Gender as performance or as innate essence

[SaltPorridge]

Why is it that kids talk about "coming out" as trans when they change their names and ask to be treated as the opposite sex/gender? Yet I also see references to gender as a performance, which seems to come from Judith Butler.
Where did the idea of an innate gender that is unrelated to sex come from?

It reminds me of the plot to a book! Don't want to say which one, and ruin the plot twist

Maybe his parents didn’t do a very good job of trying to convince him he was a girl, consciously or subconsciously.

Maybe Money’s experiment and behaviour towards him were dodgy (most definitely).

Maybe there is some kind of inherent brain wiring that is broadly correlated with sex (probably imo)

That happened in the 60s, and the poor lad suffered years of 'treatment' by John Money which included sexualised behaviour, so it's very difficult to disentangle what was going on for him.

He was told he was a boy when he was in his early teens, he later reported that he 'knew' he was a boy earlier. Common sense would suggest that family and friends would have known that Mrs Reimer had given birth to twin boys and I think the final operation to alter his genitals didn't happen till he was nearly two, so his existence as a baby boy was well established - did someone let that fact slip in his presence? did he find some document referring to his birth?

I think his case is too singular, and too unreliably documented by Money, to either prove or disprove innate/constructed gender ID, it's a heart-breaking case of a child being messed up by the very professionals who should have been helping him.

I know exactly what book you mean. Re-read recently. Fascinating in light of what's going on now

@DameMaud if you know, you know

Will have to recommend a re-read elsewhere, where it can't be linked with the plot twist...

Er, no.

Second wave feminists are being proven pretty much correct in their analysis of the separation of sex and gender roles and stereotypes. That is, femininity and masculinity.

In this way of thinking about it, the term “gender” is an adjective not a noun.

And while people may feel that their likes, dislikes, way of behaving in gendered ways, are in part innate, what this might actually show is the extent and strength of socialisation into sex-based stereotypes.

They believed that gender and gender differences were socially constructed not innate.

Not quite. It’s more nuanced than that. Most feminists would argue that in terms of social roles and power, sex is not deterministic.

That is, just because women have babies does not mean women are “naturally “ nurturing in all aspects and roles of their lives.

And so on.

I think it came out later that Money also sexually abused both twins during their psychotherapy with him. One or both of them (can't remember which) then went on to commit suicide. So tragic

To add to the confusion, "performative" doesn't mean "is a performance" as in "an act", despite many people using it to mean this in many contexts.

A performative action, literally speaking, is something (usually language-based) that actually causes a state, or something similar, to come into being. Eg a jury declaring "not guilty" is a performative action because it affects reality for the person being judged.

I was explaining to my OH in a recent conversation that I didn't think it made sense to say someone could be a trans woman "in the closet." Because trans-ing is something that you do. If you don't have the opportunity to wear estrogen patches or get wrap skirts made in your size or whatever else transition might involve, you're just a man who thinks he might like to be a trans woman.
OH said this means I don't believe that trans is a thing. To him, it makes just as much sense to talk of a gay man in the closet as a trans woman in the closet.
I couldn't understand what it was about the would-be-trans-woman that made him different from a fanciful man.

I basically see gender identity as loosely what we would call "masculinity"/"femininity" (acknowledging that what falls under each category changes between cultures and over time) and sex is male/ female.

It's entirely normal for female and feminine to overlap, and it's entirely normal for them to be mutually exclusive.

The idea that they "match" or "are aligned" is inherently sexist imo - anyone female must be in some way feminine, or anyone feminine must be in some way female - makes no sense.

I’m willing to believe that (natural) variances in exposure to and production of various hormones account for some of the ‘feeling like the opposite sex’ (aka having an independent, innate sense of gender) that some people experience, and which in some individuals drives the desire to transition.

Fair enough. I'm not but then plenty of people are.

Dr Cass is clearly happy to believe that having a sense of gender identity is a real thing, as evidenced in the Cass Report (and mentioned above re sections 6 and 8). Gillian Keegan is too - her recent comments on Radio 4 with Emma Barnett are covered on another thread.

The most important things for educators, healthcare providers and law makers to recognise are that a) not everyone does believe in it and b) anyone who does and feels distressed about their own body deserves evidence-based healthcare to unpick and address their distress.

Dr Cass and Gillian Keegan seem to be in broad agreement with point b. Gillian Keegan seems to have (reluctantly?) accepted point a and Dr Cass does acknowledge, in section 8.23, that there are lots of unknowns relating to gender identity.

Yes – I should add that I also believe biological sex is real and immutable, so don’t think the two ideas are mutually exclusive.

I haven’t read the Cass report directly, thanks for sharing.

Butler's theories are nothing more than a crude reappropriation (and not as well-written) as Foucault's theories of constructivism.

She certainly seems to have backtracked on some of her earlier and more persuasive work. Because, if gender is a social construct - something we perform in terms of citation, iteration and reiteration of the new 'subject positions' which form identities (she writes of this in 'Critically Queer') - than how can it be intrinsic? It can't be both.

Like a lot of poststructuralists she's tied herself up in a knot of her own complex theorising.

'Queer' theory started out with some very good concepts and wasn't (to my mind) the root of the evil it's sometimes made out to be. Feminists were really excited about this stuff to start with: it freed us from the essentialism of supposed innate gender and the chains attaching us to the kitchen sink.

It's what it's been bastardised into that sticks in the craw.

Okay, so Butler is using highly technical language that I misunderstood.
So does that mean then that the act of, say, wearing female-coded clothes realises a feminine gender state?

I think the existence of two separate words for the same thing may have caused a lot of trouble in the anglophone world. And..

That Butler should be ignored.

That gender is a synonym for sex (unless referring to grammar or copulation).

That it's most often used in compound nouns - gender norms, acquired gender, gender reassignment, gender recognition, gender identity.

That gender identity is a supposed sense of which sex category the self belongs in and therefore wishes to associate with: it does not entail 'feeling like' members of that category.

That trans people believe that they have a gender identity incongruent with their body, and this is proof that they are really the opposite sex: hence the emphasis on early medicalisation and rewriting the past. This belief is unfalsifiable.

That gender norms, roles, and stereotypes are irrelevant to the trans issue. They are just a collection of ideas about masculinity and femininity that are partly broadly natural and partly culturally contingent, but should not be forced on any one individual. They are useful to trans people for 'acting the part' of their 'true' sex.

Oh so she’s extending the language of speech act theory

So in the sense that ‘acting like’ an x (man/woman/etc) makes it so, purely by virtue of performing the act?

Similar to how simply pronouncing someone husband and wife makes it so?

If you're asking me what Butler means, I can't help, I'm afraid but yes to some extent it looks like that. And tbf it often overlaps with our common understanding of "performance".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity there is a Judith Butler section on there which outlines it.

Myself, I broadly see "gender " as "the expectations or assumptions placed on you by society based on your perceived sex" - slightly different from "gender identity" which is some indefinable feeling that both is and isn't to do with biological sex.

Dr Cass is clearly happy to believe that having a sense of gender identity is a real thing, as evidenced in the Cass Report

I think Dr Cass was happy to take that position. I am pretty sure her remit was to investigate the way gender questioning children were treated, not to investigate gender identity itself.

I totally accept that some people, for whatever reason, strongly wish to have the opposite sex body. I don't think that's really in any doubt. (What is in question is whether anything harmful underlies that wish, or to what extent someone should be helped to have surgery or whatever).

I don't think that's necessarily, now, what "gender identity" always means, although often it is. Read the recent AMA with the very thoughtful trans man - they are in the former camp of simply knowing they want to be biologically male.

There is a huge question in my mind as to why people reach the conclusion that they're "really" the opposite gender. Not that they simply 'want to change their body', but that there is some indefinable essence or characteristic that is only shared by people of that gender and they also have it. (Proving, obviously, that whatever that essence is does present in either sex, but that is never brought up....)

The criteria for gender dysphoria rely heavily on gender stereotypes- "playing with toys often played with by the opposite gender", for example. It's no wonder really that people then use this to conclude there is a thing you can do that "makes you really the opposite gender".

(Old thread on those criteria here)
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4096882-Surely-this-list-of-behaviours-that-challenge-social-convention-are-not-THE-list-used-by-medical-professionals-to-diagnos-gender-dysphoria

I have now looked up this highly specific definition of "performative" in the dictionary:
"of a statement or verb that itself constitutes the action described... opp. of constative".
Does that mean she is asserting that anyone's gender is whatever they say it is?
That seems subtly different to having an intrinsic gender identity but not necessarily incompatible.

It's not necessarily a consistent or lasting state. But I wouldn't get too hung up on Butler - it's not really what most people are referring to when they talk about gender.

"Philosopher and feminist theorist Judith Butler offered a new, more Continental (specifically, Foucauldian) reading of the notion of performativity, which has its roots in linguistics and philosophy of language. They describe performativity as "that reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains."[9] They have largely used this concept in their analysis of gender development.[10]
The concept places emphasis on the manners by which identity is passed or brought to life through discourse. Performative acts are types of authoritative speech. This can only happen and be enforced through the law or norms of the society. These statements, just by speaking them, carry out a certain action and exhibit a certain level of power. Examples of these types of statements are declarations of ownership, baptisms, inaugurations, and legal sentences. Something that is key to performativity is repetition.[11] The statements are not singular in nature or use and must be used consistently in order to exert power.[12]

Performance theory and gender perspectives
Butler explains gender as constructed by repeated acts. Acts that people come to perform in the mode of belief which cite existing norms, analogous to a script. Butler sees gender not as an expression of what one is but as something that one does. The appearance of a gendered essence is merely a "performative accomplishment".[13] Furthermore, they do not see it as socially imposed on a self that is prior to gender, as the self is not distinct from the categories which constitute it. According to Butler's theory, homosexuality and heterosexuality are not fixed categories. For Butler, a person is merely in a condition of "doing straightness" or "doing queerness," where these categories are not natural but historical and socially constititued.[14]
"For Butler, the distinction between the personal and the political or between private and public is itself a fiction designed to support an oppressive status quo: our most personal acts are, in fact, continually being scripted by hegemonic social conventions and ideologies".[15]"