So what exactly is gender?

[XChrome]

I'm still waiting for [redacted], to explain in depth what gender is. According to many people, it's a feeling, a self-perception, which they are labelling as gender. My question would be; how do the people who are using this label for a feeling know that the label they are giving it is accurate? How do they know it's not just the result of being socialized into believing certain feelings or interests signify that one is the gender that society has deemed corresponds to those feelings and interests?
I genuinely want to know, because I have never had this feeling in my life. I can perceive only my biological sex. I have always regarded my self-perception as the result of my individual personality and experiences, not about either gender or biological sex. However, many of those experiences are sex specific, so biological sex does play into it in that sense.

Can anybody answer this question about what gender is? Can you describe the feeling and explain how you know what it signifies? Please note that this is not a goading post. I'm not looking for an argument, just an explanation.
Thanks.

[Post edited by MNHQ to remove tag]

Anyway, @AuntyBumBum, that's the funniest name on this site lol

No, I wasn't, I was talking about brain development and the possible biological basis for what we assume is gendered behaviour.

Can you give some examples of what you mean by gendered behaviour?

Doesn't feel like a burn, because it makes perfect sense. What we're talking about, however, is not sense but feeelz.

So, like the brain, there are sex based differences, but you could have a male kidney transplant, and it would be identifiable as a male organ working in a female body.

Stop talking sense, OK! This is not about transplants, but about the organs a person was born with. I understand Circumferences to be referring to the 'born in the wrong body' narrative. Males identify themselves as having a woman's brain in a man's body, and that therefore they feeeeel they are a woman, and we're supposed to take this seriously and lesbians are supposed to have sex with ladydick etc etc etc. How come nobody claims that they were born with their kidneys in the wrong body, that they have women's kidneys in their male body? Why doesn't that make them a woman with ladydick?

Ok. Young kids play. Obviously it's a massively socially influenced area, inescapably so. But, there is evidence that girls who have been exposed to higher levels of androgens in the womb prefer toys typically categorised as boy's toys.

There could be other explanations for this preference of course, and this suggest an interesting one.

https://theconversation.com/how-we-inherit-masculine-and-feminine-behaviours-a-new-idea-about-environment-and-genes-82524

So, like the brain, there are sex based differences, but you could have a male kidney transplant, and it would be identifiable as a male organ working in a female body.

So how can someone have a female brain in a male body without an organ transplant?

No. You're not.

Yeah sorry I personally edited my post above because the entire train of thought is so ridiculous

I never said they could.

there is evidence that girls who have been exposed to higher levels of androgens in the womb prefer toys typically categorised as boy's toys.

I read the article you linked to. This is what it says about that:

This study found that girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), who are exposed in utero to unusually high levels of androgens (the group of steroid hormones that include testosterone), show a reduced tendency to mimic the behaviour of women and “obey” gender labels.

This may explain the greater interest of girls with CAH in “boy toys”

It's specifically about girls with CAH, which is a disorder affecting the body's ability to produce hormones.

It also says this:

In other words, sex affects the brain, but this doesn’t mean that there are two distinct types of brains – “male brains” and “female brains”.

But I'm not sure why you think it's so important to find a 'cause' for some people not conforming to stereotypical gender norms.

Same here. Gender used to be a polite way to say sex, one that didn't imply sexual intercourse. At some point gender started to be defined as gender stereotypes, which was definitely not the definition years ago.

Monkey - what is your actual argument? Can you have a think and rephrase it so that we can understand what it is you are trying to say?

Gender used to be a polite way to say sex

Only from the mid 1990s. Gender for anything other than grammar wasn't used outside academic writing until the mid 1980s. I remember the first time a colleague wondered whether to use 'gender' instead of 'sex' of a form he was designing - that was in 2003 and we all thought he was nuts.

Because the OP was asking what gender was and it provided an example of a possible biological explanation for some of what we assume is mostly a social construct.

I get the feeling that your trans hostility is clouding your objectivity and it's pointless discussing it further.

Bye now.

Did you explain what gender is in response to the OP's request? I must have missed that post.

Who is the 'we' you keep referring to in your posts? You and who else assume that differing behaviour between the sexes is "mostly a social construct"?

There have been many posts on here commenting on the differences in behaviour between the sexes, such as men being more violent than women in all societies, indicating that this is likely an innate difference rather than a socially constructed one.

What do you mean by 'trans hostility'? Is it because I don't believe that people can be 'born in the wrong body' and have an opposite sex brain to the rest of their body? This is just self-evident scientific fact.

I assume that last post was the poster's final flourish now they don't have anything further they can say about "gendered brains" @OldCrone

Not that they've really said anything much before that. I've just gone back and read all the posts.

Oh well that seems like a comprehensive reply that will really get people thinking

FWIW I think you guys were a bit harsh there. Not that anyone need give a shit what I think, obviously.

In what sense? From what I saw the poster accused people of posting responses from ChatGPT and suggested it was "unfortunate" that they couldn't have a brain transplant.

I tried to engage but the poster didn’t seem to want to talk about sex based behavioural differences (which I 100% believe are a thing at population level)

I’m not sure they’d thought things through very well and they weren’t interested in taking to refine their views <shrug>

Just my impression. Don't want to get into a fight.

I thought it was a male goose, or don't they have those any more? 🤔

Sock puppet frenzy

If you think people are sock puppeting, you can report them to MNHQ. Just press the report button.

Or explain your argument like an adult?