Is "gender identity" real?

[ByTheRiverside]

I'd like to hear your thoughts!

TRAs argue that being "transgender" is a real thing. They think there's some distinct quality to the way someone perceives themselves as a male or female, magically unobserved, that lives in the brain called "gender identity".

For my opinion - Sex Realists don't believe in this concept. We believe "transgender" is a lie, and that people are either male or female. That "gender identity" is a made-up idea that masks all of the obvious issues like autism, internalised homophobia, misogyny, sexism, sexual fetishes, etc.

What are your thoughts? Does "gender identity" exist in everyone, and are any "trans" people "valid" because of it?

And a follow-up question: As we know "gender identity" isn't real, is it possible to "prove a negative" here and come up with a hypothesis that may disprove it?

You are confusing gender with sex.

Gender is a set of made up ‘rules’ based on stereotypes and control. No one is born with a gender, it’s imposed on us from birth.

However we are born either male or female, but that’s sex. Not gender.

Let me repeat my post from the last page again for you:

Oh for heaven's sake. I'm making a joke.

"Agender? Yes, you have a gender. Female!"

That's it. I didn't just become a transgender ideologist in the space of hours.

It isn't in the least bit real. There wasn't even any such thing as a "gender identity" until 5 minutes ago

It's about as real as that delusion some people had that they were made of glass. They really believed that too. Didn't make it real.

Oh God not another poll

Gender identify is a psychological condition so nobody can prove it does or doesn’t exist. The comment about it being “magically unobserved” is silly - you can’t see pain, anxiety or desire but nobody argues about their existence.

i think you have to look at it in more scientific and less political way. Ask open-minded questions such a as “does the concept of gender identity explain these behaviours better or worse than other theories?”

It doesn't. The other issues do explain it, though. Maybe we should update the definition for gender identity?

Gender Identity: A group of internal belief systems that people hold that erroneously convince them they are of the opposite sex. These reasons are -
For females:

• Internalised misogyny
• Desire to escape the issues of womanhood
• External pressure
• Autism
• Trauma
• Autoandrophilia (Rare)

For males:

• Internalised homophobia
• Autogynephilia
• Sexist beliefs

Regarding autism - remember that correlation does not equal causation. Nobody knows whether what appears to be a higher incidence of autism among transgender people is because autism is the cause or whether it is something else entirely eg people with gender dysphoria are more likely to see psychiatrists and psychologists so their autism is more likely to be spotted.

This is an example of "ignore your eyes and ears". We know what it means when people, especially children, claim to be something that they're not. Fantasy-mindedness.

Ask open-minded questions such a as “does the concept of gender identity explain these behaviours better or worse than other theories?”

I agree with @ByTheRiverside : it doesn't. There's literally no need to posit the existence of gender identity to explain anything. There are other, reasonable explanations to all these behaviours.

i prefer to go with science, rather than anecdotal evidence that I can see and hear. The research is far from complete but you are talking in black and white terms as if if has been extensively studied and there is widespread agreement. We don’t actually know one way or the other, so I am remaining open-minded.

You are taking a political stance rather than a position based on facts, robust evidence and data.

I have not voted because none of the questions cover my answer. I believe that gender identity is a belief. So there are real people with this belief so they “exist”

in the past I’d have agreed that I had a gender identity but as I’ve learned more I don’t think that.

Im female - thats biological fact amd separate from identity.

i dont have a gender identity because I don’t believe in that system snd because there are many aspects of my life which are non conforming to stereotypes of male/female - but I’d never say that those choices make me male - having a male coded job or hairy legs/poor female grooming sometimes shouldn’t impact anyone’s identity

So for me gender identity is not “real” in the same way im not a catholic or a Buddhist. But I can see that others really believe, and adopt life practices in line with their beliefs, so GI is “real” for them.

And as it’s not necessarily readily observable or measurable by others in the way that sex is, it’s not a stable category that can be used for situations where sex matters.

ETA sex is immutable and real. Identity is performed or as a result of choices made, therefore changeable over time - so if the latter is real it’s not necessarily stable

No, gender is based on stereotypes!

I think gender identity is more akin to personality or likes. It’s like being an emo, metal head etc etc. It’s not a thing which others need to bend over backwards for.

I’ve discussed this w my non-binary adult child who says it’s not about ‘not being girly’, but not feeling or wanting to look like a girl at all (ie, not wanting to have boobs for example and not shaving legs/pits)I can’t crawl in to her brain so I really don’t know what it’s like to feel that way. . I can’t deny her reality but at the same time I do think it’s a combination of probable ND, being bullied at school so never fitting in until she went to uni and found ‘her tribe’ (which was when she came out as NB and lesbian eventually). shes swallowing the kook aid in a number of things so I think very easily ‘manipulated’ as well.

Also how do you explain very young children believing they are the opposite sex? I’ve heard of a 3 year old who has maintained they’re a boy and is still saying it years later (and the parent is totally in board). I’ve never met them but they’re relatives of my good friend.

Also how do you explain very young children believing they are the opposite sex? I’ve heard of a 3 year old who has maintained they’re a boy and is still saying it years later

I was one of those children (though not saying it out loud, because my parent would very much not have been on board). So yeah, we exist. But I absolutely don't believe there's many of us, and most importantly, I believe that these children deserve to be safeguarded as much as any other, and so their bodily integrity must be preserved until they are adults who can make their own decisions about it.

So why do you think that gender identity issues is not one of the possible explanations that is worth considering?

I feel like the discussion here is largely political rather than based on robust evidence.

A group of internal belief systems that people hold that erroneously convince them they are of the opposite sex.

This leaves out all the people whose gender identity conforms with their sex.

Which is most people.

Also how do you explain very young children believing they are the opposite sex? I’ve heard of a 3 year old who has maintained they’re a boy and is still saying it years later (and the parent is totally in board). I’ve never met them but they’re relatives of my good friend.

One way this happens is that the parents, usually the mother, wanted a child of the opposite sex to the one which was born and before that baby could even speak it picked up the clues that the mother would love them more if they behaved as the sex their mother wanted.

Also girls who want to be boys could be partly explained in the past by girls seeing how much more freedom and fun and power boys had and wanting that. That certainly featured in my childhood.

The evidence is that John Money invented this idea of 'gender identity' when he decided to remove a boy's penis after a botched circumcision, get his parents to bring him up as a girrl, and to lie to him and his bother and then proceeded to keep seeing the boys without their parents and made them perform sex acts on each other. Yes, he was also a paedophile.

I feel like we've been over this so many times, you could at least do some reading up on this before telling us that this is discussion is 'political'.

What does it mean for your gender identity to conform with your sex? There are plenty of transwomen who don’t have an issue with their male sex.

That describes trans gender identity.
PP makes a valid point that there are also people who find the stereotypes attached to their own sex highly attractive, or else have been so strongly socialised to them they have internalised them.
Women who describe themselves as 'girly girls'. Men who display toxic masculinity.
I think if we break it down, 'gender' just means set of stereotypes associated with sex, and 'identity' just means taking them on oneself so they underpin how we behave and relate to others.
This is indeed a real thing that effects us all on a continuum, with at one end the hyper masculine/feminine man/woman, and at the other the actively, consciously, gender non conforming people. Some people don't just want to be GNC, they want to conform to the stereotypes of the opposite sex and have assumed the label trans gender.
Which is not in itself a problem. The problems come when living in accordance with gender stereotypes for the opposite sex become conflated with actually being the opposite sex.
So the argument isn't whether GI is 'real', it's whether having a trans one is in any way relevent to sex based rights. Which it isn't as it has no bearing on one's actual sex.

Also how do you explain very young children believing they are the opposite sex? I’ve heard of a 3 year old who has maintained they’re a boy and is still saying it years later (and the parent is totally in board). I’ve never met them but they’re relatives of my good friend

If the parent is totally on board they could be constantly feeding this belief even if they’re not aware of it. It’s like those children who’ve supposedly visited heaven and have all these details of their relatives who died before they were born. How could they know? It’s likely that the parents are encouraging it and giving info without realising because they want it to be true.

I don’t believe it exists in the way gender ideologies think it does. There is not a complete man trapped in a woman or vice versa.

It’s also clear that there are many different roots into people expressing gender incongruence/ confusion, autism, abuse, same sex attraction, poor mental health, etc.

However, given as social mammals learn their role by mimicking adults of their sex, my guess is that we each have something inside which tells us what sex we are. And maybe that gets misaligned for some people. Which causes settled gender dysphoria. But is not an indication you are a woman in a man’s body, just thar internal messaging has got it wrong.

I also think that as well as physical
differences between men and women there are other innate differences ( on a population level) evolved due to the different social roles of men and women. Which I realise puts me out of step with many on here.

Because there's no evidence that gender identity is even a thing that exists. You might as well ask if the influence of heavenly guardian angels, or reincarnation, or alien mind control, are not some of the possible explanations.

Exactly that. In some people it confirms 100%, in some it's the exact opposite and in most of us we're on a sliding scale somewhere on the side which is most identified with the sex we were born as.

The trans problem is not that they claim a gender identity, it's that many claim their gender identity changes their sex.

This 100%. There is your sex observed at birth and everything else is preferred personal aesthetic.