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?

The talk pages are, as always, enlightening about the bias involved.

Trying to discuss whether the concept of 'gender identity' exists is genderwang's version of 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin'. Nobody can ever define it, they tell people to google it for a definition, nobody can show anyone where it is, or describe what it is and yet countries changed laws based on it.

A complete and utter waste of time.

No, I don't really believe in gender. Sex stereotypes, sure, but that's just personality. A woman can have short hair, muscles, date women, like sports, and be entirely masculine in stereotype but she's still a woman.

It's never clear what gender even is. Is it adhering to stereotypes, in which case it means nothing because personality doesn't change what you are? Is it approach to your biological sex, in which case it means nothing compared to sex. Or is it sone vague, innate feeling a person has that is neither provable nor clear?

I reckon it can sometimes be useful, but its very much misapplied.

The issue is that some people decided sex (testable and immutable) as a category should be discarded in favour of gender identity (vague, undefined, not discernible).

More broadly arguing an internal subjective feeling should override a shared stable and understood category.

The ideas are deliberately muddled and often apply bait and switch to issues, as well as outright lies.

Where's the diagram about washing up? That was a succint summary.

No.

Society decides what's masculine and feminine, and this is different throughout cultures (e.g. wearing a skirt vs. wearing a kilt).

People's personality aligns with this in some areas and others not, in part due to nature and in part due to nurture. The elements of the cultural masculine/feminine you align with is what some might call "gender identity" ... to then decide you're a different sex based on this arbitrary (and flexible) notion is absolute batshittery.

For example, I would say I'm a relatively 'masculine' woman (because according to British culture, the stuff I do, the way I act and the things I'm interested in are associated more with masculinity). Today it's hot weather and I have been looking at summer dresses because I sort of fancy wearing one - a stereotypically female thing to do but not my usual behaviour. Did I suddenly switch gender identity? No...

Also I have given birth and breastfed my daughter, and am currently on my period. No amount of DIY, watching Sci-Fi/Fantasy and wearing clodhopper shoes is going to change that.

I'd personally say it is an internal sense of consistency of self - rather than 'a feeling' which firmly attaches itself to sepcific content. A stability; a core; an integral 'centre'. I suppose you could call a that a 'meta feeling'.

I think when we attach our sense of 'identity' to certain content - then to some extent we are creating a persona with very specific definitions and outlines which can slip, quite easily, into performative stances and poses. -to which we cling for safety or security or through which we signal our sense of self to others.

The trouble today is that people are told/instructed that they have a gender identity. This is foisted on staff on training days, it is taught in schools....

I was never exposed to any of this and I completely reject it.

But plenty of people have clearly been given something to think about and a sizeable number have decided that yes, in fact, yes, they DO have a gender ID and yes, omg it IS different from their bio sex.

And some people will applaud that self-discovery and others, like me, will think "what a load of rubbish".

None of the child development experts came up with this idea. It was never before seen as an important issue in childhood. It has been delivered to children as truth when in fact it is just something some adults dreamed up.

I don't believe there is such a thing as an innate sense of gender identity because gender identity is a dubious concept, but I think it's possible that people do have an innate sense of what sex they are. The main reason I think this is because of the famous David Reimer case - the little boy who lost his penis in a botched circumcision and was brought up as a girl, but who nonetheless strongly believed himself to be a boy, and as an adult lived as a man before dying by suicide.

I think it's almost impossible that we can know for sure, however, because you can't carry out an experiment of bringing people up as the opposite sex, or not informing them of their sex, and then waiting to see if they work out correctly what sex they are.

The obvious question that follows on is whether someone's innate sense of their sex could be different from their actual sex and my answer to that is - who knows? It seems unlikely, though.

David Reimer had an identical twin brother. I don't think it would require innate senses for him to realise something was up. And castration in infancy would not block all physical indicators of sex, so there would be physical tells for him and others to notice.

Unfortunately there have been attempts to bring up kids without telling them or anyone else what sex they are - so-called "theybies". The ones I can remember seeing follow up on have grown up thinking themselves some kind of colourful NB/fluid gender. But why would you pick one when both sides are being painted as monotone?

No.

I am female because I was born in a female body.

I have no idea if my feelings are the same as those of any other female. How could I possibly know? I only know what it is like to be me.

I like some things that are stereotypically considered to be things that women and girls like. I also like lots of things that are often considered to be things men and boys like.

I sometimes wear trousers, I sometimes wear dresses (not skirts though, I don't own any skirts). Neither option makes me 'feel' anything..they're just clothes.

I have no gender identity. I am just me.

I have no idea if my feelings are the same as those of any other female. How could I possibly know? I only know what it is like to be me.

How is it that you can distill into three sentences what took me several paragraphs to articulate at 23:30 yesterday?

Well, religion is supposed to be like that. There's no point in faith with certainty; there's no point in faith without doubt.

But the gender-affirming movement insist that an innate gender identity is perfectly logical with complete certainty and no doubt.

I'm sorry if it offends you, but it really is the best word to use to mean what I'm using it to mean. I'm not typing out 'people who aren't trans' every time.

I think there's a lot of truth to what you're saying, but you're also massively oversimplifying it. 'Self-esteem issues' is certainly one way to put it. A combination of feeling pressured during puberty due to the societal expectations placed upon women (or those she perceived) and the influence of ADHD and autistic tendencies encapsulates it better.

'Enabling' is a harsh accusation. There's not a thing me or my parents could have done to convince my sister otherwise. She was certainly enabled by a certain (online) narrative. If she had received therapy (maybe CBT?) re. the things I mentioned above, I doubt she would be trans. It's just that those pressures manifested as what she saw as gender dysphoria, but it really wasn't.

She may not ultimately be male, but that doesn't mean I have to cause offence and use feminine pronouns and her deadname in front of her. Maintaining a level of respect for others' feelings sometimes comes above the truth.

Late to the party, but no I don't think it is a thing in the way GI says.

I do think all humans have a kind of sense of self that develops and becomes stable over time (if they are healthy) which incorporates many things including biological things and social and cultural things and relations to other people.

And I think there are identity disorders where these things are not stable or are otherwise unhealthy.

Just say "women".

That's what we are. We don't need another word to qualify "women".

No

I wouldn't agree with you re. 'agender'. As far as I understand, 'I don't like the question' or especially 'I don't understand the question' is much more likely to equate to not being trans, rather than agender, which is typically included as a form of being non-binary.

I'm sorry that I used 'cisgender', but I was using it to mean people who identify with the gender corresponding to their sex. All that really means is that you're comfortable being described as a woman (given the expectations, roles, and norms surrounding women).

Being agender - not identifying with a specific gender - is not the same thing as not identifying with gendered stereotypes. I am a gender abolitionist; I don't believe men must be masculine and women must be feminine, and so on. Despite the fact that I'm not fully masculine in everything I do and all my behaviours, I still identify as a man because I have no reason to otherwise. There's nothing internal that tells me I'm a man, and my personality (along with all human personalities) is too unique to be neatly characterised as masculine, but the very fact that I have no sense of self or inherent understanding of my own 'gender identity' makes me a (cisgender) man. Does that make sense? (I hope no one has qualms with male users.)

Apologies also for characterising it as a journey. I just wanted to highlight what I saw as a similarity.

It's quite helpful jargon for this subject. I use it to mean whatever you see as the opposite of transgender. I can anticipate people accusing academia of being controlled by the gender-affirming movement, but lots of neutral academic articles use it.

I actually had no idea that the gender-critical movement was this opposed to the term 'cisgender', to the extent that some of you seem to think you are agender. Although I now recognise the offence some people take, I will continue to use it because (a) I am simply using it to mean someone who isn't trans, someone who doesn't consider themselves to have transitioned, (b) it's widely seen as a neutral term, and (c) I don't think your offence is reasonable. I am sorry for our disagreement.

I'm seething so much (and I can't imagine I'm alone) that there is no guarantee that this post will be coherent. But here goes:

I am a woman. I was born female; I have never identified as anything other than a woman. When you label me "cis" you are consigning me to a subset of my own sex. There are women and there are trans-identifying men. There seems to be nothing stopping them calling themselves "trans women" but when you refer to women as "cis women" you are implying equivalence. As if there are two types of women.

I find myself wondering who the hell you think you are to come on here, impose a much-hated and long argued against label on women and then, when challenged, blithely mansplain it away as "convenient" (to you and only you). This was never a benign thread, was it? This was always a covert attempt to reintroduce language we threw back at you years ago. I make no apology for telling you that you turn my stomach.

You continue to use it then. I hope and pray that whilst you continue to use it people refrain from responding to you. Someone who deliberately sets out to offend, having been told they are being offensive, is not worthy of consideration. And I absolutely do not believe that you did not know it was offensive, given that on some platforms your post would be deleted for using it.

I'm glad you brought this up; I expected it sooner!

The Reimer case is one of the first things I saw cited by gender-affirming people in an attempt to prove that we do have an innate gender identity. But I agree with you; it doesn't show that dysphoria etc. is related to some intangible identity but rather that it relates to your sex and how society treats you as a result of your sex.

I do think that someone's internal sense of self regarding their sex can be different from their actual sex though. I mean, even before the 'gender brigade' many other people mention, gender dysphoria was recognised as a real (medical) thing. I see it as a mismatch in between someone's conception of themselves and their sex and they way their treated because of their sex that typically emerges at a very young age and is more common in males than females. Other presentations seem like a different beast altogether to me, but that's besides the point.

The issue is I'm not always referring just to women, and even if I am, there's a number of people who would include trans women (i.e. males) in that. If I did as you suggested, I would end up with the same problem but with gender-affirming people instead, who would question why I am so discriminatory that I don't even consider trans people as ('real') men or women. The only other option would be to use 'non-trans', but I would prefer to use an actively defined word, or a word that seems actively defined, rather than outright define the vast majority simply through the negative.

"Cis-gender" implies acceptance of the gendered baggage of womanhood (over and above the fact of female sex), which I'd guess most of us here do not, or not wholesale.
It feels offensive because the subtext of that is "you haven't identified out of being a woman so you must like and want all that shit." We don't!
It makes no sense, as a concept, in the context of gender critical feminism - where womanhood is attached to sex, not gender, so rejecting gender conformity doesn't require repudiating one's sex.