Do you feel that gender identity exists and is innate?

[FairHippopotama]

In progressive circles, there's the concept of 'gender identity' where everyone has a gender (not necessarily corresponding to their sex) that is unchangeable and inherent to them as a person. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?

Quite. Self interest politics. The me me me generation. Or just plain narcissism which has known and defined personality disorders.

Right in my personal viewpoint it’s not but it’s still highly important and we allow self id in those concepts for rights based purposes.
from the nature side you would argue how much is this down to biology and how much is down to the environment? My framework says gender identity is formed from both but it’s a teponse to living in a patriarchal system not innate

Labour isn't the best example.

Now turn that into a political cult (or which there are many examples).

What does what your saying sound like now?

It's age related and subject to indoctrination from elders who use youth for their own aims.
It's period related in that emerged at a time of technological change which there is historic precedence for.

It's not even necessarily about gender stereotypes in this sense - because it follows known patterns - all of which flash and burn out. It's just this one centres on this particular issue.

I just see it as of it's time rather than something specific to sex or gender tbh.

Right but if you get past the semantics isn’t this just really about to what extent self-id, which is allowed in many other contexts and you would probably fight for, such as your right to choose your religion, should inform rights and impact the rights of others. Which is a human issue as long as time no?

No. I just think I'm an individual with my own thoughts and quirks and likes and dislikes. My own good and bad qualities.

I know I'm female because when I look down I see two tits and a vulva. Also because I've been subjected to misogyny, rape and sexism and had different standards expected of me than would be expected of a man.

I don't think my personality is inherently 'female'. I just happen to be one of the two sexes just like everyone else and I'm under no illusion I could ever not be a woman.

It's not healthy to be so focused on feelings all of the time to the extent that we identify with our feelings. Feelings are like weather systems. They come and go and can be triggered by all manner of things.

Even a persistent feeling is not indicative of absolute truth or reality, but is more an indicator of an issue that needs to be addressed in one's life. Most often once you change your perspective your feelings change too.

Identity goes beyond feelings. Identity is the core that holds and integrates the various aspects of the self together. 'Gender' is not an identity, especially when it suggests something so inherently false that you have no sex ( NB), or are not the sex that you are actually are.

People who develop a 'trans' identity seem to have their whole life revolve around that one thing, with a perpetual need to shore it up and defend it.

'Gender' is a post modernistic concept rooted in theories about the self.

Going back to the example of ‘the profound’ statement that ‘I am a mother’ compared to the ‘trivial’ ‘ I am a chess player’ - a key thing about identity is that the salience these roles differ with different people.

Not everyone places being a mother at the forefront of their identity, even when their children are young. This tends to be societally taboo for mothers in a way that it isn’t for fathers. Whilst playing chess might be a fun pastime for some, for others the meaning they give to their chess playing might be salient to their sense of self. When people retire and are no longer ‘a teacher’, they often struggle with their sense of self for a while.

It is notable that where people have a component of their identity that conflicts with their sex, this component often becomes all consuming, drowning out other components - and in turn, this impacts negatively on their quality of life. It is logical that intervention to support quality of life would involve reconnecting the person with other important parts of their sense of self whilst dialling down the significance of gender component that is overwhelming them. The fact that this is considered conversion therapy by many is harmful for those who are struggling.

Those are unhealthy self.interest with no regard for others. But a healthy ego is essential.

A healthy self concept can jnclude how we feel about our sex and societal norms, an unhealthy one places a man's right to see.himself as a smexy lady over women's rights to single.sex spaces, privcy, dignity, etc.

Rights have to be balanced and that has to consider how we impact on others.

'Identity goes beyond feelings.'

Hm. Does it? I guess we get into looking at where feelings and beliefs overlap? But both are mutable. You want to say identity is a sort of meta feeling?

Not that hard to sort out. Where a.space or service is reserved as.single sex that must be on the basis of biological sex. Thats it.

But again, a religion has a definition. A set of rules or beliefs. These are usually written down for everyone to read and understand. There may be disagreement around how to apply the beliefs etc but largely we know what a Christian is (or an amputee, or a pregnant woman... same for any "identities" one might suggest).

The genders don't have that definition.
They say "woman doesn't mean female, it means something else" but will not say what it does mean.

They are unable to say even what differentiates "woman" and "man"... it very quickly becomes circular with no actual objective meaning given.

In fact, you are.called transphobic for asking.

So if someone's identity is woman gender, but that doesn't mean female, I have no idea what it is they are saying about themselves.

Things are either mixed sex or single sex.

'Mixed gender' - in practise that would be mixed sex.(so everyone, meaningless as a classification category)
'Single gender' - meaningless. Gender is infinite and limitless and mutable so we cant use it as a classification category

I think they are arguing that a woman is a subjective term dependent on whoever is interpreting it. That biological characteristics alone cannot account for all the variations across the female species.
to argue against that scientifically isn’t transphobic if you’ve got medical evidence to back it up as we’ve seen with the Olympics.

Labour isn’t the best example of what? I think it stands as a reasonable exemplar of how two people might hold equal value to something but only one adopts this as a part of their identity?

People can become obsessed or indoctrinated by something without it reaching their sense of who they are.

Gender identity is a pile of crap invented by academics. I no more have a gender identity than I do a foot size identity or a belly button identity. Sexism is real. Sex stereotypes are real and women get the shit ones.

Tbf I could argue you do have a foot size identity due to living in a capitalist and patriarchal society where your foot size means something. Men make jokes about big feet all the time 😂😂
I won’t but that did make me laugh

Not the way some people talk about it, as if it’s something that just trumps everything else.

But in the other hand I believe gender exists and is not always negative. There seems to be a very strong urge in humans to ascribe meaning to sex beyond the purely physical. Clothes always have meaning and context in time, like a one piece swimming costume being quite covered up at the beach but shocking in church, or my mum growing up said that women who came to their house for lunch in the 30s and 40s wore specific types of hat to go out routinely and kept them on for the meal, but that would be very out there on both counts now. It’s why just saying ‘wear what you like’ doesn’t quite work if it means we’re expected not to react - some things will always be outside convention, including what is conventional for your sex, and I think the reasons why people break those conventions vary. Tbh commerce plays into it - I’m sure the hat industry would love to bring those days back, and women get cigarettes and alcohol sold to them as liberating gender-defying forces despite the specific impacts of these things on female bodies. Previous gender moral norms also cloaked those impacts though. It was shocking in the 30s to see a pregnant woman drink and it was a fake liberation for women to be sold higher alcohol intake as a good thing, even if removing the misogynistic judgment was an improvement.

It’s so fluid and not sensible to pin down into law or in medicine, but yes, I think gender has a cultural presence that we can’t just ignore.

I am skeptical about ‘gender identity’ being a stand alone phenomenon, but there is no getting away from the fact that for some people, gendered ideas form an integral part of their sense of who they are/ their identity.

Are you saying their is no such thing as identity - at all, or gendered ideas dit outside of elements that identities comprise of?

So if someone thought it meant "person who has a pet cat", that would be fine with them and society should be ordered along those lines (and any other meanings people make up)?

I find it hard to believe that people expect it to be essentially meaningless (if it can mean literally anything, it has no meaning).

People make a really big deal about changing from woman gender to man gender.

They must mean something, but they will not say what.

Perhaps there are hints that it's related to societal or cultural understandings of femininity or masculinity, but this is never made explicit, because it would reveal a sexist conflation of female-bodied/ feminine and male-bodied/masculine etc.

"100 women in X industry" lists having men on them. Men and boys taking women's and girls' medals, team places, and sports-related scholarships. Men being granted access to the relative safety of women's prisons, dormitories, DV shelters, rape centres, and showers at the expense of the women.

Well they’re not wrong. It can mean a person who has a pet cat, and arguably they could expand the definition of woman to include - could possibly have a pet cat.
the question is at what point does this just become pointless?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-critical_feminism slight aside, but have just seen this on Wikipedia. Its incredibly skewed and misrepresents most gender critical women’s approach. Sigh.

Wikipedia is utterly captured and dissenting voices get banned.

Its bonkers.