OK, massive post. Sorry. Got carried away thinking things through. May change my views on reflection, too! Thanks if you can bear to read... I've added sub-headings so you can skip! 😂
So.
I'd recommend reading the link far, far, far below. I'd be especially interested to see what @DadJoke thinks about it. I don't agree with everything in it (& am also uncomfortably conscious of my own ignorance - it delves into science, medicine, anthropology, philosophy...!) but I do find it a fascinating way of potentially reconciling the different positions on this thread. Or at least those I was seeing 20 posts ago last time I looked!
In short (ish), as I understand it, the article argues how, in a sense, both positions may be seen as correct: gender identity does, & doesn't, exist! Further down is a short (OK, actually not remotely, but it's all needed for it to make sense) extract in italics from the whole, in which the author uses PTSD to explain what they mean by this.
TLDR
TLDR: With apologies for using the uncomfortably reductive "real" & "not real" for simplicity's sake... As I understand it, the author below argues that PTSD is "real" in that it describes a universal human experience - as, indeed, identifying with a particular sex appears to be (not everyone may experience PTSD or have a gender identity, but these do exist as potential, or latent, "realities"). But particular manifestations of PTSD may be culturally constructed; they're influenced by - they're in a sense, the product of - a particular place, time & context (again, I'd say, this seems relevant to gender identity).
My Thoughts
If we're to accept this perspective - & I think it's helpful in many ways - I'd also say that my own concern is the enforced imposition of gender identity on the whole of our society. Other distinct manifestations of universal human experiences are acknowledged & judged/treated/accommodated/condemned on their own "merits" (itself a problematic process fraught with prejudice and contradiction, of course!) They're not, however, imposed on the rest of the population, in that those of us who don't experience them aren't defined by them & categorised by our experience, or lack thereof, of them - our own reality isn't being subsumed into them (I'm not, for example, labelled an infidel by the faithful - and I'd be concerned if I were; certain other theocratic societies which do take this approach could be see as authoritarian).
This, to me, is the key difference. I'm interested in the concept of gender identity as a contemporary manifestation of one facet of the glorious variety of human experience, and that's fine (although I'd personally say it's become a problematic umbrella term for a wealth of more complex, disparate, experiences). Regardless, though, gender identity isn't real for me - & yet I'm being told it's fundamental to who I am. So I have the utterly destabilising sense both of my own reality being denied, & of society itself being reshaped to accommodate something I perceive as wholly individual & potentially transitory. And this in place of biological sex, tested by centuries of scientific understanding!
Link
https://bprice.substack.com/p/trans-is-something-we-made-up
Extract
"Whether or not they’ve given the matter any thought, most 21st century Western people probably share the belief that PTSD is a predictable human response to trauma. It’s widely viewed as a human universal. Trauma reactions have been documented for thousands of years.
Well, yes and no. PTSD is a bit like windigo. There’s a universal human experience at the core, and there’s a bunch of cultural stuff laid on top.
Let’s look at Western symptoms in response to trauma at a few different time points:
In about 440 BC Herodotus, in writing about the battle of Marathon, described a soldier with symptoms in response to emotional trauma that developed during a sword fight: he suffered psychogenic blindness and frightening visions of a giant enemy soldier.
Flash forward a couple thousand years: In World War I, “shell shock” was described as a trauma response to war: “The main causes are the fright and anxiety brought about by the explosion of enemy shells and mines, and seeing maimed or dead comrades ... The resulting symptoms are states of sudden muteness, deafness ... general tremor, inability to stand or walk, episodes of loss of consciousness, and convulsions.”
Then, just a few decades later, in the post‒Vietnam War era, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was officially recognized in the DSM-III, the diagnostic manual used by psychologists and psychiatrists. The full criteria are somewhat lengthy, but basically, instead of being shut down like the World War I vets, the new PTSD diagnosis required symptoms of hyperarousal, including “difficulty falling or staying asleep … irritability or outbursts of anger…difficulty concentrating … hyper vigilance … exaggerated startle response … [and] physiological activity upon exposure to events that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.”
In the new conception of PTSD, there was also an aspect of “reliving” the old trauma in response to triggering events.
The stereotype of the World War I vet was of someone who was so shut down he withdrew, and his physical symptoms corresponded to that. The stereotype of the Vietnam War vet was of someone who was so high strung he would dive for cover when he heard a weather helicopter and become combative and confused.
And now today, in the early 21st century, compared to the past 2,500 years in which trauma responses were widely acknowledged to occur in response to an “event that is outside the range of usual human experience” such as war, the definition of PTSD has expanded to include responses to all sorts of lesser events.
As the Mayo Clinic website describes it, “Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.”
No longer just survivors of extreme events “outside the range of usual human experience” but people who’ve suffered more common human experiences, like bullying, are now conceived of as being vulnerable to PTSD as well.
Again: “people are conscious of the way they are classified, and they alter their behavior and self-conceptions in response to their classification.”
This might explain, for example, why there was no such thing as being “triggered” by emotionally difficult lecture material in 1975, and yet we’ve heard about it often in recent years. Our current cultural understanding is that it’s possible to have a trauma response to upsetting educational content — it’s now become a thing for us, just as the fear of becoming a cannibal is a thing in another culture — and so if a lecture is upsetting, it can (really) result in being triggered now.
No one is pretending. Our cultural expectations shape our reality. Both those things can be true.
There’s always a human universal underlying these phenomena. The human universal here is that humans sometimes have extreme responses to traumatizing events. But the specific ways they respond, and even what they consider to be trauma, change depending on time, place, culture, and context. Trauma responses are very real. But culture lays a lot of things on top of it. Culture tells you how to respond, but you’re not aware that’s happening, so the response feels like it’s coming from inside you.