a guy chose us - I watched the first Top Gun again recently. When I first saw it I wanted to be Charlie, with Maverick chasing me. OMG! The first time he meets her he sings, the second time he tells her that she wants him and he follows her in to the ladies' and suggests that they have sex on the sinks. No wonder there are girls who are rejecting being a woman.
And psychologically, many girls find it hard navigating the emotions of puberty. They are looking for answers and are feeling lost. One answer that is now lit up in rainbow colours is that they probably aren't girls at all. The first toe in the water step might be non-binary (at least that way you can set yourself aside from all the misogyny and sexism etc) but you may feel more "comfortable" if you go all the way and become a boy. All of this will be baked in psychologically because of the great distress associated with these feelings of not belonging in your body.

Autism
This deserves its own footnote because a) the social isolation and lack of being able to navigate adolescence is intensified and b) the psychological side is also intensified because the answer (the need to transition) is locked in through a combination of obsession and black and white thinking (pink and blue planet thinking).

There will obviously be more to all of it than that and there are many brilliant people on this board who can add to or improve what I've said. Also I'm happy to be challenged on any of it. I'm still learning about this whole world of gender identity thinking.

PS just realised I had positioned my response as something that was going to be a "question". No question as such other than "does that make any kind of sense?". None of what I said is fact, or speaking for others, it's all just my own opinion.

Some studies do show that the interaction and processing between the brain's lobes is different between the sexes, but that would not explain why so many males who 'identify as women' show no real empathy for the female condition, nor would it seem to reduce their 'typical' masculine modes of behaviour, or preference.

On the subject of gaming avatars, that is definitely a thing. Gamers are directly required to identify as a character in order to complete the task or play the game.

I've been watching, from a distance, the transition of a young man ( now aged 30) who was clearly suffering from intense distress around his genitalia, and who has come to 'identify as a woman'. He has just had the 'big' surgery - a couple of weeks ago.

He is a gamer, and actual studied game development as a degree course. Whenever he posts photo updates of any 'work' he has had done - the pose is always the same one - very reminiscent of sexualised, big eyed female gaming avatars. In fact he new name, I suspect, is one that is based on a female gaming character: one that is very current and very popular.

I gave up at the 'intersex people are 2%' bit. They can only have got that by including conditions like PCOS

I watched the video. It's easy enough to see where it goes wrong, I think. At some point the bloke with the big hair and the moustache says, "Everyone has a gender identity."

This is false. Not because some people lack a gender identity, but because there just is no such thing as gender identity, at least in the sense of a kind of feeling humans have that may or not match somehow with an individual's sex.

(The case is actually stronger, if you think about it: there could be no such thing, since feelings and sexes are different categories (as Gilbert Ryle might have put it). But 'there is no such thing' will do for our purposes.)

I know some people believe in gender identity. We have to deal with that, sure, just as we have to deal with people who believe in guardian angels, ghosts, fairies, devils, gods, prophets, ... whatever. We have learned to live with people who believe in guardian angels -- not by accepting their beliefs as cogent, but more along the lines of, "That's nice dear, now run along and play," sort of thing, barring them from teaching their beliefs to our children, and so on.

So for other false beliefs. We correct our children, allow space in our societal institutions for believers - however daft - and get on with things in as reasonable a manner as we can.

In this case, "That's all very well, but, you see, there's actually no such thing as gender identity in the sense you're thinking about," seems a more than adequate response to all the (consequential) nonsense.

No? -- Leave it at that? Why not?

My sex wasn't assigned at birth. My sex began at conception with XX chromosomes. Anything else is bullshit.

The older feminist view was that sex is the basis on which women are oppressed (desire to control access to reproduction and heterosexual sex which most men want), gender is one of the ways that oppression is achieved (gender roles and norms about what women are allowed to do, own or control, stereotypes about femininity as the opposite of masculinity etc.).

I still see that as the clear-eyed view, and from that angle what we should dispense with are harmful gender norms, roles, and stereotypes. The gender identitarians want to deify gender itself while making it impossible to see that the oppression of women and girls is sex-based. The 'out' they allow us is to pretend that we can identify out of that oppression by simply stating some new identity (without any surgical or medical treatment).

It leaves 'women' as an incredibly sexist label, associated with at best pink and makeup and fluffiness and at worst with porn-steeped views of what a female person is. Only now we are assumed to have opted for these views because we are ordered to have something like a feminine gender identity. Like Barbie dolls, Stepford Wives and so on.

When did this whole thing take differences in personalities and insist on repackaging it into the old sexist boxes while arguing that this is progressive?

I agree completely, @dressedforcomfort - ‘assigned at birth’ sounds like the midwife flips a coin, or draws a ‘gender card’ out of a hat - when in fact, the midwife or doctor observes (with incredibly high accuracy) the baby’s sex!

Good ones, though - showing innate differences? Some appear to onna first reading, but look closer and they always seem to turn out to be based on tiny samples, or fishing expeditions (in which they look at dozens of things and report only the one finding that agrees with their pre-existing conclusions), or of adults who have a lifetime of socialisation and experience shaping their brain architecture, or several of the above or many other methodological problems.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sex-differences-brain-anatomy#:~:text=Females%20had%20greater%20volume%20in,processing%20different%20types%20of%20information.

Adults.

See the studies of working and retired London taxi drivers for why that tells you nothing about innate differences.

Also, volume doesn't necessarily map to activity and function.