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?

thats debated even in academia

I'm me.
I've never been fond of labels beyond that.

That's because academia invented the whole thing.

That's nothing to do with people thinking that they have an innate gender identity.

Right sorry don’t think gender identity is innate. I think that’s enforced by the society we live in: but everyone has one because of this and you can’t just deny that. How you experience the world has been informed by gender stereotypes. To pretend otherwise is just kidding yourself:

Football in the UK is a “boys” sport.

football (soccer) in the US is a “girls” sport.

so if gender is innate, why does it differ between societies?

Uhm…I’m not really sure, I understand what anyone is actually talking about.

I’m pretty sure that if I were 30 years younger I’d be gender fluid or gender confused or gender non conforming, based on my expression of gender but actually I just fossilised in the fashions of my early twenties the 1990s.

That doesn’t mean that I feel like anything other than an adult woman, in so far as I even know what an adult woman feels like. I don’t think I feel like a man, but I really couldn’t say for certain, never having been one. Although I quite enjoy occasionally playing male characters in RPGs and writing male fictional characters.

I’ve even less of a grasp on what an identity is. Back in the early days of social media we all had tickets and signatures with short hand phrases but these identifiers seem to have morphed into identities which is a curious psychological puzzle indeed. Identity used to refer to something that was both complex and nebulous, but now is more straightforward and fixed.

I’m not even sure we’re talking about the same thing anymore?

You first OP.

Of course gender pervades society. But that's a very different claim to the idea that everyone is born with an innate gender identity that usually but not always conveniently lines up with their sex.

That idea of innate gender identity is what this thread is asking about. And it's pretty clearly regressive bollocks.

What I struggle with is where the "identity" part comes in.
If somebody born male says "I wish I was a woman" (meaning "one of those people born with a female body" or even "I feel I should have been one of those people", then what they're saying makes sense as far as it goes, as a description of a feeling, but it doesn't constitute an identity because they are talking about something they are not', not something they are. If they say "I am one of those people", they are still talking about something they are not, because they don't have a female body, so it still isn't an identity that they really have.

Which means that the "woman" they identify as actually being (rather than merely wishing they were) must be something other than "a person born with a female body". So what is it?

No, gender identity is a load of bollocks.

Nope.

Fair I was focused on q1 - does it exist? And my answer is unfortunately yes and you’d have to go and live in the wilderness to avoid it

See, I think you're just confusing matters by using the word 'gender'.

Sexism is about Sex. Its based on negative sex stereotypes, ie a stereotype of what a man or a woman is, or should be like.

I object to you saying sexism is due to gender, because that implies (although i take your point that it's not something you personally believe) that it's something a person has a choice over.

I know some people use gender to talk about the mechanism by which society oppresses women , but the OP was about gender identity. My point was even if you believe you have one, people will treat you according to your sex. Calling sex 'gender' used to be considered a politeness, but this habit has massively muddied the water.

Edit for typo

Agree hence the fact it’s all naval gazing bollocks

I get told be nice. Be kind. Don’t do this. Women do this. Ai is like the Orwellian thought police and sexism is embedded into the models becuase it’s embedded into society. And most of society’s claims about women are based in old fashioned roles about what a woman is supposed to be rather than the biology of what one is. So how can I differ when gender expectations are drilled into me because of my sex?

Or maybe girls don't cut their hair short anymore because they don't want to be assumed to be 'trans'? 🤷

Fishing with dynamite is real and it works.

Gender identity is a load of shit.

No, it;s sex that is unchangeable. I do hardly anything associated with female stereotypes but that doesn't make me a man.

I call it personality.

Yes some girls are born with a macho personality, often with masculine features, and some boys are born girlie, often with feminine features. I do agree with gender theory that the personality becomes apparent between the 2nd and 3rd birthday and I can understand children feeling they are a better fit for the opposite sex when they start to differentiate between the two sexes. But that doesn't make the child the opposite sex so parents need to learn to love their sissy boy or their tomboy girl and within reason allow them to dress how they want and play with who and what they want. The chances are they will have a homosexual adult child one day.

I’m female. I don’t where skirts or dresses. I live in jeans and jumpers. I’m not on the ‘feminine’ side of being a woman. But I am female and I am a women. Gender is a ridiculous social construct based on stereotypes. It means absolutely nothing.

John Money. He performed a penectomy on a baby boy whose circumcision had gone wrong and tried to raise him as a girl.

The whole sorry affair, which ended in the suicide of the boy who was genitally mutilated, would never have happened if Americans didn't routinely and needlessly circumcise their sons.

@mattala - you seem to be making off-topic comments about "gender" in the sense of "expectations about the sexes" which isn't really relevant to the concept of "innate gender identity" the OP is asking about.

We don't dispute "gender" in the former sense exists - that's why we call ourselves "gender critical" - we say such expectations are bad. And that we don't improve things by pretending individuals can opt out by claiming a different "gender identity", implying those who don't claim a "gender identity" are somehow opting in.

We are opting out without endorsing the concept of "gender identity" that is just a reification of sexism.

Sexism doesn't go away by fucking up the necessary handling of sex with the invention of "gender identity", leading to putting men in women's sports, prisons etc. That just creates yet another form of sexism on top.

The legal basis of the EA2010 in the UK is quite solid - sexism is illegal, except in the cases where sex matters. So we are, legally, a non-gendered society. The law accurately describes the most progressive position. Obviously that doesn't mean sexism doesn't exist, any more than murder being illegal means murder doesn't happen. But we are clearly legally in the correct place compared to where we were decades ago, and many societies still are.

Except for the recent Stonewall-led trend for men to be counted as women due to "gender identity" in the places where sex matters - now clarified as illegal in the Supreme Court.

I'd recommend this video, which I've always thought gets to the bottom of what's wrong with responding to sexism with "gender identity", rather than just feminism.

Magdalen Berns - RE: “I asked my Corporate Job if I could Wear the Men's Uniform”

What a pile of crap.
Yes the uk is a sexist society with some gender stereotypes. I however fit none of them and never have.
Sexism has nothing to do with gendered souls or identities its wholly to do with a person's sex (usually female).
Nice try thought

I think some people have a gender identity. Most of the time, I don't have a GI but sometimes I do. Sometimes I have gender dysphoria. It might be because of trauma, traumatic brain injuries, my C-PTSD, or my dissociative disorder. I don't think it was innate in my case, though it might have been. My earliest memories involve abuse so I can't even guess how I felt before that.

The girl across the street from where I lived as an adult always identified as a boy. I'm not sure why. She transitioned to a transman when she was 27. (I still think of her as a girl/woman.) She seems relatively happy. I don't think her gender identity has changed.

I've known other people who felt strongly that they had a gender identity, usually the same as their sex but sometimes not. For most, it never changes but it does for some.

Even though I think that some people have a gender identity that's important to them, I think that sex, which is immutable, is almost always more important. A lot of my trauma was because I was a girl/am a woman. I tried to identify out of my childhood sexual abuse but it didn't work.