OK, here's the fundamental thing I think you're missing about the distinction between stereotypes and gender identity.
Gender identity is about which group you see yourself as part of, or aspire to be part of.
The role that gender stereotypes play, at least the one that's relevant here, is essentially that of branding, or uniforms: a way to advertise which group you belong to, and guess which groups others belong to.
We all know that some things (behaviors, interests, mannerisms, styles of dress, etc.) are associated with men and others are associated with women. Regardless of whether those associations are based in biology or totally arbitrary, or indeed whether we find them acceptable or regrettable, the fact that we're all aware of them makes them useful signals.
Humans have the same evolutionary need to distinguish between the sexes as any other sexual species. We also have sex-specific behaviors that are too complex to be instinctual, and in our evolution we've stumbled on the solution of psychological drives that motivate us to learn the "right" set of behaviors from those around us, make ourselves identifiable as members of the "right" group, and seek confirmation that we've done it.
This, perhaps not coincidentally, is similar to how we experience other types of group affiliation. The difference is that for gender, the group affiliation is at least partly innate rather than learned, and the "branding" is at least partly made up of biological traits.
"""The point here is that preferences about one’s body (either aesthetic or functional) exist without a reliance on paradigm shifts of one’s “internal sense of self”. If someone wants to, for example, bulk up and build muscle, they can just do it; it’s nonsensical to say they first need to “identify” as their chosen aspiration before any changes can occur."""
"""The perennial challenge for this camp remains the logical impossibility of harmonizing the twin snakes of “trans people don’t owe you passing” and “trans people will literally kill themselves if they don’t pass”."""
Can't say I've ever heard anyone say the second part in quite those terms, but assuming it's an exaggerated version of something like "we shouldn't get in the way of trans people doing what they need to do to pass", I guess I don't see why harmonizing them strikes you as difficult, much less impossible.
Passing isn't a binary yes/no question, a fixed finish line you can cross and then be done with. It's a question of how often, to whom, and to what degree, and everyone has their own sense of how much it matters to them. "Trans people don't owe you passing" is an acknowledgement that not every trans person will be able to pass 100% undetectably in your view -- and a reminder that encountering someone who's having a bad day, or who was dealt a bad hand, or who just doesn't mind if you know they're trans, isn't a license to be rude.
"""Dr. Ehrensaft literally said that a baby throwing out a barrette is a “gender signal” the baby might not really be a girl"""
Stripped of context, yes, that'd be an absurd statement. But she was talking about a specific individual who did grow up to be trans, and citing that moment as an example of preverbal communication about gender. Isn't there a reasonable chance that that's what it was?
You're right that babies do dumb shit for all kinds of reasons, and we can't know why they did any particular thing when we see it happen once. But no one's making clinical decisions about gender based on that kind of dumb shit; there are no such decisions to make at that age. So what really puzzles me about that clip is: why does it even matter? Who cares what 1-2 year olds have to say about their gender? They can speak for themselves when they can speak for themselves.
"""The only possible explanation for this unrelenting dedication is to maintain access to what Dembroff refers to as “the robust associations welded to that particular gender classification.” Stereotypes, in other words. It’s also the only explanation for why the circular definition “a woman is someone who identifies as a woman” garners so much intense attachment despite its emptiness. It maintains the ability to hint-hint-wink-wink toward gender stereotypes without having to say so out loud."""
To claim that winking at stereotypes is the "only possible explanation" is to deny that social group identity, in and of itself, could possibly matter to anyone. But clearly it does.
The idea of caring about which group someone is part of, separate from any of the visible aspects of what it means to be part of that group, isn't especially unusual. Sports teams can change their colors, change their names, move between cities, trade players, and still keep their fans and rivals. Corporations can rebrand, rename, pivot, turn over staff and leadership, and still maintain a continuous identity. Even companies in the army that wear the same uniform, go through the same training, follow the same orders, and are otherwise indistinguishable to outsiders can develop an identity and inspire loyalty.
The thing that's surprising about gender, in this sense, is just that our "loyalty" to a gender is at least partly innate rather than learned. I could believe that seems far-fetched to most cis people. But the evolutionary need for such a thing is clear enough, and there are plenty of first-hand reports from people who say that's what they experience.
It seems unreasonable to dismiss all of that and assert that the "stereotypes" are secretly what everyone really cares about... especially since for a lot of trans people, the cultural/behavioral stuff is all secondary to the physiological stuff anyway.
First off, I really appreciate that you took the time to engage and pushback on what I wrote. The part I find most inscrutable about your comment is that you seem to gloss over what "which group you see yourself as part of" actually means. The lack of clarity here is indistinguishable from the vacuous definitions I endlessly complained about in my piece.
I'm male, present in a stereotypical masculine manner, but almost all my close friends are female and that's who I tend to spend most of my time with. So if I'm hanging out with a bunch of my female friends, does that mean I "belong" to the group females? I'm assuming you'd say that I might belong to my "friend group" but not the broader "female group", but I wouldn't understand what you used to come to that answer. Similarly, I have no idea what you mean by "loyalty to a gender"... what?
I would be very eager to learn more about your perspective.
It's basically which subset of the people around you you see as peers and role models, the people you want to emulate and earn respect from. I don't think we're always conscious of who that is, but it shows up in our learned behaviors. And it's probably easiest to notice at younger ages, when we're still forming habits and tastes based on what we see our peers doing.
For example: a boy from the city moves to the country, shows up at his new school, and sees that all the other kids are wearing clothes that look nothing like what he owns. He wants to fit in. Whose wardrobe does he have in mind when he begs his parents to get him some new clothes? The other kids use slang he's never heard before, they have unfamiliar accents and speech patterns. Whose style of speaking does he slowly adopt without even thinking about it?
These kinds of learned behaviors are all arbitrary, and to be clear, there's plenty of individual variation. But there is a natural process by which we absorb them from each other, and in a mixed-sex environment, most people will tend to pick up common behaviors of their own sex and pay little attention to those of the opposite sex. A few, however, tend to pick up the behaviors of the opposite sex and pay little attention to their own.
As for "loyalty" to a gender: that was kind of metaphorical. What I mean is, just like someone might firmly believe "I'm a 49ers fan" and feel connected to the team almost as an abstract concept, despite not having any attachment to its coach/roster/colors/name/etc. and sticking with it when those things change, I think someone can firmly believe "I'm a woman" and feel connected to the gender as a mostly abstract concept, despite not having any special attachment to any of the specific cultural things we associate with women.
Is it strange that people think this way? Sure, in almost exactly the same way that it's strange that people think "but is it REALLY a blegg?"(*) But evidently they do.
That said... my own personal experience hasn't been one of feeling strongly connected to a gender identity. My experience has been very similar to the one in that Medium article I linked; in fact, that article (along with some other writing in the same vein) is what made me realize I was one of the people who'd benefit from transitioning, even though I'd never exactly felt trapped in my body or gender.
From talking to other trans people since then, I gather that this is a lot more common than I thought it was (though still a minority view), and I'm annoyed at both the popular media and the loudest trans activists for focusing exclusively on the narrative that equates being trans with being certain you *are* the opposite gender.
There remains a lack of specifics here. I completely understand the desire to belong and fit into groups. Where you lose me is when you expand this concrete and comprehendible example to cover a group with almost 4 billion members (arguably more since even dead men can be role models).
How would I even begin to address the question of "which group of 4 billion people do you see as peers and role models"? It's impossible to answer without flattening the category into the lowest common denominator, at which point it would be so diluted that even homeopathic medicine start to look good by comparison. I'm a male and there certainly are other males that I admire and wish to emulate, but there's probably a much higher number of males who I find completely detestable. Who determines which ones get appointed ambassadors for the group? If we can't even agree on the basic premise about who should be representative, how is it possible for anyone to experience "dysphoria" over the mismatch?
"""How would I even begin to address the question of "which group of 4 billion people do you see as peers and role models"?"""
If you're asking that question, I think it's a sign that I've done a poor job of communicating here, because I get the impression that the thing *you* think I've been describing is much more of a high-level, conscious, deliberate behavior than what *I* thought I was describing.
What I'm talking about is social learning, an animal behavior that's been observed in many species whose cognitive abilities are nowhere near ours (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/55/6/489/363397). Birds, fish, and rats manage to pick up behaviors and preferences from other members of their species, despite (presumably) not being able to discuss -- much less solve -- the philosophical problem of how they could possibly tell *their* species apart from thousands of similar species.
More specifically, what I'm talking about is sex-specific social learning, another form of which has been observed in orangutans (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001173): young female orangutans mostly learn from their mothers, whereas young males learn more from other males. Orangutans are smarter than fish, and much less numerous than humans, but presumably this learning process still doesn't require juvenile orangutans to understand and apply a logical system to find a same-sex "ambassador" among the tens of thousands of other orangutans.
But we don't even have to look at other species to see this happening. Just look at the way young kids socialize: they form single-sex peer groups, which over time influence the skills, attitudes, interests, and behaviors they develop. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23096165: "Sex segregation is one of the most powerful and pervasive social phenomena known to exist in childhood ... the strongest sex segregation occurs in settings where children are allowed to make their own choices ... these preferences are difficult for adults to change.")
"""Who determines which ones get appointed ambassadors for the group?"""
I confess I don't even understand what you're asking here. Why would any of what we've been talking about require anyone to be appointed an "ambassador" for their gender?
"""If we can't even agree on the basic premise about who should be representative, how is it possible for anyone to experience "dysphoria" over the mismatch?"""
I'm not sure I completely understand what you're asking here either, but if you have questions about the subjective experience of gender dysphoria, I'd recommend checking out genderdysphoria.fyi.
I *think* maybe what you're asking is: if everyone has a slightly different idea of which traits are associated with men or women, how can those traits cause dysphoria? If that's it, then the answer is, not all of them do for everyone; there's just as much individual variation in what causes dysphoria as you'd expect given that starting point.
I understand what social learning is, including the type that falls along sex-specific boundaries. I already said there are clear physical/psychological differences between males and females, so to the extent male orangutans are different from female orangutans, it makes sense for the older fe/males to be the ones teaching the younger fe/males.
The part where you continue to lose me is where you try to paste an "gender identify" layer on top of this framework. To avoid further confusion, maybe it would be useful for you to describe what you think it would mean for an orangutan to be "trans" assuming that's even possible (is it? why not?). Because what it looks like to me is that you're essentially just rederiving the concept of gender stereotypes (males do this, females do that) from scratch while also doing everything in your power to avoid using the phrase "gender stereotypes".
This is why I keep begging for specifics here, because what you're communicating appears to break down when you try to describe the practical ramifications. So going back to my original question: If I spend most of my time socializing with women and generally dislike hanging out with men, is this indicative that I have a woman's gender identity? According to *what you elucidated* yes! Here's a recap of what you said:
> "Gender identity is about which group you see yourself as part of, or aspire to be part of."
> "It's basically which subset of the people around you you see as peers and role models, the people you want to emulate and earn respect from."
> "For example, an AMAB trans person may find themselves very uncomfortable in groups of men. They may feel out of place and struggle to fit in among their male peers. Masculine social interactions don’t come naturally to them, and trying to emulate their male friends feels awkward. They may feel themselves drawn more to friendships with women, but become frustrated at the social and heterosexual dynamics that come into play between men and women, preventing them from forming platonic relationships. This is if women are willing to form friendships at all. They may find themselves deeply hurt when women shy away from them on principle."
The apparent "answer" to a male feeling uncomfortable around groups of men, and feeling rejected by groups of women is apparently "I must *really* be a woman and need others to see me as such". I find this line of thinking so completely incomprehensible and myopic! I wouldn't expect you to know exactly but if you had to formulate a theory, what is your best explanation for why I apparently do not have a woman's gender identity despite checking all the criteria you've outlined? Does it prompt you to question any of your premises?
"""To avoid further confusion, maybe it would be useful for you to describe what you think it would mean for an orangutan to be "trans" assuming that's even possible (is it? why not?)."""
I'm no expert on orangutans, and I have no idea to what extent they know/care about other aspects of themselves that distinguish the sexes. But based on what I've mentioned so far, the closest equivalent would be a male orangutan who mostly learns sex-specific behaviors from his mother, paying little attention to other males, or a female who mostly learns them from adult males rather than her mother.
"""Because what it looks like to me is that you're essentially just rederiving the concept of gender stereotypes (males do this, females do that) from scratch while also doing everything in your power to avoid using the phrase "gender stereotypes"."""
I gotta say, it's frustrating to try to explain this over and over to someone who appears determined to interpret everything I write through the same reductive lens. I know what stereotypes are, and I'm not afraid to refer to them. The reason I'm not using the phrase "gender stereotypes" is that I'm talking about a different concept.
They're related in the sense that gender identity is one possible reason people behave in ways that defy stereotypes, but it's hardly the only reason.
"""If I spend most of my time socializing with women and generally dislike hanging out with men, is this indicative that I have a woman's gender identity?"""
It's suggestive, but of course there are other reasons you might do that.
"""The apparent "answer" to a male feeling uncomfortable around groups of men, and feeling rejected by groups of women is apparently "I must *really* be a woman and need others to see me as such"."""
No, not necessarily. Again: you're being overly reductive. To assume that e.g. when that website says AMAB trans people *may* find themselves uncomfortable in groups of men, what it's really claiming is that everyone who is uncomfortable in groups of men *must* be trans, is to strip away all nuance and reverse the direction of implication.
If you're feeling annoyed that there doesn't seem to be a simple, straightforward test to run to determine what your True Gender Identity is... yeah, it sure sucks. That's why some people only realize they're trans after reflecting on it for years or decades.
"""I find this line of thinking so completely incomprehensible and myopic!"""
As you should! The interpretation you've come up with is, indeed, incomprehensible and myopic. Luckily, I don't think anyone is actually saying what you think they're saying.
"""if you had to formulate a theory, what is your best explanation for why I apparently do not have a woman's gender identity despite checking all the criteria you've outlined?"""
My best explanation is that you've misunderstood the criteria. I never said that every man who likes hanging out with women must be trans.
"""Does it prompt you to question any of your premises?"""
Yes, honestly: it makes me question whether our styles of communication are mutually compatible enough for this to be a worthwhile use of my time.
I know you're a smart guy, from everything I've seen you write on Reddit, Twitter, and here on this blog. And I'm genuinely doing my best to explain this to you. But you keep attributing things to me that I didn't say.
I need to acknowledge your efforts in engaging with such a contentious topic among a demonstrably hostile audience. I accused you of glossing over some aspects and I must admit that I likely have done the same with what you describe as overly reductive. So I appreciate your efforts and also wish to apologize for my response, at least in its tone if anything.
I maintain that my efforts here at uncovering your meaning are earnest on my part, but concur that we might be carrying on with incompatible communication styles within the text medium. I'm still very interested in understanding your perspective, so if you're interested we could try discussing in a real-time through a call. Shoot me an email if you're game ymeskhout@gmail.com
I believe there's a lot of overlap in the underlying biology there, so much that distinguishing between them is mostly about their own preference. So, at the risk of stating the obvious, I'd think that someone in that situation would introspect with questions like "Do I want to be a woman? Does that idea sound appealing? How do I feel when I imagine being addressed by strangers as a woman, seeing a female body in the mirror, etc.?"
>Isn't there a reasonable chance that that's what it was?
I don't think so. I suspect that exactly the same behaviour is exhibited by millions of babies all over the world, who then grow up to be adults without the slightest hint of gender incongruence.
As for the "maybe it's autism" theory: besides the fact that being trans *isn't* actually caused by a perceived need to conform to rigid gender roles anyway, there's also the fact that autism isn't only associated with differences in gender identity. It's also associated with differences in sexual orientation (e.g. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aur.1892): a trait which, like gender identity, is linked to sex differentiation in the developing brain.
If intolerance for social ambiguity and a resulting need to conform to stereotypes were the cause of the gender identity correlation with autism, wouldn't we expect to also see more conformity in sexual orientation (i.e. heterosexuality), not less?
I think a more plausible explanation is that autism, a developmental condition affecting the brain and especially affecting traits that tend to be sex-specific, shares a common cause with other developmental conditions affecting other sex-specific aspects of brain development.
Okay? Congratulations? But the point remains. Gender identity is a psychological phenomenon, albeit one with biological origins. Believing yourself to be a Royal Bengal Tiger wouldn't make you one either, but it would mean that you had the "species identity" of one (if that were a real thing).
> but it would mean that you had the "species identity" of one (if that were a real thing).
I think it really wouldn‘t, at least as far as “identity” is to be coherent and useful and reflect physical reality. At the very least, it is highly valuable to push back against this usage (and consecration) of ”identity“.
I can‘t plausibly entertain otherkin, especially the wacky ones. A human identifying as a binary star system does not lose the metabolism and neurologcial function of a biped mammal, gain stellar mass, and start nuclear fusion; and a duck imprinted on a human has a mistaken idea that it is a human — which it is mainfestly not.
Trans identity at least has a fig leaf that there is a plausible biological thing going wrong here. Stretching it to pure “whatever I say goes” makes the concept entirely useless, giving ”I identify as a man/woman“ and “I identify as purple sunlight” the same degree of truth in the logical system.
"Stretching it to pure “whatever I say goes” makes the concept entirely useless"
I agree, that's why I said "if that were a real thing". As far as I can tell, it isn't. Species identity does not exist as a concept with any basis in neurobiology (in contrast to gender identity, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6677266/).
That said... why should we expect the *psychological* concept of identity to reflect *physical* reality? Is that really what the concept of identity is about?
I don't need my identity to reflect physical traits like the color of my eyes, or the length of my hair. A mirror or a camera can do that, and they can give an exact answer instead of having to rely on my memory.
It seems to me that talking about identity as a psychological concept is useful precisely because it can include things that *aren't* objective physical realities.
OK, here's the fundamental thing I think you're missing about the distinction between stereotypes and gender identity.
Gender identity is about which group you see yourself as part of, or aspire to be part of.
The role that gender stereotypes play, at least the one that's relevant here, is essentially that of branding, or uniforms: a way to advertise which group you belong to, and guess which groups others belong to.
We all know that some things (behaviors, interests, mannerisms, styles of dress, etc.) are associated with men and others are associated with women. Regardless of whether those associations are based in biology or totally arbitrary, or indeed whether we find them acceptable or regrettable, the fact that we're all aware of them makes them useful signals.
Humans have the same evolutionary need to distinguish between the sexes as any other sexual species. We also have sex-specific behaviors that are too complex to be instinctual, and in our evolution we've stumbled on the solution of psychological drives that motivate us to learn the "right" set of behaviors from those around us, make ourselves identifiable as members of the "right" group, and seek confirmation that we've done it.
This, perhaps not coincidentally, is similar to how we experience other types of group affiliation. The difference is that for gender, the group affiliation is at least partly innate rather than learned, and the "branding" is at least partly made up of biological traits.
"""The point here is that preferences about one’s body (either aesthetic or functional) exist without a reliance on paradigm shifts of one’s “internal sense of self”. If someone wants to, for example, bulk up and build muscle, they can just do it; it’s nonsensical to say they first need to “identify” as their chosen aspiration before any changes can occur."""
Indeed. And doing that is more common than one might assume from the popular narratives about gender identity. For example, everyone I've shown this article to has found it relatable: https://medium.com/@kemenatan/gender-desire-vs-gender-identity-a334cb4eeec5
"""The perennial challenge for this camp remains the logical impossibility of harmonizing the twin snakes of “trans people don’t owe you passing” and “trans people will literally kill themselves if they don’t pass”."""
Can't say I've ever heard anyone say the second part in quite those terms, but assuming it's an exaggerated version of something like "we shouldn't get in the way of trans people doing what they need to do to pass", I guess I don't see why harmonizing them strikes you as difficult, much less impossible.
Passing isn't a binary yes/no question, a fixed finish line you can cross and then be done with. It's a question of how often, to whom, and to what degree, and everyone has their own sense of how much it matters to them. "Trans people don't owe you passing" is an acknowledgement that not every trans person will be able to pass 100% undetectably in your view -- and a reminder that encountering someone who's having a bad day, or who was dealt a bad hand, or who just doesn't mind if you know they're trans, isn't a license to be rude.
"""Dr. Ehrensaft literally said that a baby throwing out a barrette is a “gender signal” the baby might not really be a girl"""
Stripped of context, yes, that'd be an absurd statement. But she was talking about a specific individual who did grow up to be trans, and citing that moment as an example of preverbal communication about gender. Isn't there a reasonable chance that that's what it was?
You're right that babies do dumb shit for all kinds of reasons, and we can't know why they did any particular thing when we see it happen once. But no one's making clinical decisions about gender based on that kind of dumb shit; there are no such decisions to make at that age. So what really puzzles me about that clip is: why does it even matter? Who cares what 1-2 year olds have to say about their gender? They can speak for themselves when they can speak for themselves.
"""The only possible explanation for this unrelenting dedication is to maintain access to what Dembroff refers to as “the robust associations welded to that particular gender classification.” Stereotypes, in other words. It’s also the only explanation for why the circular definition “a woman is someone who identifies as a woman” garners so much intense attachment despite its emptiness. It maintains the ability to hint-hint-wink-wink toward gender stereotypes without having to say so out loud."""
To claim that winking at stereotypes is the "only possible explanation" is to deny that social group identity, in and of itself, could possibly matter to anyone. But clearly it does.
The idea of caring about which group someone is part of, separate from any of the visible aspects of what it means to be part of that group, isn't especially unusual. Sports teams can change their colors, change their names, move between cities, trade players, and still keep their fans and rivals. Corporations can rebrand, rename, pivot, turn over staff and leadership, and still maintain a continuous identity. Even companies in the army that wear the same uniform, go through the same training, follow the same orders, and are otherwise indistinguishable to outsiders can develop an identity and inspire loyalty.
The thing that's surprising about gender, in this sense, is just that our "loyalty" to a gender is at least partly innate rather than learned. I could believe that seems far-fetched to most cis people. But the evolutionary need for such a thing is clear enough, and there are plenty of first-hand reports from people who say that's what they experience.
It seems unreasonable to dismiss all of that and assert that the "stereotypes" are secretly what everyone really cares about... especially since for a lot of trans people, the cultural/behavioral stuff is all secondary to the physiological stuff anyway.
First off, I really appreciate that you took the time to engage and pushback on what I wrote. The part I find most inscrutable about your comment is that you seem to gloss over what "which group you see yourself as part of" actually means. The lack of clarity here is indistinguishable from the vacuous definitions I endlessly complained about in my piece.
I'm male, present in a stereotypical masculine manner, but almost all my close friends are female and that's who I tend to spend most of my time with. So if I'm hanging out with a bunch of my female friends, does that mean I "belong" to the group females? I'm assuming you'd say that I might belong to my "friend group" but not the broader "female group", but I wouldn't understand what you used to come to that answer. Similarly, I have no idea what you mean by "loyalty to a gender"... what?
I would be very eager to learn more about your perspective.
It's basically which subset of the people around you you see as peers and role models, the people you want to emulate and earn respect from. I don't think we're always conscious of who that is, but it shows up in our learned behaviors. And it's probably easiest to notice at younger ages, when we're still forming habits and tastes based on what we see our peers doing.
For example: a boy from the city moves to the country, shows up at his new school, and sees that all the other kids are wearing clothes that look nothing like what he owns. He wants to fit in. Whose wardrobe does he have in mind when he begs his parents to get him some new clothes? The other kids use slang he's never heard before, they have unfamiliar accents and speech patterns. Whose style of speaking does he slowly adopt without even thinking about it?
These kinds of learned behaviors are all arbitrary, and to be clear, there's plenty of individual variation. But there is a natural process by which we absorb them from each other, and in a mixed-sex environment, most people will tend to pick up common behaviors of their own sex and pay little attention to those of the opposite sex. A few, however, tend to pick up the behaviors of the opposite sex and pay little attention to their own.
As for "loyalty" to a gender: that was kind of metaphorical. What I mean is, just like someone might firmly believe "I'm a 49ers fan" and feel connected to the team almost as an abstract concept, despite not having any attachment to its coach/roster/colors/name/etc. and sticking with it when those things change, I think someone can firmly believe "I'm a woman" and feel connected to the gender as a mostly abstract concept, despite not having any special attachment to any of the specific cultural things we associate with women.
Is it strange that people think this way? Sure, in almost exactly the same way that it's strange that people think "but is it REALLY a blegg?"(*) But evidently they do.
That said... my own personal experience hasn't been one of feeling strongly connected to a gender identity. My experience has been very similar to the one in that Medium article I linked; in fact, that article (along with some other writing in the same vein) is what made me realize I was one of the people who'd benefit from transitioning, even though I'd never exactly felt trapped in my body or gender.
From talking to other trans people since then, I gather that this is a lot more common than I thought it was (though still a minority view), and I'm annoyed at both the popular media and the loudest trans activists for focusing exclusively on the narrative that equates being trans with being certain you *are* the opposite gender.
(* pretty sure I don't need to explain the reference here, but https://www.readthesequences.com/How-An-Algorithm-Feels-From-Inside just in case)
There remains a lack of specifics here. I completely understand the desire to belong and fit into groups. Where you lose me is when you expand this concrete and comprehendible example to cover a group with almost 4 billion members (arguably more since even dead men can be role models).
How would I even begin to address the question of "which group of 4 billion people do you see as peers and role models"? It's impossible to answer without flattening the category into the lowest common denominator, at which point it would be so diluted that even homeopathic medicine start to look good by comparison. I'm a male and there certainly are other males that I admire and wish to emulate, but there's probably a much higher number of males who I find completely detestable. Who determines which ones get appointed ambassadors for the group? If we can't even agree on the basic premise about who should be representative, how is it possible for anyone to experience "dysphoria" over the mismatch?
"""How would I even begin to address the question of "which group of 4 billion people do you see as peers and role models"?"""
If you're asking that question, I think it's a sign that I've done a poor job of communicating here, because I get the impression that the thing *you* think I've been describing is much more of a high-level, conscious, deliberate behavior than what *I* thought I was describing.
What I'm talking about is social learning, an animal behavior that's been observed in many species whose cognitive abilities are nowhere near ours (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/55/6/489/363397). Birds, fish, and rats manage to pick up behaviors and preferences from other members of their species, despite (presumably) not being able to discuss -- much less solve -- the philosophical problem of how they could possibly tell *their* species apart from thousands of similar species.
More specifically, what I'm talking about is sex-specific social learning, another form of which has been observed in orangutans (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001173): young female orangutans mostly learn from their mothers, whereas young males learn more from other males. Orangutans are smarter than fish, and much less numerous than humans, but presumably this learning process still doesn't require juvenile orangutans to understand and apply a logical system to find a same-sex "ambassador" among the tens of thousands of other orangutans.
But we don't even have to look at other species to see this happening. Just look at the way young kids socialize: they form single-sex peer groups, which over time influence the skills, attitudes, interests, and behaviors they develop. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23096165: "Sex segregation is one of the most powerful and pervasive social phenomena known to exist in childhood ... the strongest sex segregation occurs in settings where children are allowed to make their own choices ... these preferences are difficult for adults to change.")
"""Who determines which ones get appointed ambassadors for the group?"""
I confess I don't even understand what you're asking here. Why would any of what we've been talking about require anyone to be appointed an "ambassador" for their gender?
"""If we can't even agree on the basic premise about who should be representative, how is it possible for anyone to experience "dysphoria" over the mismatch?"""
I'm not sure I completely understand what you're asking here either, but if you have questions about the subjective experience of gender dysphoria, I'd recommend checking out genderdysphoria.fyi.
I *think* maybe what you're asking is: if everyone has a slightly different idea of which traits are associated with men or women, how can those traits cause dysphoria? If that's it, then the answer is, not all of them do for everyone; there's just as much individual variation in what causes dysphoria as you'd expect given that starting point.
Apologies for the late reply, I was out vibing.
I understand what social learning is, including the type that falls along sex-specific boundaries. I already said there are clear physical/psychological differences between males and females, so to the extent male orangutans are different from female orangutans, it makes sense for the older fe/males to be the ones teaching the younger fe/males.
The part where you continue to lose me is where you try to paste an "gender identify" layer on top of this framework. To avoid further confusion, maybe it would be useful for you to describe what you think it would mean for an orangutan to be "trans" assuming that's even possible (is it? why not?). Because what it looks like to me is that you're essentially just rederiving the concept of gender stereotypes (males do this, females do that) from scratch while also doing everything in your power to avoid using the phrase "gender stereotypes".
This is why I keep begging for specifics here, because what you're communicating appears to break down when you try to describe the practical ramifications. So going back to my original question: If I spend most of my time socializing with women and generally dislike hanging out with men, is this indicative that I have a woman's gender identity? According to *what you elucidated* yes! Here's a recap of what you said:
> "Gender identity is about which group you see yourself as part of, or aspire to be part of."
> "It's basically which subset of the people around you you see as peers and role models, the people you want to emulate and earn respect from."
Additionally this is what is cited as an example in: https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/social-dysphoria
> "For example, an AMAB trans person may find themselves very uncomfortable in groups of men. They may feel out of place and struggle to fit in among their male peers. Masculine social interactions don’t come naturally to them, and trying to emulate their male friends feels awkward. They may feel themselves drawn more to friendships with women, but become frustrated at the social and heterosexual dynamics that come into play between men and women, preventing them from forming platonic relationships. This is if women are willing to form friendships at all. They may find themselves deeply hurt when women shy away from them on principle."
The apparent "answer" to a male feeling uncomfortable around groups of men, and feeling rejected by groups of women is apparently "I must *really* be a woman and need others to see me as such". I find this line of thinking so completely incomprehensible and myopic! I wouldn't expect you to know exactly but if you had to formulate a theory, what is your best explanation for why I apparently do not have a woman's gender identity despite checking all the criteria you've outlined? Does it prompt you to question any of your premises?
"""To avoid further confusion, maybe it would be useful for you to describe what you think it would mean for an orangutan to be "trans" assuming that's even possible (is it? why not?)."""
I'm no expert on orangutans, and I have no idea to what extent they know/care about other aspects of themselves that distinguish the sexes. But based on what I've mentioned so far, the closest equivalent would be a male orangutan who mostly learns sex-specific behaviors from his mother, paying little attention to other males, or a female who mostly learns them from adult males rather than her mother.
"""Because what it looks like to me is that you're essentially just rederiving the concept of gender stereotypes (males do this, females do that) from scratch while also doing everything in your power to avoid using the phrase "gender stereotypes"."""
I gotta say, it's frustrating to try to explain this over and over to someone who appears determined to interpret everything I write through the same reductive lens. I know what stereotypes are, and I'm not afraid to refer to them. The reason I'm not using the phrase "gender stereotypes" is that I'm talking about a different concept.
They're related in the sense that gender identity is one possible reason people behave in ways that defy stereotypes, but it's hardly the only reason.
"""If I spend most of my time socializing with women and generally dislike hanging out with men, is this indicative that I have a woman's gender identity?"""
It's suggestive, but of course there are other reasons you might do that.
"""The apparent "answer" to a male feeling uncomfortable around groups of men, and feeling rejected by groups of women is apparently "I must *really* be a woman and need others to see me as such"."""
No, not necessarily. Again: you're being overly reductive. To assume that e.g. when that website says AMAB trans people *may* find themselves uncomfortable in groups of men, what it's really claiming is that everyone who is uncomfortable in groups of men *must* be trans, is to strip away all nuance and reverse the direction of implication.
If you're feeling annoyed that there doesn't seem to be a simple, straightforward test to run to determine what your True Gender Identity is... yeah, it sure sucks. That's why some people only realize they're trans after reflecting on it for years or decades.
"""I find this line of thinking so completely incomprehensible and myopic!"""
As you should! The interpretation you've come up with is, indeed, incomprehensible and myopic. Luckily, I don't think anyone is actually saying what you think they're saying.
"""if you had to formulate a theory, what is your best explanation for why I apparently do not have a woman's gender identity despite checking all the criteria you've outlined?"""
My best explanation is that you've misunderstood the criteria. I never said that every man who likes hanging out with women must be trans.
"""Does it prompt you to question any of your premises?"""
Yes, honestly: it makes me question whether our styles of communication are mutually compatible enough for this to be a worthwhile use of my time.
I know you're a smart guy, from everything I've seen you write on Reddit, Twitter, and here on this blog. And I'm genuinely doing my best to explain this to you. But you keep attributing things to me that I didn't say.
I need to acknowledge your efforts in engaging with such a contentious topic among a demonstrably hostile audience. I accused you of glossing over some aspects and I must admit that I likely have done the same with what you describe as overly reductive. So I appreciate your efforts and also wish to apologize for my response, at least in its tone if anything.
I maintain that my efforts here at uncovering your meaning are earnest on my part, but concur that we might be carrying on with incompatible communication styles within the text medium. I'm still very interested in understanding your perspective, so if you're interested we could try discussing in a real-time through a call. Shoot me an email if you're game ymeskhout@gmail.com
How do you distinguish between effeminate men that predominantly socialize with women and other effeminate men and transwomen?
How would an effeminate man introspect to determine this for himself?
I believe there's a lot of overlap in the underlying biology there, so much that distinguishing between them is mostly about their own preference. So, at the risk of stating the obvious, I'd think that someone in that situation would introspect with questions like "Do I want to be a woman? Does that idea sound appealing? How do I feel when I imagine being addressed by strangers as a woman, seeing a female body in the mirror, etc.?"
>Isn't there a reasonable chance that that's what it was?
I don't think so. I suspect that exactly the same behaviour is exhibited by millions of babies all over the world, who then grow up to be adults without the slightest hint of gender incongruence.
As for the "maybe it's autism" theory: besides the fact that being trans *isn't* actually caused by a perceived need to conform to rigid gender roles anyway, there's also the fact that autism isn't only associated with differences in gender identity. It's also associated with differences in sexual orientation (e.g. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aur.1892): a trait which, like gender identity, is linked to sex differentiation in the developing brain.
If intolerance for social ambiguity and a resulting need to conform to stereotypes were the cause of the gender identity correlation with autism, wouldn't we expect to also see more conformity in sexual orientation (i.e. heterosexuality), not less?
I think a more plausible explanation is that autism, a developmental condition affecting the brain and especially affecting traits that tend to be sex-specific, shares a common cause with other developmental conditions affecting other sex-specific aspects of brain development.
I can aspire all I want to being a Royal Bengal Tiger but I still am a cat.
Okay? Congratulations? But the point remains. Gender identity is a psychological phenomenon, albeit one with biological origins. Believing yourself to be a Royal Bengal Tiger wouldn't make you one either, but it would mean that you had the "species identity" of one (if that were a real thing).
> but it would mean that you had the "species identity" of one (if that were a real thing).
I think it really wouldn‘t, at least as far as “identity” is to be coherent and useful and reflect physical reality. At the very least, it is highly valuable to push back against this usage (and consecration) of ”identity“.
I can‘t plausibly entertain otherkin, especially the wacky ones. A human identifying as a binary star system does not lose the metabolism and neurologcial function of a biped mammal, gain stellar mass, and start nuclear fusion; and a duck imprinted on a human has a mistaken idea that it is a human — which it is mainfestly not.
Trans identity at least has a fig leaf that there is a plausible biological thing going wrong here. Stretching it to pure “whatever I say goes” makes the concept entirely useless, giving ”I identify as a man/woman“ and “I identify as purple sunlight” the same degree of truth in the logical system.
"Stretching it to pure “whatever I say goes” makes the concept entirely useless"
I agree, that's why I said "if that were a real thing". As far as I can tell, it isn't. Species identity does not exist as a concept with any basis in neurobiology (in contrast to gender identity, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6677266/).
That said... why should we expect the *psychological* concept of identity to reflect *physical* reality? Is that really what the concept of identity is about?
I don't need my identity to reflect physical traits like the color of my eyes, or the length of my hair. A mirror or a camera can do that, and they can give an exact answer instead of having to rely on my memory.
It seems to me that talking about identity as a psychological concept is useful precisely because it can include things that *aren't* objective physical realities.