Definitions of 'gender identity'

[ThatDogIsACat]

The most common definitions of 'gender identity' all refer to inner feelings and perceptions that seemingly have no origin and no reason. For example something like this:

One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

Or like this:

Gender identity is defined as a personal and internal sense of oneself as male, female, or other.

I think this is underdefined and that 'gender identity' is perhaps better understood as a conflation of desire and knowledge. Those who desire to be the opposite sex in some regard, or at least desire not to be the sex they are, may use 'gender identity' to rationalise that desire into an identity belief. Conversely, those who don't have any such desire, which is most people, will rely on knowledge of their own sex if asked 'what is your gender identity?'. Particularly if it's some sort of questionnaire and the available answers include 'female' / 'male' or 'woman' / 'man'.

Looking at the forums where the trans-identified go to discuss transition, it's quite revealing to see how many of them change their self-description over time, and how this, for example, will often segue from 'I want to be a woman' (desire) to 'I am a woman' (identity).

I believe it helps to view 'gender identity' in this way because it brings more clarity to the underlying process of how such identities are developed, recognised and declared.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this. Please tell me if I'm dead wrong or missed something fundamental.

I’ve noticed as well that some people conflate masculine and male, and it does seem to be a factor for some people. I think though that it’s not specific to trans people; it seems more a reflection of essentialist thinking about ‘male’.

Yes totally, I wasn't being specific to "trans issues", it's almost everyday language to say "that's male behaviour" (which I don't like because it's usually factually wrong!) to mean "masculine" or "male sex stereotypical" behaviour.

My general feeling is that by "male", people either mean XY bodied, sex stereotypical behaviour, or a muddle of both.

I can't think of anything else that would be universally meant by "male" (eg someone who likes jam).

It's just that you started by saying you didn't know what sex stereotypes have to do with this discussion. But it's because it's the thing that many people are actually talking about when they say "sex" (or "male"/"female"). People can't disentangle the stereotype from the body, to the point where they use them interchangeably.

I was interested in hearing whether there was another thing it could mean that I hadn't considered.

Someone who is essentialising ‘male’ believes in a male essence of some form, sometimes it’s a brain property (in the case of some, but not all, trans people), sometimes it’s a functional essence, e.g. gamete production, etc, etc.

Someone who isn’t essentialising ‘male’ doesn’t believe that there is a male essence. In my case, this is because I believe ‘male’ has evolved over time, and is still evolving. If I believe that evolution occurs through different changes occurring in individual males, then I can’t believe in a male essence, as evolution means differences between individual males. Evolution of ‘male’ sex and male essences are incompatible beliefs.

It’s not another meaning of male, more a different understanding of reality.

Yes totally, I wasn't being specific to "trans issues", it's almost everyday language to say "that's male behaviour" (which I don't like because it's usually factually wrong!) to mean "masculine" or "male sex stereotypical" behaviour.

Yes, I agree. I was thinking that actually I never talk in those ways, as I tend to think everyone is different and doesn’t fit in a narrow societal box.

It's just that you started by saying you didn't know what sex stereotypes have to do with this discussion. But it's because it's the thing that many people are actually talking about when they say "sex" (or "male"/"female"). People can't disentangle the stereotype from the body, to the point where they use them interchangeably.

You’re right, I did. I think it’s not that I don’t think that sex stereotypes are factors, but that they’re only one factor, and potentially may not always be the most important, and that it’s all more subconscious than sometimes suggested. (and really you can say all the same things about trans and non trans people)

Anyway, this has made me think.

Someone who is essentialising ‘male’ believes in a male essence of some form, sometimes it’s a brain property (in the case of some, but not all, trans people), sometimes it’s a functional essence, e.g. gamete production, etc, etc.

Gamete production isn't a 'male essence' or a 'functional essence', it's a biological process. It's reality. Only males can produce male gametes, only females can produce female gametes.

I believe ‘male’ has evolved over time, and is still evolving.

What do you mean by this? Do you think males have not always produced male gametes? Do you think sexual dimorphism in humans has 'evolved' over time? In what way?

It’s not another meaning of male, more a different understanding of reality.

Can you explain what you mean by reality? I don't think you mean the same as I do when I talk about reality.

Someone who isn’t essentialising ‘male’ doesn’t believe that there is a male essence. In my case, this is because I believe ‘male’ has evolved over time, and is still evolving.

Do you think males are evolving away from the function of producing small gametes?

I don’t have time for a discussion of nominalistic and essentialist views on the nature of concepts. That’s a discussion which is thousands of years old, and isn’t specific to any particular concept. There is more than enough to read about it, if you want to.

As people have been disagreeing on those ideas for thousands of years, I see no purpose rehashing the discussions; I don’t think it would benefit anyone.

I didn’t want to leave people expecting me to debate it though.

But a male can't possibly 'feel' female, because they don't know what it is to feel, or be female, and vice versa.

Male mammals have XY chromosomes. Species evolution does not happen one sex at a time, and is a slow and gradual process.

Modern humans have been around for about 25 thousand years and show no signs of evolving into anything else.

In many mammal species males are larger and more aggressive than females - hence rams and bulls being scarier than ewes and cows. In other species, such as cats and dogs those differences are more subtle and often masked by social influence and selective breeding.

Feel like @Peasandsweetcorns peas is making the idea of male more complex than it needs to be.
Male in sex terms is back to the old gametes.
Male in gender terms is how you are treated by society due to those gametes. This is the bit that varies across time and geography. The gametes aren't varying. Nor is the idea of what male as a sex class means.

And I don't think many people walk around thinking 'I am female' or 'I am male', they just get on with their day. It really crops up in very few situations. The only time you ever notice it is, again, when society treats you differently from people of the sex opposite to yours ( awful grammar, sorry).

If someone is spending a vast amount of time querying whether they are male or female and what that means, they are the ones giving weight to society's expectations. If they just get on with their day, their gametes aside, society's expectations aside , they are being a living example of their sex class and challenging stereotypes just by being.

I think all concepts / words are like this. It’s not utterly random, but they mean different things to different people and vary across time and geography.

Some types of word do. 'Masculine' certainly does. But that's a word relating to a variable concept. Words relating to concrete, provable things don't mean different things to different people, or vary across time and geography (within the same language obviously). An oxygen atom is either an oxygen atom or it isn't - there are no variable concepts of what it means. The exact design of a knife might vary through history, and whether it's a hunting knife or a butter knife, but knife never means spoon, or table, or sponge cake.

Someone who essentializes male is likely to think there is an essential something (essence) which links all male people (they may not be sure what that something is, but they’ll believe there is something essential); that people are male or they aren’t based on whether they have the essence, and that there is a hard boundary, as someone either has the essence or not; that the body characteristics they observe are signs of the essence; it’s black and white and immutable.

Someone with a nominalistic view of male would not believe in an essence linking all male people. They may still categorise people as male based on the body characteristics they observe, but they wouldn’t believe those body characteristics are signs of a male essence, shared by all male people. They would consider that they are simply labelling people male (assigning people to a male category) based on observations. There would be a gray / fuzzy boundary to the category, and it would vary across people, geography and time.

'Essential definitional criteria' are not the same as an 'undefined essence'. There are set things that make a male a male. But that doesn't mean there is a 'male essence' (and certainly not one that could somehow end up as part of a woman). A male human is male, or not, just like an oxygen atom is an oxgyen atom, or an egg is an egg. Not because of an essence that can be understood in different ways by different people, but by virtue of meeting the biological definition.

A woman who thinks 'I am male' or man who thinks 'I am female' is making a factual error.

Are you sure there are no binturongs there?

Nope, can't see any.

mate

I think it's excessive navel gazing, and people who are lonely being able to find a community, usually online, which becomes an echo chamber. Then there's social contagion.

This has been said many times before but I still marvel at the fact that in the 90s everyone wore Levi's 501s, docs and baggy shirts, many women had short hair, and no one blinked. Men like Kurt Cobain and brad Pitt wore skirts. Now those things would all be considered non binary, what changed ? Magazines and movies have always presented stereotypical feminine and masculine ideals, but real people just went about their business wearing what they liked. Now it all has to mean something and have a very specific label.

Nothing wrong with introspection, but to conclude at the end "I have decided I am something I have no way of communicating to anyone else what it is, but it happens to also be a word that describes a very specific physical thing" - should probably not be the basis of any policy or law that affects everyone.