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?

So basically your conclusion is gender stereotypes are a load of wishynwashy bollocks we should all ignore? Got it.

Sometimes it is a good idea to look at other animals. Human beings are animals after all.

Why don't other animals, who are mammals like us, have a 'gener identity'?

Can other mammals change sex?

If a male mammal that is not a human, but has cryptorchidism, is still male, why are some people arguing that humans are different (cryptorchid male = female)?

If a castrated male mammal that is not a human is still male, why are some people arguing that humans are different (castrated male = woman)?

Sexual dimorphism is real. You cannot surgically turn a male rat into a female rat, for example. There have been some horrific experiments done with rats in this area. They were not a success.

Humans suffer from hubris. We are not that special, we are just mammals and obey the laws of biology just as our fellow mammals do.

I'm not saying all the stereotypes are necessarily useful. But they do tend to be true on average, and some of them are definitely more true than others e.g. height as a biological one, wearing dresses as a clothing one. On the whole, all of them together, they are useful.

I don't see this as being muddled at all. How do others here think people determine whether others are male or female?

'cis women' is not a personal attack. Here, 'the truth' matters more than respecting others' feelings: I would rather use standard terminology that only means and connotes 'non-trans' for the majority of people (and is what I intend it to) rather than use politically sided language.

If you hadn't told us that you're a teenager, I would have guessed you were very young from this statement.

No, 'cis' means absolutely nothing to the majority of the population. I only came across it myself in this particular context about 10 years ago. Most people who have heard of it would only know it from its scientific context or because they've studied Latin. It is about as far removed from standard terminology as it could get.

A large proportion of people think that a 'trans woman' is a woman who wants to be a man. Very young people like you have a very skewed idea of most people's knowledge of these issues. We're a bit of an exception on here because many of us have been discussing this for years.

You might think that 'cis' is standard terminology because you're not old enough to remember a time (only about 10 years ago) when it was only used in chemistry or by Latin scholars.

Earlier in the thread I posted an archive link to the talk guidelines for this part of mumsnet which were brought in 10 years ago. This is what they said concerning the use of 'cis':

https://archive.ph/XbZ8U

That said, it’s clear that most trans people find the use of pronouns or names that they or others have consciously rejected, to be hurtful and would therefore struggle to engage in a discussion with those who insist on using them. The same is true of the expression ‘Trans-Identified Male’ or ‘TIM’. Likewise, many feminists are affronted by the term ‘cis’ and ‘terf’, so using these terms will make civil debate less likely. As we’ve said, context is everything – but our moderation team will most likely delete these expressions if we feel they're being used in a deliberately inflammatory way.

Even back then it was recognised as an offensive term, and it's no different today.

That isn't me, I swear. We might be making similar arguments though.

Which of these ladies is a man in his 50s?

Useful to do what? At an individual level, I mean.
Gendered interests are great if you want to sell things to groups women or men. Clothes, for example. Candles, hockey sticks, I dunno.

Not useful when you're trying to do anything where sex actually matters.

Harmful if you're employing someone, perhaps they need to have a height requirement, but instead of having 'must be 6' tall' as a criterion, you say 'must be male'.

Absolutely. I’ve often mentioned this in the context of these discussions. One of my cats had to have his penis amputated when he was only a year or two old (ongoing urinary blockages). He also has no testicles as these were obviously removed when he was a kitten. He is still recorded as a male cat at the vets and the vet still says ‘he’ when we are discussing the cat. It would be completely illogical to think or say that the cat is now female- why is it any different for humans? I’ve noticed that some of the younger generation look shocked when someone points out that humans are animals!

We use our eyes.

I think it's worth commenting though that without an inherent gender identity, there is no divide between gender and sex. For people who aren't transgender, their gender is equivalent to the one corresponding to their sex.

I've just come back to this thread and I'm posting as I read, so this might have been said already, but this is utter nonsense.

The conventional difference between gender and sex is that sex is biological and gender is the imposition of stereotypes due to sex.

Gender identity is, like 'cis', a new term which has only appeared in the last 10-20 years. There is no need for this term in order to understand that sex is biological, gender is stereotypes.

As for the second sentence the phrase 'their gender' makes no sense to those of us who accept the conventional definition of gender, because people don't 'have' a gender. The stereotypes are imposed from outside. Using this definition, what is a gender identity other than a liking for the stereotypes of one sex or the other?

I think this helps illustrate my point more than anything. The main differences that lead people to conclude the second person is male are their height and sharp jawline--two generally true gender stereotypes. Besides their jaw, their face could easily be that of a female's. Their shoulders are as shallow as the others there. Their haircuts are similar.

Well he was a sexist misogynistic idiot who used the sane arguments youre using. But to be fair, you haven’t suggested TW are women because they cry a lot so theres that .

My parents and extended family had lots of expectations of me, especially since I was the first girl born into the family for a couple of generations. I hated it aged 8. I still hate it. But I am definitely a woman. Gender is a load of nonsense.

They aren't useful at at an individual level, apart from determining others' sexes as I've said.

As for a middle ground, forget it. Some of us came to this debate a decade or more ago thinking there could be a middle ground, but it's impossible to find a middle ground between what is fundamentally a men's rights movement and feminism.

Errr no. Really no. That really tall one is a woman according to him. So you’re saying we can’t tell if he’s a woman cis he’s got long hair? You can tell you never lived through the 80s lol.

Exactly.

Women and children are spectacularly good at identifying sex. Men are less so. No matter what we're wearing or doing, the different angles of our legs due to the shape of our pelvises means the gait of men and women is different, amongst many others, which is why in real life transwomen and transmen rarely pass.

Sex is fixed in mammals. People are either female or male. If they grow to adulthood they are women or men - like horses are mare or stallions, like cats are queens or toms. Woman is the word for a fully grown female human; girl is for a young one.

Society imposes gendered expectations on women and men. GC feminists reject those expectations as damaging. We assert a man in a frock who likes flower arranging is just as much a valid man as a bloke who goes to the gym 7 days a week and reads SAS novels. (indeed, the same man can do all those things.

Woman is not a gendered word, it is a sex-specific word. Our sex, female.

It is grossly offensive to claim we are cis when we wholeheartedly reject the sexist assumptions that come with the concept of a gender identity.

OK... but what's that got to do with gender identity?
(Entirely my fault that I haven't kept up with the whole thread so I'm asking you to condense your points that you have possibly already made!)

I don't dispute that people can't change sex. Obviously, your cat is still male - his biology (apart from primary sex characteristics) remains exactly the same.

Tbf he’s a little bit politer than Howse who called us all manner of names and also claimed to be female from time to time.

Gender stereotypes change over time

I said this to another user, but I don't comprehend this argument. The overall population of people who identify as transgender is roughly equal in terms of sex. I think it was 0.52% of the UK population are female and say they're trans and 0.56% are male and say they're trans.

But if you look at just people aged 16 to 24 years, you see that trans-identified females are much more common than trans-identified males, more than 2:1 I believe. They are also much more likely to identify as non-binary rather than simply the opposite gender.

The gender-affirming movement at the moment is a movement for the rights of these females too. In due time, it will be more a movement for females than for males. It's not a 'men's rights movement'.

Oh for heaven's sake - he looks like what he is, a middle aged man. Nothing to do with gender expectations, everything to do with being biologically male.

If we're going to play "you can't tell" you might as well stop now, @FairHippopotama .

Yesterday I went for a walk in the park. I chatted to a young woman who mentioned she was waiting for her boyfriend. As we turned, I saw what was clearly a young woman who was on testosterone. Female frame, female gait, small hands and feet. She had a mustache and receding hair and that strange thickened voice testosterone give to trans-identifying women, but not for a second was I under the misapprehension she was male.

It happens a lot in my area, there's a large trans community. That's fine, but in no way are we unaware of who's which sex.

I think the OPs views are wishy-washy nonsense of a hotchpotch of we should be nice and stereotypes don't matter until they do but without having the first fucking clue about the law or safeguarding and impact to anyone but themselves and we should all magically know who is legit and who is a bell end and the assumption that validation is a positive not negative thing to do in all situations. And may possibly remove rights from the sister. Oh and btw they think their sister has mental health issues which were not dealt with appropriately at the time.

It's such utter bollox.

And somehow we are all supposed to play along with this utterly ridiculous situation.

Which other people who are pro-trans also might not necessarily agree with.

Facepalm.