The kind of “girl” that a boy who identifies as a girl thinks he is

[MyAmpleSheep]

How do people who celebrate the transitioning of five year old children know that the kind of girl a boy who identities as a “girl” identifies as is the same kind of girl that a girl who identifies as a “girl” is?

Other than than from what he sees girls doing, how can a boy “know” what being a girl is, to be sure he is one?

is it posited that there is an innate sense of boy:girl that exists outside of the experience of seeing and being the presence of others?

If a child was “raised by wolves”, could they be trans? If that child had a male body and reached the age of 20 never having seen or met or known of the existence of women is it possible for them to grow up with dysphoria? When eventually discovering the other sex would they suddenly recognize “they had been born in the wrong body”?

Of course not!

These are questions to assess a child's gender identity.

And we were talking about very young children in this conversation - a 5 year old.
Obviously with an adolescent you would expect an answer with more content/ depth.

Just pointing out that the question was if a young boy says he is really a girl, what does he think a girl is?

You instead keep referencing a short conversation with your child who you say does not have any gender incongruence and has Global Developmental Delay where you didn't ask "what is a girl?", you asked "how do you know you are a girl". I think we can all agree she knows she's a girl because she's been told all her life she's a girl, and referred to as such so of course she's confused by the question "how do you know you are a girl?" - which again, was not the actual question being asked.

You say you're here for a productive conversation, but I don't think that's at all true. You have a sneering tone (which came before any pushback on your ideas imo) and, with a paper thin mask of I'm ever so exhausted by having to be so reasonable with you all being so difficult, act as though anyone who questions you, or probes further, is just not capable of the required level of intelligence to wrap their brains around such a complex issue.

You are clearly avoiding answering some questions. You say you've linked to research papers when you actually haven't linked anything, you've just given enough information for people to attempt to find the papers themselves - which would be fine and dandy if they were accessible to read when found, but as a PP has already told you, the full papers are not all accessible. You could share links to the full papers, but as yet you haven't.

what does he think a girl is?

The answer is - there is no single answer to that question (different children will have different conceptions), and while it's perfectly reasonable to ask a child what the word "girl" means to them, that doesn't necessarily explain why they identify as one.

So close.

'Oh well then! That's all perfectly clear now! Lets get you pumped full of harmful drugs, set you on a lifelong medical pathway, and chop some perfectly healthy pieces of your body off!'

Utter madness.

@Pingponghavoc On one hand, we are expected to acknowledge the deep feelings these people have and their distress. But then believe that these feelings, that cannot be articulated, can be eliminated by dictionary definitions?

That was where we were. I think of it as phase 2. Phase 1 was living "as a woman", knowing full well you weren't a woman and being happy if people close to you agreed to call you she. Then we got phase 2 as you describe, changing the meaning of words. Now we are into phase 3 because phase 2 has not provided the comfort they require.

Phase 3 demands that everyone uses the names and pronouns of their adopted sex and affirms that they genuinely have changed sex by allowing them to do every activity that women do, including breast feeding. I have no doubt that this phase will include a uterus transplant now that a women has given birth with a transplanted uterus. Only total affirmation will do.

What these people will do, in the countries which are allowing this, when they realise that this has not resolved their mental turmoil either, remains to be seen. I watch with interest, while thanking the heavens for the Supreme Court judgement.

Yep.

Because if the reference term doesn’t mean the same thing for both people in the discussion, someone declaring they are something can mean anything.

And again, no male person has the experiential reference point of knowing what the female person’s experience of life is that he is describing as his own experience by labelling himself as female.

It always comes down to this same point. Because one group argues from a philosophical belief that is someone says they are something, then they are what they declare they are.

It will cycle on for the eras.

Transactivism in a nutshell.

I just am...now off you go.

Cut off body parts, medicate me infertile, make sure I can't really pair bond, possibly lower my IQ, and upend every law based on sex that we have.

it's fucking chilling, is what it is

Indeed. They're not using the same definition, but more than that, they're not even using a definition of any description!

It's incomprehensible jibber jabber.

There is no logical basis for a boy saying he is a girl. None. Lacksy knows it, we know it, everyone knows it.

So, when a child says "I'm a girl", of course we can ask what the word "girl" means to them. We can explore their understanding of sex, anatomy, social expectations and gender stereotypes. Those are all legitimate questions.
But the child's answers tell us about their conceptual understanding of the category. They don't necessarily explain the cognitive processes through which they came to identify with it.

I don't think you can even start to try to explain the cognitive processes by which a child comes to identify with a category without asking those "legitimate" questions about what the category means to them.

It feels like your brushing off the interesting and important part as "legitimate" and interesting but irrelevant and really something someone else should be concerned with.

Whereas I think it's at the heart of the issue of a boy claiming to be a girl: not why, but what is behind the label they give to the thing they say they are?

the thing with asking someone how they know they are a girl relies on their understanding of the word

and as soon as you change the word you end up with lots of poeple who will be confused

yes.

But apparently it is a coherent concept, that people are uninformed if they can see that it is incoherent.

Because that is what happens when philosophical theory is given credibility when it is actually not based on material reality at all, but an individual's subjective belief that is not reflective of material reality.

I feel like we're asking a four year old if they're a Conservative or a Liberal. And then homing in on the fact that they can't say why they say they're one or the other, they just "are". But we haven't asked what a four year old understands the difference to be.

Whereas I think it's at the heart of the issue of a boy claiming to be a girl

Yes. And that’s precisely the assumption I’m challenging. It seems intuitively obvious to you that a child’s identification as a girl must arise from their understanding of what a girl is. But something seeming intuitively obvious doesn’t make it true.

Plenty of things we now know to be true are profoundly counterintuitive. Just look at modern physics. Our intuitions about how the world works are not always reliable guides to reality, and human cognition is no exception.

. Sometimes understanding a phenomenon requires us to question the assumptions through which we’ve been interpreting it.

Unfortunately, there seems to be very little willingness among some posters here to do that. Instead, the same assumptions are repeatedly presented as self-evident facts, even when alternative explanations are offered

Yes, but you can't think you are a girl if you are a boy i.e. have a penis etc. and it is bad practice to allow a child to pursue being the opposite sex, because they cannot be. The answer to a boy saying he is a girl, is 'No, you are a boy.' And not to gender activities, of course.

Yes, but you can't think you are a girl if you are a boy i.e. have a penis etc

🤦🏼‍♀️

Sadly, it does seem that all this complex evidence and research has amounted to a very simple process. When a young child says they are the opposite sex, everyone is expected to affirm it, socially transition the child, allow access to opposite sex spaces, puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgery. With a long term goal that the child can go 'stealth' for the rest of their life.

That is what @Lacksie has been arguing for this whole time. Based on the word of a 4 year old.

It is why Lacksie refuses to engage with certain questions, and will no doubt ignore this also. (that's a blatant goad by the way)

Someone who claims to be a parent sacrificing other people’s children on an ideological altar.

The trouble is Lacksie, that you have been unable to present any genuine alternative explanations, while we present logical ways that "trans children" can be created that are supported by research.

It comes back time and time again to "it's what they feel, we must believe them", while consistently refusing to engage, and indeed denying that the research exists, into things like how parents can mould their children with micro expressions, conscious and unconscious. You even quote research which, when we dig into it, specifically does not support your argument.

You blame us for being closed minded while failing to present even the slightest lever, other than "belief", with which to open them.

And I'm sorry but "belief" is insufficient justification for treating a child with pharmacological and surgical responses to a mental problem.

something seeming intuitively obvious doesn’t make it true.

😶

And yet someone's identification as fat doesn't mean that everyone else has to see that person as fat, and we test the identity using measurement (weight, height, waist circumference etc) before deciding on the appropriateness of diet, or weight loss drugs, or gastric bands. With 'gender identity' it seems that the person's self image as female or male is the starting point – we are supposed to accept that, without testing visually or via medical or genetic tests.

The thing is, words do have meanings, and the postmodern idea that using the word defines the reality rather than the word being an attempt to describe the reality is what makes it nigh on impossible to understand each other. If a girl's self identification as a boy makes them different from all other girls, and that means that everyone should affirm that she is a boy and if she later wants it block her puberty, administer testosterone and cut off healthy organs, does it actually mean she is a boy? If we do that, we are elevating someone's self perception over their observable and testable physical reality. To say this is the right side of history, is an ideology, and one which is very much disputed.

It is gobsmacking isn't it?

To be simultaneously told that something that is intuitively (and actually for the most part observably true and biologically true) is not necessarily true, while also being told to accept the word of a four year old who cannot explain what they mean that they are not the sex that they were born.

So many red flags.
No child's body is wrong.
No adult should be badgering a 4 / 5 child about what sex they are.
That can be seen as an emotionally abusive act. It's gaslighting a child. It's imposing an adult belief or fetish (take your pick) on a young child.

Children deserve to be safeguarded from this and must be allowed to develop and mature without adults imposing their age inappropriate beliefs on them.

No amount of waffle excuses this behaviour.

A female child can be said to understand what a female child is because they have direct experience to reference being a female child. This is an accurate dynamic to describe as the child having an understanding of who they are and 'recognising' themselves as being female. It is formed from their interaction with the world, even in their short life.

No male child has that.

So, again. We cycle around to a male child is not recognising themselves as a female child because there is no logic (or evidence) that they recognise themselves as a female child at all. Only their concept, their personally built perception, of what a female child is and how a female child interacts with the world.

Children obviously interpret the huge number of stimuli during the day that will build their understanding of how male people and how female people interact with the world with their sexed bodies. It will still be impossible for any male child to understand themselves as a female child until humans can be zapped into sub-atomic particles and put back together as an infant with no memories at all.