I've always bristled at the fact that opposing gender ideology is seen as a conservative issue, when it can be framed as a progressive one. The fact that gender ideologues are forced to resort to stereotypes is a very regressive choice.
Kinda think you're misreading that slide, though there's a bunch of bait-and-switch, mote-and-bailey by many on the "gender ideology" side that contribute to that misreading.
But you say, "gender is the fuzzy spectrum of sex-based societal expectations about how one is supposed to act" -- is that your final answer? 😉🙂 But do you think that, for example, a feminine man is acting that way because society expects him to do so? Or is that maybe because he simply feels that way?
You might consider something that "philosopher" Byrne said about "gender identity" which I expect will be part of his forthcoming book [Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions] on the topic:
Byrne: "Is there another kind of gender identity that all transgender people have, and which does not match their sex? Specifically, is there a kind of 'female gender identity' that is shared by trans women? Here are some candidates: a sense of kinship with females as a group, a female-typical psychology, satisfaction at being socially treated as a female, a tendency to conform to the norms of female behavior, and a tendency to emulate female stereotypes."
Making gender just a matter of "societal expectations" -- nurture -- really short-changes any contributions from the biology -- nature. You may wish to take a gander at my latest:
Basically, there's a great deal of evidence to justify the view that "gender" is just a more or less accurate synonym for sexually dimorphic personalities, behaviours, roles, and expressions, all of which have their roots in both nature and nurture, some more in one than the other. And that many people exhibit aspects of those that are more typical of the other sex -- which is what makes them gender non-conforming.
I don't disagree with what you said. It doesn't change that 'gender' is generally used to refer to these archetypes, regardless of whether people conform to them or not.
Sure. I know -- from re-reading our conversations here -- that you've agreed that those stereotypes are generally not cut from whole cloth.
However, a rather large number of people -- mostly various gender-criticals and Radfems -- are more or less "barking (mad)" in wanting to "abolish gender" (Stock's point). As you've referenced Matt Osborne here, one might reasonably put him in that category too, particularly in his rather demented insistence that gender is just some new "gnostic religion" to be anathematized from pulpits far and wide.
No doubt some "gender ideologues" have gone off the deep end and into that territory, but not all of them. Still not sure whether he's simply pigheaded and clueless, or an outright grifter -- jury is still out.
So while I appreciate your "here we believe in gender stereotypes" -- though less a matter of belief than of fact -- you still might want to emphasize the underlying "brute facts". Time permitting of course, you being recently married and all that -- congrats by the way. 👍🙂
👍🙂 But as some potential grist for the mill -- should you have some time or inclination to be tilting at that particular windmill 🙂 -- you might have some interest in a post by Stella O'Malley of Genspect fame, and my response to it:
>The trouble is, thanks to the trolling efforts of Long Chu and Dylan Mulvaney, it’s becoming much harder to maintain the pretence that gender identity isn’t all about stereotypes, no matter how manipulative you are with words. How can you admit you’re wrong, if you’ve thrown your lot in with telling other women they’re genocidal Nazis for noticing the problem before you did? Won’t you get called a genocidal Nazi, too? It reminds me of cats, when they misjudge jumping over a fence or squeezing through a gap, adopting a face-saving air of “I totally meant to do that”. Likewise, we have people who are against stereotypes pretending they are in fact into stereotypes. Only in certain circumstances, though, which only really clever people would understand.
Brilliant. The denials have been pure gaslighting for a while now.
That is a hilariously depressing read. It's baffling how blatant the incoherency has been from the very beginning and yet somehow that hasn't been a death blow.
Sure a lotta people these days who are unclear on the difference between substance and appearance, between being X and "identifying-as" X, between reality and illusion -- the theme of Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and part of my:
Very very good post re: Reality & Illusion, I share your position completely. We also have the same habit of insisting on putting the punctuation mark outside of the quotations haha
Thank kew, thank kew ver much ... 🙂 High praise indeed -- can I quote you? Put it on my CV? 🙂
But not a big fan of the so-called "Oxford comma", though I need to look into the specifics a bit more. When I find the time ...
But incredibly convoluted issue -- "hilariously depressing incoherency" as you put it. Largely, one might argue, due to what Francis Bacon called the "shoddy and inept application of words [that] lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways":
You might be interested in another item to add to that "bill of particulars", to wit a Twitter exchange, of sorts, between philosopher Tomas Bogardus and (apparently) transwoman "Dr. Caitlin Green" according to philosopher (?) Moti Gorin who leaped into the fray to defend Tomas' honour:
Tomas, more or less endorsing the standard biological definitions for the sexes asserted that "Yet male nematodes are male just as I am male", the trait in common being "produces sperm":
Yet Caitlin apparently saw that as some sort of assertion that Tomas was somehow, in the fevered depths of "her" "mind", identical to a nematode. Which Moti cogently summarized as:
Moti: "Bogardus: nematodes, unlike humans, don’t have culture. But a male nematode and I (a male human) share the property of being male. So, being male is not a matter of culture.
Twitter theoreticians: GC philosophy holds that all human and nematode sex characteristics are identical!!"
Some pretty bizarre "thoughts" there by Caitlin, though rather too common, that would take some seriously hazardous spelunking to get to the bottom of. But offhand it seems that Caitlin & "her" ilk see "male" as a descriptor for the sum total of some half of the human population, whereas Tomas, more reasonably and scientifically, sees it as a label that denotes ONLY a certain reproductive ability common to literally millions of species.
To Tomas, "male" denotes only "produces sperm", whereas to Caitlin it apparently denotes a whole panoply of traits typical of "adult human males". Even if Tomas is apparently not yet ready to countenance "sexless" for those unable to produce either sperm or ova -- although he seems to have recognized a glimmer of it on the horizon:
But talk about looking at things from the opposite ends of the telescope. As I say, and have said and have been saying for a coon's age. Although the crux of the matter seems related to the dichotomy between properties that are essential for category membership -- Bogardus' position -- and accidental ones -- Caitlin's:
Good lord what a fucking dumb pile-on that was. It feels like Caitlin is intentionally misinterpreting for as long as possible in order to avoid being forced into reconciling her impossible position. It's not a winning strategy, all it does is expose how dumb she thinks her audience is.
Sadly, I doubt that Caitlin is "intentionally misinterpreting". Seems that "she" and too many others really are "dumb", or clueless, enough to misunderstand what it means to be male & female.
Though it seems part and parcel of the general tendency to "devalue" the linguistic currency. And a prime case of muddying the waters is making "man" & "woman", and "male" & "female" into terms that are both, on the one hand, sex-based or sexes -- respectively -- and, on the other hand, genders.
For examples, see the Merriam-Webster [MW] usage recommendations for "man" and "woman", and Matt Walsh's tweet of MW's definitions of "female" as both a sex [produces ova] AND as a gender identity:
Particularly risible in the latter is that defining "female" as a gender identity is circular. Its definition of "having a gender identity that is the opposite of male" is "complemented" by a definition for "male" as "having a gender identity that is the opposite of female". Idiots. Cretins. Those responsible there at MW should be fired.
Seriously moot exactly what are the roots of that particular aspect of the transgender clusterfuck -- that I have yet to get to the bottom of -- but a couple of salient features seem discernable. For example, see this tweet by Bogardus which was a response to one by Anne Fausto-Sterling [AFS]:
AFS: ".... If you want to restrict sex to just reproduction go ahead."
What else is sex all about if not reproduction? What's particularly gobsmacking is that AFS had once acquired -- apparently in her distant past and before she turned into an acolyte of Judith Butler -- a "Ph.D. in developmental genetics". If anyone should understand that sex is all about reproduction, one would think such PhDs would be front and center.
But another piece of the puzzle seems afforded by the dichotomy between "lumpers and splitters":
Wikipedia: "Lumpers and splitters are opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories."
AFS and Caitlin and many of their ilk apparently want to "lump" every last trait known to man and woman that shows any degree of "sexual dimorphism" into the categories "male" and "female". But, on the other hand, mainstream biologists worth their salt want to "split" all of those dimorphic traits out of those categories so there is only a single defining trait for each, i.e., functional gonads of either of two types.
I don't really know enough about the principles undergirding taxonomy, and categorization in general, to prognosticate at any length on the differences between the two approaches. But offhand, it seems that the latter is far more useful and efficient.
Trans activists: Hey, government. We’ve got this great idea. You know how people think you’re a bunch of assholes who has been driving the economy into the ground and lining rich people’s pockets while you let vulnerable people starve, we’ve got just the ticket for you.
Government: *Ears prick up* Tell us more.
Trans activists: Yeah, all you have to do is change this piece of legislation so we can get our sex changed more easily. The current legislation is really burdensome, and we’re really vulnerable, and it would really help us out, and would totally make you look like you care about marginalized people while costing you fuck all.
Not especially. I think what they're actually doing is promoting the idea that "women" should be defined in a way that encompasses trans women, using a dumb but catchy slogan.
As an analogy, imagine intersex activists saying something like "CAIS women are women!"
CAIS is a developmental condition in which someone with XY chromosomes is born with an apparently female body, because their cells don't respond to testosterone. They're infertile, with no ovaries or uterus, but otherwise they have a female external appearance and gender identity. Usually, no one suspects anything is wrong until after puberty, when they develop breasts but never menstruate.
An activist who shouts "CAIS women are women" isn't saying this condition will magically resolve itself and turn them into fertile XX women.
They're saying people with CAIS are or should be treated as women in everyday society, despite not having all the typical female biology, and thus that we shouldn't define "women" so narrowly that it excludes them...
...which is basically what TWAW is saying for trans women.
Current gender discourse makes way more sense if you understand it as the result of uneasy collaboration between different groups with fundamentally different models of transness.
For instance, funding/ political clout is a huge background factor in message visibility, and it seems there's a substantial amount of patronage from late-transitioning MtF types (e.g. the Pritzkers: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers) specifically promoting the "trans women are super hot women" model that centers the validity of natal males adopting stereotypical feminine presentation based on gender-essentialist ideas. The most active body of internet enforcers also seems to be of this ilk.
Meanwhile, the respectable spokespeople in research and academia, whose nonprofits collect those grants, who hold those endowed chairs and fear cancellation by those mobs, have a native ideology that leans much more to the social-constructivist/ anti-binary, gender-isn't-real side of the equation. But anyone who's spent time in nonprofits knows their fawning respect for new ideas with full funding and powerful patrons behind them, so you get these weird, unstable syntheses that pay lip service to principles of social construction while working for practical results that match their funders' goals. One way to read the trend of very smart people stammering over "what is a woman?" is that it's what happens when you want to say "there's no such thing as a woman in the conventional social sense, that's an artificial and frankly oppressive construct" but know that your *backers* want to hear "a woman is Dylan Mulvaney and Rachel Levine, you can tell because of the lipstick and the killer heels."
Finally, there are lots of front-line workers in healthcare and K-12 who seem mostly excited about facilitating transition itself - maybe out of pure compassion, because it seems like miracle solution to certain kinds of intractable trauma and social maladjustment (what if you could just... be someone brand new and cute, instead of the lonely person that those terrible things happened to?). Or maybe because being the office Tumblr evangelist is a way to feel pleasurably enlightened, compassionate and powerful, while grinding in professions with rough working conditions and shrinking prestige. Some people in these spheres seem to dogmatically assert whatever will let them get on with the work - like that babies can demand transition, why not? - because the work is the point, not the model.
All told, I think "who/whom?" works better than "why/how?" as a guiding question for this corner of the present.
Very insightful comment, thank you. I share your perspective that we're just observing an uneasy and incoherent collaboration; it explains the uncomfortably contradictory straddling I described in my main post. At minimum I would appreciate some honesty and candor from the groups you mention, but that's a tall order.
Interesting essay, and one I may have further comments on after a more thorough read, but offhand it seems you're starting off on the wrong foot by at least suggesting that gender stereotypes are cut from whole cloth. Which is typical of many feminists, Reilly-Cooper in particular, who seem think they were hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!!11!! 🙄" simply to oppress women.
Great deal of evidence that stereotypes are often quite accurate, in large part because there are often bedrock biological differences in the groups in question -- particularly males and females which you conceded in later paragraphs -- which underwrite or motivate those stereotypes.
So you might have some interest in this essay from social scientist and Substacker Lee Jussim:
"Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology":
Many of those stereotypes are less than flattering, or can be turned into something of a socially imposed straitjacket. But many others provide or constitute socially beneficial role models. Something which Kathleen Stock elaborated on in some detail in this essay where she credibly argued that Radfems were "barking (mad)" to try to abolish gender stereotypes:
I absolutely do NOT believe nor did I intend to imply that stereotypes are spawned out of thin air, or that they were created and intended to be a tool of oppression. I acknowledge that gender stereotypes maintain some accuracy, and that's because many of them have a direct link to differentiating aspects of biology (e.g. males are indeed way more violent than females, etc etc etc).
The word count was already a disaster and I didn't want to further pile it on with what would be tangential to the main thesis.
Thx for the links though, very interested to read Stock’s take in particular.
👍🙂 Good show! 👏🙂 But, en passant, thanks for the Like of and response to both my Note and comment here. Something of a serious bug in Substack that that isn't automatic.
But I quite agree that you weren't arguing that stereotypes are cut from whole cloth -- I at least alluded to your later paragraphs that acknowledged that:
Yassine: there are clear observable differences in physiology and psychology between males and females that will not disappear any time soon.
But, as indicated, many feminists, like Reilly-Cooper, DO. Which is a large part of the whole problem -- part and parcel of it in fact.
Bit of a thorny question as to the extent and source of those differences -- nature or nurture? Only his, her, or its hairdresser knows for sure ... 😉🙂
But, ICYMI, a fairly decent and quite thorough introduction to the research on the topic:
Gender should be defined as masculine/feminine rather than male/female. This is the original definition before postmodernist views of sex and gender took over. When medical forms asked for gender in the 90's, they meant something like "it's really sex but we don't want to get yelled at by parents." Masculine/feminine is a spectrum in a way that male/female simply is not. The former are stereotypical descriptions that do not identify, whereas the latter are fundamental, unambiguous aspects of life on Earth. Not complicated. And somehow ambivalence about the interchangeability of the words "sex" and "gender" turned into the total inability to define a woman. Specificity matters.
Also, for the love of God, someone please admit to laughing at the "strap on, this is going to be a long one." It's like the subtitle to the South Park film.
This is an excellent article. Thank you so much for sharing this lucid, carefully constructed essay. All these years after my adolescent toe dipping into the trans realm, I shake my head sadly and only hope people get the actual help and treatment and lives that will be holistically good for them. And, I hazard to say, I think that rarely involves living in logic pretzels about gender identity & the like, let alone medical treatment and surgeries.
I do think you're missing something fundamental about the distinction between stereotypes and gender identity. I'd like to help you understand it, and I feel like I'm in a good position to do so: although I'm a trans woman, I share your puzzlement at some of the contradictions you mentioned in the post.
However, I have a thing I need to do for the next half hour. So, I'll be back, but for now, I'll reshare a comment I wrote a while back arguing that "gender identity" is a simplified explanation of a biological phenomenon:
---
Wrapping it up in one term, "identity", isn't always helpful. It's a simplification, like the Bohr model of the atom, that can be useful for explaining it to people who are new to the topic and have no other frame of reference. But once they start asking probing questions that test the boundaries of that simplified model, it's time to move on to a more complex one that can answer those questions.
I've never had a voice in the back of my head whispering "Psst, don't believe the mirror! You're a girl!" And I can't speak for everyone, but judging from what I've read in comment sections, most people don't have a voice like that either.
What they have instead are experiences in which their gender becomes salient in some way and provokes an emotional reaction -- a reaction which they may or may not consciously connect to their gender at the time, depending on exactly what happened and how much insight they have into themselves.
[Someone who isn't here] linked to genderdysphoria.fyi above, a site that has a good (and long) list of ways in which GD can manifest. Interestingly, different people tend to experience different combinations of them: there are a bunch of things that *can* provoke the sort of reaction that implies they'd be more comfortable as the opposite sex, but none of them are 100% guaranteed to resonate with any particular trans person. They're just all correlated.
Kinda like how there are a bunch of observable physiological differences that *can* occur in people with some sort of gender non-conformity, but none of them are 100% guaranteed. Suspiciously like that, in fact.
So, here's a less simplified model. It may or may not be The Truth, but it lines up with my experience and research better than the singular "gender identity" model while explaining all the same things:
Many parts of the body develop differently in the presence vs. absence of testosterone before birth.
They all develop at different times during gestation, which normally doesn't matter, because the prenatal hormonal environment (and the body's response to those hormones) is usually consistent across the relevant time and space: either everything develops "the female way", or everything develops "the male way".
But sometimes it's inconsistent, and different parts develop in different directions.
Some of those parts happen to be in the brain, and the function they normally serve is to influence our psychology in ways that nudge us toward sex-specific behaviors, making us visible, attractive, and attracted to possible mates.
Because human behavior is complex, the way they exert that influence is through emotional cues and rewards that encourage us to learn sex-specific behaviors from other humans, and seek out positive feedback to confirm that we've gotten them right.
Because this is all just our species' particular version of something deep down that evolved a long, long time ago, something that's present in some form in any species with complex sex-specific behaviors... there isn't much we can do about it. Once it develops a certain way, we're stuck with it.
And because this is all happening at a low level, we aren't really conscious of what's happening, and if we try to explain our reaction, what comes to mind may actually be a story we write on the spot based on the things we *are* consciously aware of (just like trying to explain any other emotional reaction!). If seeing a beard in the mirror makes me feel a pang of disappointment, I may explain it as "this goatee looks dumb on me, maybe I should try a new style, but I don't really know what else would look good" when my brain is actually trying to say "that is NOT what I expect to see on an attractive woman's face".
So, "gender identity" is a concept representing what we get when we take stock of all of these emotional signals that we can consciously connect to gender, and try to decide whether they line up more with "the male way" or "the female way" of development. The explosion of gender identities happens because sometimes the signals are conflicting or unclear, and it's hard to make a call either way, but people still want to call it something. And gender identity can change over time as we get in new situations and experience new signals, or as we recognize the meaning of signals we've already experienced.
(This might get me tarred as a transmedicalist, I guess, but I'm throwing caution to the wind today!)
What’s so bad about transmedicalism? It’s very similar to the very succesful ‘born-this-way’-argument in favour of gay rights and really the only reason sex reassignment surgeries can be covered under healthcare insurance
But to steelman the opposing view: those who oppose transmedicalism tend to say "you don't need dysphoria to be trans". And although portraying gender as an arbitrary preference would indeed seem to trivialize it, and get in the way of societal tolerance and insurance coverage, it serves an important purpose in opening the door to people who don't *know* they're experiencing gender dysphoria.
"...only two of [the DSM-5's] conditions need to be met for a formal diagnosis [of gender dysphoria]. You may notice that only two of these comprise the physical body. It is perfectly valid for a trans person to be experiencing gender dysphoria without actually hating any part of their body or wanting to change any part of their body. Physical dysphoria is only one fraction of the many things that lead to being trans."
Problem is, most people don't know that, including a lot of people who are trans but have yet to realize it. "Sure, every time I blew out a birthday candle as a kid, I wished to wake up as a girl... and, uh, once in a while I still do it as an adult... but it's not like I hate being a guy, you know? I don't mind being called sir. I even grew a beard, on purpose! Does that sound like dysphoria? So I guess I'm not trans... which is lucky, because surgery is expensive, and I don't know how it'd turn out, and I'm not sure if I really want it right now anyway..." (But enough of my autobiography.)
So, to the extent transmedicalism causes people like that to get stuck in denial, it's a bad thing.
That said, I think there are better ways to avoid that than pretending gender identity has nothing to do with biology.
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 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.?"
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?
Jun 24, 2023·edited Jun 24, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout
"""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.
>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.
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.
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 feel like there's a general pattern going on with LGBTQ issues (and perhaps all progressive causes) that bugs the heck of out me, which is more or less: "There's a problem X; there's a rational response Y that would solve the problem, but there's also a far more radical response Z that will also solve the problem, and somehow Z has become enshrined as the solution you must support if you don't want to be labeled a garbage person by Twitter mobs". Examples:
Problem: many heterosexuals are verbally or physically abusive towards homosexuals because they see homosexuality as deviant, unnatural behavior.
Rational solution: teach people it's not cool to verbally or physically abuse people because you don't like them. (Note that this is a universally applicable rule that covers all kinds of use cases other than homophobia, as valuable as gold. A "Golden Rule", if you will.)
Radical solution: embark upon a massive project of societal reprogramming via official government messaging, public education, news media and popular entertainment to convince everybody to think that homosexuality (a sexual behavior practiced by perhaps a tenth of the population and that does not lead to procreation) is just as "normal" and "natural" as heterosexuality, and that to suggest otherwise is violence.
Problem: some people have hobbies, interests, and behaviors that don't conform with the traditional gender expectations associated with their biological sex, and they are sometimes made to feel bad about that, or are abused and bullied by their family and/or peers.
Rational solution: teach people it's not cool to verbally or physically abuse people because they're not into the things you expect them to be into based on what genitalia they have.
Radical solution: embark on a massive project of societal reprogramming via (the Cathedral) to convince everybody that gender has nothing to do with biological sex and that it's simultaneously super important to respect and uphold transpeople's gender identities, and also gender is socially constructed and we should stop having any kind of gender expectations whatsoever.
My very religious and conservative friend is amused that trans activists, who he assumes are all completely atheist or agnostic, seem to have reinvented the concept of the soul, in asserting that gender identity is completely separate from the physical body.
Maybe I'm lucky. When I (a male) was in junior high I got into doing cross-stitch one winter because I was bored and needed something to do and was curious about how to do something that my mom did. Maybe I'd feel more of a need to embrace radical gender politics if my dad (or mom) had flown off the handle and made me feel bad for wanting to do a girly thing instead of wanting to do a boy thing.
I agree with how you characterize the response to the trans issue but not the gay issue. Namely, I don't see how you could ever implement the "Rational solution" without the "Radical solution".
There are many reasons for why the anti-gay position even existed and at least part of it was believing it was unnatural, abhorrent, immoral, or whatever. If those are the reasons why people didn't like the gays and why people were mean to them, how can you hope to ever change that behavior without addressing the reasons for the dislike?
I guess I think it's possible to expect people to treat other people respectfully without necessarily having to like them? I mean, I come across people every day I don't particularly care for but I don't hit them or say mean things about them.
Sure, I grant it's possible to be respectful without liking someone, but you're sort of glossing over how intensely acute the dislike against gays used to be. It's difficult for me to imagine a situation where the equivalent sentiment of "I believe you are degenerate, immoral, repugnant, corrupting our children, and harboring a deadly plague" can peacefully co-exist with societal tolerance. I don't see how that's possible, but if you have any good counter-examples I'd be very curious to hear about them.
Indeed, what you implicitly deride as the "radical solution" ended up being spectacularly successful. If gay marriage polling is any indicator, the US rocketed from near universal scorn (27% support) to broad bipartisan acceptance (71%) in barely over 15 years. That pace is absolutely unheard of within the realm of social changes.
"It's difficult for me to imagine a situation where the equivalent sentiment of 'I believe you are degenerate, immoral, repugnant, corrupting our children, and harboring a deadly plague' can peacefully co-exist with societal tolerance."
In that case, God help conservatives in America in the future. *rimshot*
More seriously: you may very well be right, but I dislike the broader culture war implications, that there really is no way for two groups that hate each other to peacefully coexist in the same country; that like Harry Potter and Voldemort (I know, I know, read another book), neither can live while the other survives. You'll probably argue that the LGBTQ community doesn't hate straight cisgender religious conservatives so it's not an apt analogy, that its only ever been one side hating and oppressing the other, but I have seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Regarding the "radical solution": you talk about it as if it's over and done with, whereas I see it as very much an ongoing thing. Gay rights activists didn't all close up shop and declare victory after winning the right to gay marriage, they moved on to shaming Hollywood for not having more gay characters in their movies. They switched from demanding tolerance to demanding being centered and uplifted. And they started demanding social (and in some cases economic) censure of anybody who wants to say that they think that since the biological function of human sexuality is to make more humans, that the kinds of sex that don't make more humans are less natural than the kind that does (and that's fine, because have you looked at traffic lately, the world could use a few less humans).
I'm saying this all as a non-religious, mostly blue-tribe cishet male with no kids and no desire for any, who has never had a problem with people being gay, but who definitely has a problem with people trying to force him to believe absurd things because it makes them feel better.
"some people have hobbies, interests, and behaviors that don't conform with the traditional gender expectations associated with their biological sex"
This is... not actually a very accurate description of many/most trans people, unless you're including under "interests and behaviors" things like "looking and sounding like the opposite sex".
A lot of people seem to believe that the common life story goes something like this:
1. A boy is interested in wearing dresses and putting on makeup.
2. He learns that in his society, these are considered girls' interests, and people will hassle him for pursuing them as a boy.
3. He then concludes that he must be a girl, since he has interests that society tells him are girls' interests; or he simply decides to become a girl so he can pursue his interests in peace.
Whereas more commonly, the causality goes in the other direction:
1. A boy sees girls as his in-group, and wants to fit in with them and emulate them.
2. He sees girls wearing dresses and makeup, and learns that in his society, there's a strong association between those things and being a girl.
3. He becomes interested in wearing dresses and makeup himself.
Fair enough. However, the reasonable response of "don't be mean to a biological adult male who dresses like a woman" would still cover this situation, and doesn't require demanding that everybody believe that he is *actually* a woman or be guilty of thought crime.
No one can judge your thoughts directly, right? So if you're worried about being found guilty of thought crime, then what you're really worried about is *doing* something that might reveal those thoughts, and *that* is where the real dispute lives.
The behavior that would constitute "being mean" in your eyes is probably pretty different from what would constitute "being mean" in the eyes of the most radical trans activists. And both are probably different from what would constitute "being mean" in the eyes of me, a fairly chill trans woman who cares way more about the medical aspects of transition than the social aspects and has a healthy sense of humor about it.
Many radical trans activists have taken the position that disagreeing with their opinions is morally equivalent to murdering them because they will kill themselves if the world doesn't enthusiastically agree with everything they say.
One of the things that pisses me off is the combination of motte-and-bailey and weakmanning that goes on. When asked why transphobia is so bad, trans activists can certainly nutpick plenty of examples of disgusting right-wing hatred towards trans people, which bolsters the argument that transphobia is a clear and present danger towards trans people. Then when people want to have a good-faith debate over whether, for example, transwomen should be allowed to compete athletically against biological females in women's sports, the trans activists scream "you're trying to erase our existence you evil transphobe".
Interesting question. The easy answer is, "just talk to a trans person": saying the latter happened "more commonly" was an understatement, because the former is unheard of. I've literally never seen or heard a single report of anyone ever choosing to transition simply as a means to pursue some hobby or interest that would've been non-conforming for their birth sex.
If you want some data to look at, I suppose one place to start would be the US Transgender Survey. The 2015 report (https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf) says only about 55% of trans people were out to "all" or "most" of their non-LGBT friends, 41% to all/most of their bosses, 34% to all/most of their coworkers, and only 25% to all/most of their classmates. Is it plausible that people who transitioned because they feared the social consequences of their gender non-conforming behavior would be able to keep it concealed from so many people they closely interact with in person?
Know plenty of women my age (younger millennials) who identify as non-binary or even ‘demi-girl’ (come on, you’re 32) who are on a spectrum of autism and/or ADD. I guess it’s one way to deal with your problems but I doubt it’s the best way. Just makes me sad, really.
Don’t think there’s all of it, though; zoomers just seem to be grossed-out by sex altogether and I’m pretty sure some of them adopt these sorts of identities to pretect them from the evil eye of being perceived as sexual beings
"I guess it's one way to deal with your problems"?
What does that mean, exactly? You think they're pretending their gender identity is something other than what it really is, in order to alleviate... ADHD symptoms?
They have a sense of unease and being different and interpret that as being gender-divergent instead of or in addition to being neuro-divergent. I don’t think people have 100% self-knowledge or are capable of diagnosing this sort of thing independently.
Nit sure ‘gender identity’ is a thing in itself for most people either, if I’m honest. It’s a model that works to explain trans people’s experience and but doesn’t really work for people outside of that. I think the whole ‘non-binary’ phenomenon comes from that misapplication of a unsuitable model.
Again, just my observations. I do hope you don’t take it personally.
It's hard not to take it personally when I'm one of the people you're talking about.
I've been diagnosed with both gender dysphoria and autism, about a year apart. I've spent most of my life feeling somewhat "different". I've also spent most of my life wanting to be female.
Those two feelings haven't felt at all similar.
The feeling of being "different" has diminished over time, as I've gotten better and better at dealing with the social situations and expectations that used to be difficult for me. I've had a successful career and long, happy relationships.
The feeling of wanting to be female has... not. Before transitioning, I'd been able to partially satisfy it by experiencing femininity vicariously through a partner, but it never really went away, and I often felt a sense of envy when I met women that was hard to explain. And that desire has always felt very distinct from the ways in which I've felt different: like, I never imagined myself being able to fit in any better as a girl or a woman, or having a different personality in any way. (I think starting estrogen *has* actually made it easier to relate to other people and talk about emotions, but that took me by surprise.)
So the idea that people with ASD or ADHD are misinterpreting their feelings about those conditions as feelings about gender strikes me as far-fetched. From what I've seen, people are more likely to come up with rationalizations to *avoid* concluding they're trans than to support it.
But I think this idea also overlooks the insight people gain as they take the first steps in transition. The first time I was able to squint into a mirror and see a feminine shape reflected back, the feeling was almost indescribable: happiness, comfort, a glimpse into a better timeline. Same thing happened the first time I ran my picture through FaceApp's gender filter: I stared at it for minutes on end, with tears in my eyes, like I'd been reunited with a sister I never knew I had. And, again and again, I would notice that when I thought about the person I might be after transition, so many of the thoughts I always knew I should have which never felt very real -- plans about my future, opinions about the way I look -- suddenly felt real and personal, like I finally had a concept of "me" worth caring about. Those feelings, more than anything, convinced me to go ahead with medical transition. And the way every change I noticed in myself after starting hormones brought a smile to my face convinced me it was the right choice.
I've talked to a lot of people who describe themselves as autistic and trans. None of them have ever seemed indifferent or uninvested in their gender, the way I'd expect them to be if they were simply grasping at it to solve unrelated problems.
"""[Gender identity is] a model that works to explain trans people’s experience and but doesn’t really work for people outside of that."""
In what way does it not work?
I think we need only look at how young kids self-organize to see the impact of gender identity for cis people. As I wrote in another comment here, kids left to their own devices will form same-sex peer groups; this is "one of the most powerful and pervasive social phenomena known to exist in childhood". Typical boys see themselves as boys, prefer spending their time with other boys, learn preferences and behaviors from other boys, and often even shun anything they think is "for girls". What is the psychological phenomenon that makes them identify so strongly as boys, if not gender identity?
"""I think the whole ‘non-binary’ phenomenon comes from that misapplication of a unsuitable model."""
Are you saying people normally don't feel a connection to their gender, but this model makes some of them falsely believe they should be feeling a connection, and so they falsely conclude they must be non-binary?
Interesting idea, but do you really think anyone's transitioning or actively rejecting their gender because of that? Like, most people are fine being referred to by the pronouns of their birth gender, even if (as you hypothesize) they don't have any internal sense of connection to that gender. Why would belief in an inaccurate model make some people uncomfortable being called "he" or "she"?
Honestly the autism thing really bugs me. A decade ago there was a real movement about how autism in women was massively understudied and underdiagnosed because it’s quite different from male autism, and now that movement is gone not because female autism is better understood and appreciated, but because the concept of womanhood is in crisis
What makes you think it's gone? A quick YouTube search for "autism in women", "autism in girls", etc., turns up lots of recent content, including a TED talk from 2 months ago.
The way to square the circle here is that gender stereotypes are true, have always been true, etc. Trans people are a nice additional proof of this but not really necessary. Of course it is weird that many left leaning people believe both contradictory things but you can paper over a lot of doublethink if you control the entire media and all major institutions of knowledge. Google Rebecca Tuvel if you want an example of it in action.
"Matt Osborne wrote a devastating piece about her very long history of dangerous quackery."
Citing this made me think less of you. In addition to the source being openly biased, they only "quote" her a handful of words at a time (at most - often just one or two!), and I had to put "quote" in quotes, because they don't even cite where she said those things!
Invalid evidence doesn't invalidate the point, but you should be able to find a valid source discrediting her, if she's genuinely this bad.
I initially wrote about Dr. Ehrensaft citing only her own words and her own website. It wasn't until much later that Matt Osborne's post brought to my attention her past involvement with the Daycare Satanic Panic (and linked directly to her own words). I didn't choose to link to Osborne's post until I corroborated that his claims about her work were well-founded. Did I overlook anything?
I did check excerpts from her book to confirm she does indeed use "gender angels" and "gender ghosts", in addition with comparing it to what she writes on her own website. I also paraphrased her report on the Presidio case by reading her own words directly rather than just accepting Osborn's summary (though his was indeed accurate). Do you have any reason to believe that Matt Osborne is misquoting or otherwise misrepresenting Dr. Ehrensaft? I would be happy to acknowledge any errors and add any necessary corrections.
"Do you have any reason to believe that Matt Osborne is misquoting or otherwise misrepresenting Dr. Ehrensaft? "
The point is that it was written so unscrupulously, there was no reason to believe it was an accurate representation. (And if it was accurate, why was it written so unscrupulously? Just to sneer?) We don't need to apply the best evidence rule to blogposts, but that evidence was just not sufficient.
I don't know what you're referring to with 'unscrupulously' but Osborne linked directly to a PDF of Ehrensaft's paper. That's often the best (though not infallible) indication that a writer is not being misleading with a citation, any skeptical reader could check for themselves (as I did).
I've always bristled at the fact that opposing gender ideology is seen as a conservative issue, when it can be framed as a progressive one. The fact that gender ideologues are forced to resort to stereotypes is a very regressive choice.
https://societystandpoint.substack.com/p/i-am-a-true-progressive
Wow I don't think I ever saw that Mermaids slide before. What other evidence do you need when they admit it so readily?
Kinda think you're misreading that slide, though there's a bunch of bait-and-switch, mote-and-bailey by many on the "gender ideology" side that contribute to that misreading.
But you say, "gender is the fuzzy spectrum of sex-based societal expectations about how one is supposed to act" -- is that your final answer? 😉🙂 But do you think that, for example, a feminine man is acting that way because society expects him to do so? Or is that maybe because he simply feels that way?
You might consider something that "philosopher" Byrne said about "gender identity" which I expect will be part of his forthcoming book [Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions] on the topic:
Byrne: "Is there another kind of gender identity that all transgender people have, and which does not match their sex? Specifically, is there a kind of 'female gender identity' that is shared by trans women? Here are some candidates: a sense of kinship with females as a group, a female-typical psychology, satisfaction at being socially treated as a female, a tendency to conform to the norms of female behavior, and a tendency to emulate female stereotypes."
https://archive.ph/2021.07.20-175151/https:/medium.com/arc-digital/what-is-gender-identity-10ce0da71999
Making gender just a matter of "societal expectations" -- nurture -- really short-changes any contributions from the biology -- nature. You may wish to take a gander at my latest:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/a-multi-dimensional-gender-spectrum
Basically, there's a great deal of evidence to justify the view that "gender" is just a more or less accurate synonym for sexually dimorphic personalities, behaviours, roles, and expressions, all of which have their roots in both nature and nurture, some more in one than the other. And that many people exhibit aspects of those that are more typical of the other sex -- which is what makes them gender non-conforming.
I don't disagree with what you said. It doesn't change that 'gender' is generally used to refer to these archetypes, regardless of whether people conform to them or not.
Sure. I know -- from re-reading our conversations here -- that you've agreed that those stereotypes are generally not cut from whole cloth.
However, a rather large number of people -- mostly various gender-criticals and Radfems -- are more or less "barking (mad)" in wanting to "abolish gender" (Stock's point). As you've referenced Matt Osborne here, one might reasonably put him in that category too, particularly in his rather demented insistence that gender is just some new "gnostic religion" to be anathematized from pulpits far and wide.
No doubt some "gender ideologues" have gone off the deep end and into that territory, but not all of them. Still not sure whether he's simply pigheaded and clueless, or an outright grifter -- jury is still out.
So while I appreciate your "here we believe in gender stereotypes" -- though less a matter of belief than of fact -- you still might want to emphasize the underlying "brute facts". Time permitting of course, you being recently married and all that -- congrats by the way. 👍🙂
Thanks! I mostly agree with Stock's point on the utility of acknowledging sex differences. I'm not sure I have more to add to that but we'll see.
👍🙂 But as some potential grist for the mill -- should you have some time or inclination to be tilting at that particular windmill 🙂 -- you might have some interest in a post by Stella O'Malley of Genspect fame, and my response to it:
https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/why-genspect-doesnt-want-to-replace/comment/46754357
https://substack.com/profile/21792752-steersman/note/c-46754356
Of particular note -- in my Note -- is a couple of pictures which I think, or at least hope, get to the heart of the matter.
When the definition of gender can't be drawn from biological sex, all they have left are stereotypes.
Here come the new gender stereotypes, same as the old gender stereotypes:
https://thecritic.co.uk/here-come-the-new-gender-stereotypes-same-as-the-old-gender-stereotypes/
>The trouble is, thanks to the trolling efforts of Long Chu and Dylan Mulvaney, it’s becoming much harder to maintain the pretence that gender identity isn’t all about stereotypes, no matter how manipulative you are with words. How can you admit you’re wrong, if you’ve thrown your lot in with telling other women they’re genocidal Nazis for noticing the problem before you did? Won’t you get called a genocidal Nazi, too? It reminds me of cats, when they misjudge jumping over a fence or squeezing through a gap, adopting a face-saving air of “I totally meant to do that”. Likewise, we have people who are against stereotypes pretending they are in fact into stereotypes. Only in certain circumstances, though, which only really clever people would understand.
Brilliant. The denials have been pure gaslighting for a while now.
I'm still trying to figure out how conforming to male stereotypes makes you a dude.
https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/
This is comedy gold.
That is a hilariously depressing read. It's baffling how blatant the incoherency has been from the very beginning and yet somehow that hasn't been a death blow.
Since when did intellectual consistency or cogent arguments start to matter, when you can just use force?
If you wear a cowboy outfit then you can be a cowboy too 😉🙂:
https://www.lyricsbox.com/smothers-brothers-streets-of-laredo-lyrics-gbx5rjq.html
Sure a lotta people these days who are unclear on the difference between substance and appearance, between being X and "identifying-as" X, between reality and illusion -- the theme of Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and part of my:
https://medium.com/@steersmann/reality-and-illusion-being-vs-identifying-as-77f9618b17c7
Very very good post re: Reality & Illusion, I share your position completely. We also have the same habit of insisting on putting the punctuation mark outside of the quotations haha
Thank kew, thank kew ver much ... 🙂 High praise indeed -- can I quote you? Put it on my CV? 🙂
But not a big fan of the so-called "Oxford comma", though I need to look into the specifics a bit more. When I find the time ...
But incredibly convoluted issue -- "hilariously depressing incoherency" as you put it. Largely, one might argue, due to what Francis Bacon called the "shoddy and inept application of words [that] lays siege to the intellect in wondrous ways":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novum_Organum
You might be interested in another item to add to that "bill of particulars", to wit a Twitter exchange, of sorts, between philosopher Tomas Bogardus and (apparently) transwoman "Dr. Caitlin Green" according to philosopher (?) Moti Gorin who leaped into the fray to defend Tomas' honour:
https://twitter.com/GorinMoti/status/1667557990331809795
Tomas, more or less endorsing the standard biological definitions for the sexes asserted that "Yet male nematodes are male just as I am male", the trait in common being "produces sperm":
https://twitter.com/TomasBogardus/status/1665846236837040129
Yet Caitlin apparently saw that as some sort of assertion that Tomas was somehow, in the fevered depths of "her" "mind", identical to a nematode. Which Moti cogently summarized as:
Moti: "Bogardus: nematodes, unlike humans, don’t have culture. But a male nematode and I (a male human) share the property of being male. So, being male is not a matter of culture.
Twitter theoreticians: GC philosophy holds that all human and nematode sex characteristics are identical!!"
Some pretty bizarre "thoughts" there by Caitlin, though rather too common, that would take some seriously hazardous spelunking to get to the bottom of. But offhand it seems that Caitlin & "her" ilk see "male" as a descriptor for the sum total of some half of the human population, whereas Tomas, more reasonably and scientifically, sees it as a label that denotes ONLY a certain reproductive ability common to literally millions of species.
To Tomas, "male" denotes only "produces sperm", whereas to Caitlin it apparently denotes a whole panoply of traits typical of "adult human males". Even if Tomas is apparently not yet ready to countenance "sexless" for those unable to produce either sperm or ova -- although he seems to have recognized a glimmer of it on the horizon:
https://twitter.com/TomasBogardus/status/1667682343811702785
But talk about looking at things from the opposite ends of the telescope. As I say, and have said and have been saying for a coon's age. Although the crux of the matter seems related to the dichotomy between properties that are essential for category membership -- Bogardus' position -- and accidental ones -- Caitlin's:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/
But what a dog's breakfast, even if a "hilariously depressing" one. 🙂
Good lord what a fucking dumb pile-on that was. It feels like Caitlin is intentionally misinterpreting for as long as possible in order to avoid being forced into reconciling her impossible position. It's not a winning strategy, all it does is expose how dumb she thinks her audience is.
Sadly, I doubt that Caitlin is "intentionally misinterpreting". Seems that "she" and too many others really are "dumb", or clueless, enough to misunderstand what it means to be male & female.
Though it seems part and parcel of the general tendency to "devalue" the linguistic currency. And a prime case of muddying the waters is making "man" & "woman", and "male" & "female" into terms that are both, on the one hand, sex-based or sexes -- respectively -- and, on the other hand, genders.
For examples, see the Merriam-Webster [MW] usage recommendations for "man" and "woman", and Matt Walsh's tweet of MW's definitions of "female" as both a sex [produces ova] AND as a gender identity:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#usage-1
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1549382790952656899
Particularly risible in the latter is that defining "female" as a gender identity is circular. Its definition of "having a gender identity that is the opposite of male" is "complemented" by a definition for "male" as "having a gender identity that is the opposite of female". Idiots. Cretins. Those responsible there at MW should be fired.
Seriously moot exactly what are the roots of that particular aspect of the transgender clusterfuck -- that I have yet to get to the bottom of -- but a couple of salient features seem discernable. For example, see this tweet by Bogardus which was a response to one by Anne Fausto-Sterling [AFS]:
AFS: ".... If you want to restrict sex to just reproduction go ahead."
https://twitter.com/TomasBogardus/status/1665846236837040129
What else is sex all about if not reproduction? What's particularly gobsmacking is that AFS had once acquired -- apparently in her distant past and before she turned into an acolyte of Judith Butler -- a "Ph.D. in developmental genetics". If anyone should understand that sex is all about reproduction, one would think such PhDs would be front and center.
But another piece of the puzzle seems afforded by the dichotomy between "lumpers and splitters":
Wikipedia: "Lumpers and splitters are opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters
AFS and Caitlin and many of their ilk apparently want to "lump" every last trait known to man and woman that shows any degree of "sexual dimorphism" into the categories "male" and "female". But, on the other hand, mainstream biologists worth their salt want to "split" all of those dimorphic traits out of those categories so there is only a single defining trait for each, i.e., functional gonads of either of two types.
I don't really know enough about the principles undergirding taxonomy, and categorization in general, to prognosticate at any length on the differences between the two approaches. But offhand, it seems that the latter is far more useful and efficient.
An especially salient point:
Trans activists: Hey, government. We’ve got this great idea. You know how people think you’re a bunch of assholes who has been driving the economy into the ground and lining rich people’s pockets while you let vulnerable people starve, we’ve got just the ticket for you.
Government: *Ears prick up* Tell us more.
Trans activists: Yeah, all you have to do is change this piece of legislation so we can get our sex changed more easily. The current legislation is really burdensome, and we’re really vulnerable, and it would really help us out, and would totally make you look like you care about marginalized people while costing you fuck all.
"""I'm still trying to figure out how conforming to male stereotypes makes you a dude."""
It doesn't make you a dude. But it does make other people more likely to see you as a dude. That's the point.
Are you sure that's what activists really mean when they say "trans women are women! Period!"?
I'm sure it isn't. They aren't talking about conforming to stereotypes when they say that.
They're talking about something even more elusive.
Not especially. I think what they're actually doing is promoting the idea that "women" should be defined in a way that encompasses trans women, using a dumb but catchy slogan.
As an analogy, imagine intersex activists saying something like "CAIS women are women!"
CAIS is a developmental condition in which someone with XY chromosomes is born with an apparently female body, because their cells don't respond to testosterone. They're infertile, with no ovaries or uterus, but otherwise they have a female external appearance and gender identity. Usually, no one suspects anything is wrong until after puberty, when they develop breasts but never menstruate.
An activist who shouts "CAIS women are women" isn't saying this condition will magically resolve itself and turn them into fertile XX women.
They're saying people with CAIS are or should be treated as women in everyday society, despite not having all the typical female biology, and thus that we shouldn't define "women" so narrowly that it excludes them...
...which is basically what TWAW is saying for trans women.
> They're saying people with CAIS are or should be treated as women in everyday society
What's it like to be treated as a woman?
Funny that these activists seem rather less nuanced, unless we need to talk about "male vaginas" and the like.
Current gender discourse makes way more sense if you understand it as the result of uneasy collaboration between different groups with fundamentally different models of transness.
For instance, funding/ political clout is a huge background factor in message visibility, and it seems there's a substantial amount of patronage from late-transitioning MtF types (e.g. the Pritzkers: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers) specifically promoting the "trans women are super hot women" model that centers the validity of natal males adopting stereotypical feminine presentation based on gender-essentialist ideas. The most active body of internet enforcers also seems to be of this ilk.
Meanwhile, the respectable spokespeople in research and academia, whose nonprofits collect those grants, who hold those endowed chairs and fear cancellation by those mobs, have a native ideology that leans much more to the social-constructivist/ anti-binary, gender-isn't-real side of the equation. But anyone who's spent time in nonprofits knows their fawning respect for new ideas with full funding and powerful patrons behind them, so you get these weird, unstable syntheses that pay lip service to principles of social construction while working for practical results that match their funders' goals. One way to read the trend of very smart people stammering over "what is a woman?" is that it's what happens when you want to say "there's no such thing as a woman in the conventional social sense, that's an artificial and frankly oppressive construct" but know that your *backers* want to hear "a woman is Dylan Mulvaney and Rachel Levine, you can tell because of the lipstick and the killer heels."
Finally, there are lots of front-line workers in healthcare and K-12 who seem mostly excited about facilitating transition itself - maybe out of pure compassion, because it seems like miracle solution to certain kinds of intractable trauma and social maladjustment (what if you could just... be someone brand new and cute, instead of the lonely person that those terrible things happened to?). Or maybe because being the office Tumblr evangelist is a way to feel pleasurably enlightened, compassionate and powerful, while grinding in professions with rough working conditions and shrinking prestige. Some people in these spheres seem to dogmatically assert whatever will let them get on with the work - like that babies can demand transition, why not? - because the work is the point, not the model.
All told, I think "who/whom?" works better than "why/how?" as a guiding question for this corner of the present.
Very insightful comment, thank you. I share your perspective that we're just observing an uneasy and incoherent collaboration; it explains the uncomfortably contradictory straddling I described in my main post. At minimum I would appreciate some honesty and candor from the groups you mention, but that's a tall order.
As Bette Davis once put it, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night" 😉🙂
https://youtu.be/eja-popojUo
Interesting essay, and one I may have further comments on after a more thorough read, but offhand it seems you're starting off on the wrong foot by at least suggesting that gender stereotypes are cut from whole cloth. Which is typical of many feminists, Reilly-Cooper in particular, who seem think they were hatched in the inner sanctums of "The Patriarchy!!!11!! 🙄" simply to oppress women.
Great deal of evidence that stereotypes are often quite accurate, in large part because there are often bedrock biological differences in the groups in question -- particularly males and females which you conceded in later paragraphs -- which underwrite or motivate those stereotypes.
So you might have some interest in this essay from social scientist and Substacker Lee Jussim:
"Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology":
https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/stereotype-accuracy-one-largest-and-most-replicable-effects-all#gsc.tab=0
Many of those stereotypes are less than flattering, or can be turned into something of a socially imposed straitjacket. But many others provide or constitute socially beneficial role models. Something which Kathleen Stock elaborated on in some detail in this essay where she credibly argued that Radfems were "barking (mad)" to try to abolish gender stereotypes:
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/lets-abolish-the-dream-of-gender
I absolutely do NOT believe nor did I intend to imply that stereotypes are spawned out of thin air, or that they were created and intended to be a tool of oppression. I acknowledge that gender stereotypes maintain some accuracy, and that's because many of them have a direct link to differentiating aspects of biology (e.g. males are indeed way more violent than females, etc etc etc).
The word count was already a disaster and I didn't want to further pile it on with what would be tangential to the main thesis.
Thx for the links though, very interested to read Stock’s take in particular.
👍🙂 Good show! 👏🙂 But, en passant, thanks for the Like of and response to both my Note and comment here. Something of a serious bug in Substack that that isn't automatic.
But I quite agree that you weren't arguing that stereotypes are cut from whole cloth -- I at least alluded to your later paragraphs that acknowledged that:
Yassine: there are clear observable differences in physiology and psychology between males and females that will not disappear any time soon.
But, as indicated, many feminists, like Reilly-Cooper, DO. Which is a large part of the whole problem -- part and parcel of it in fact.
Bit of a thorny question as to the extent and source of those differences -- nature or nurture? Only his, her, or its hairdresser knows for sure ... 😉🙂
But, ICYMI, a fairly decent and quite thorough introduction to the research on the topic:
https://4thwavenow.com/2019/08/19/no-child-is-born-in-the-wrong-body-and-other-thoughts-on-the-concept-of-gender-identity/
The included joint probability distribution graph is worth particular attention.
Gender should be defined as masculine/feminine rather than male/female. This is the original definition before postmodernist views of sex and gender took over. When medical forms asked for gender in the 90's, they meant something like "it's really sex but we don't want to get yelled at by parents." Masculine/feminine is a spectrum in a way that male/female simply is not. The former are stereotypical descriptions that do not identify, whereas the latter are fundamental, unambiguous aspects of life on Earth. Not complicated. And somehow ambivalence about the interchangeability of the words "sex" and "gender" turned into the total inability to define a woman. Specificity matters.
Also, for the love of God, someone please admit to laughing at the "strap on, this is going to be a long one." It's like the subtitle to the South Park film.
Glad someone noticed
This is an excellent article. Thank you so much for sharing this lucid, carefully constructed essay. All these years after my adolescent toe dipping into the trans realm, I shake my head sadly and only hope people get the actual help and treatment and lives that will be holistically good for them. And, I hazard to say, I think that rarely involves living in logic pretzels about gender identity & the like, let alone medical treatment and surgeries.
I do think you're missing something fundamental about the distinction between stereotypes and gender identity. I'd like to help you understand it, and I feel like I'm in a good position to do so: although I'm a trans woman, I share your puzzlement at some of the contradictions you mentioned in the post.
However, I have a thing I need to do for the next half hour. So, I'll be back, but for now, I'll reshare a comment I wrote a while back arguing that "gender identity" is a simplified explanation of a biological phenomenon:
---
Wrapping it up in one term, "identity", isn't always helpful. It's a simplification, like the Bohr model of the atom, that can be useful for explaining it to people who are new to the topic and have no other frame of reference. But once they start asking probing questions that test the boundaries of that simplified model, it's time to move on to a more complex one that can answer those questions.
I've never had a voice in the back of my head whispering "Psst, don't believe the mirror! You're a girl!" And I can't speak for everyone, but judging from what I've read in comment sections, most people don't have a voice like that either.
What they have instead are experiences in which their gender becomes salient in some way and provokes an emotional reaction -- a reaction which they may or may not consciously connect to their gender at the time, depending on exactly what happened and how much insight they have into themselves.
[Someone who isn't here] linked to genderdysphoria.fyi above, a site that has a good (and long) list of ways in which GD can manifest. Interestingly, different people tend to experience different combinations of them: there are a bunch of things that *can* provoke the sort of reaction that implies they'd be more comfortable as the opposite sex, but none of them are 100% guaranteed to resonate with any particular trans person. They're just all correlated.
Kinda like how there are a bunch of observable physiological differences that *can* occur in people with some sort of gender non-conformity, but none of them are 100% guaranteed. Suspiciously like that, in fact.
So, here's a less simplified model. It may or may not be The Truth, but it lines up with my experience and research better than the singular "gender identity" model while explaining all the same things:
Many parts of the body develop differently in the presence vs. absence of testosterone before birth.
They all develop at different times during gestation, which normally doesn't matter, because the prenatal hormonal environment (and the body's response to those hormones) is usually consistent across the relevant time and space: either everything develops "the female way", or everything develops "the male way".
But sometimes it's inconsistent, and different parts develop in different directions.
Some of those parts happen to be in the brain, and the function they normally serve is to influence our psychology in ways that nudge us toward sex-specific behaviors, making us visible, attractive, and attracted to possible mates.
Because human behavior is complex, the way they exert that influence is through emotional cues and rewards that encourage us to learn sex-specific behaviors from other humans, and seek out positive feedback to confirm that we've gotten them right.
Because this is all just our species' particular version of something deep down that evolved a long, long time ago, something that's present in some form in any species with complex sex-specific behaviors... there isn't much we can do about it. Once it develops a certain way, we're stuck with it.
And because this is all happening at a low level, we aren't really conscious of what's happening, and if we try to explain our reaction, what comes to mind may actually be a story we write on the spot based on the things we *are* consciously aware of (just like trying to explain any other emotional reaction!). If seeing a beard in the mirror makes me feel a pang of disappointment, I may explain it as "this goatee looks dumb on me, maybe I should try a new style, but I don't really know what else would look good" when my brain is actually trying to say "that is NOT what I expect to see on an attractive woman's face".
So, "gender identity" is a concept representing what we get when we take stock of all of these emotional signals that we can consciously connect to gender, and try to decide whether they line up more with "the male way" or "the female way" of development. The explosion of gender identities happens because sometimes the signals are conflicting or unclear, and it's hard to make a call either way, but people still want to call it something. And gender identity can change over time as we get in new situations and experience new signals, or as we recognize the meaning of signals we've already experienced.
(This might get me tarred as a transmedicalist, I guess, but I'm throwing caution to the wind today!)
What’s so bad about transmedicalism? It’s very similar to the very succesful ‘born-this-way’-argument in favour of gay rights and really the only reason sex reassignment surgeries can be covered under healthcare insurance
I mostly agree.
But to steelman the opposing view: those who oppose transmedicalism tend to say "you don't need dysphoria to be trans". And although portraying gender as an arbitrary preference would indeed seem to trivialize it, and get in the way of societal tolerance and insurance coverage, it serves an important purpose in opening the door to people who don't *know* they're experiencing gender dysphoria.
Quoting https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/diagnoses:
"...only two of [the DSM-5's] conditions need to be met for a formal diagnosis [of gender dysphoria]. You may notice that only two of these comprise the physical body. It is perfectly valid for a trans person to be experiencing gender dysphoria without actually hating any part of their body or wanting to change any part of their body. Physical dysphoria is only one fraction of the many things that lead to being trans."
Problem is, most people don't know that, including a lot of people who are trans but have yet to realize it. "Sure, every time I blew out a birthday candle as a kid, I wished to wake up as a girl... and, uh, once in a while I still do it as an adult... but it's not like I hate being a guy, you know? I don't mind being called sir. I even grew a beard, on purpose! Does that sound like dysphoria? So I guess I'm not trans... which is lucky, because surgery is expensive, and I don't know how it'd turn out, and I'm not sure if I really want it right now anyway..." (But enough of my autobiography.)
So, to the extent transmedicalism causes people like that to get stuck in denial, it's a bad thing.
That said, I think there are better ways to avoid that than pretending gender identity has nothing to do with biology.
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.
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.?"
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.
>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.
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.
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 feel like there's a general pattern going on with LGBTQ issues (and perhaps all progressive causes) that bugs the heck of out me, which is more or less: "There's a problem X; there's a rational response Y that would solve the problem, but there's also a far more radical response Z that will also solve the problem, and somehow Z has become enshrined as the solution you must support if you don't want to be labeled a garbage person by Twitter mobs". Examples:
Problem: many heterosexuals are verbally or physically abusive towards homosexuals because they see homosexuality as deviant, unnatural behavior.
Rational solution: teach people it's not cool to verbally or physically abuse people because you don't like them. (Note that this is a universally applicable rule that covers all kinds of use cases other than homophobia, as valuable as gold. A "Golden Rule", if you will.)
Radical solution: embark upon a massive project of societal reprogramming via official government messaging, public education, news media and popular entertainment to convince everybody to think that homosexuality (a sexual behavior practiced by perhaps a tenth of the population and that does not lead to procreation) is just as "normal" and "natural" as heterosexuality, and that to suggest otherwise is violence.
Problem: some people have hobbies, interests, and behaviors that don't conform with the traditional gender expectations associated with their biological sex, and they are sometimes made to feel bad about that, or are abused and bullied by their family and/or peers.
Rational solution: teach people it's not cool to verbally or physically abuse people because they're not into the things you expect them to be into based on what genitalia they have.
Radical solution: embark on a massive project of societal reprogramming via (the Cathedral) to convince everybody that gender has nothing to do with biological sex and that it's simultaneously super important to respect and uphold transpeople's gender identities, and also gender is socially constructed and we should stop having any kind of gender expectations whatsoever.
My very religious and conservative friend is amused that trans activists, who he assumes are all completely atheist or agnostic, seem to have reinvented the concept of the soul, in asserting that gender identity is completely separate from the physical body.
Maybe I'm lucky. When I (a male) was in junior high I got into doing cross-stitch one winter because I was bored and needed something to do and was curious about how to do something that my mom did. Maybe I'd feel more of a need to embrace radical gender politics if my dad (or mom) had flown off the handle and made me feel bad for wanting to do a girly thing instead of wanting to do a boy thing.
I agree with how you characterize the response to the trans issue but not the gay issue. Namely, I don't see how you could ever implement the "Rational solution" without the "Radical solution".
There are many reasons for why the anti-gay position even existed and at least part of it was believing it was unnatural, abhorrent, immoral, or whatever. If those are the reasons why people didn't like the gays and why people were mean to them, how can you hope to ever change that behavior without addressing the reasons for the dislike?
I guess I think it's possible to expect people to treat other people respectfully without necessarily having to like them? I mean, I come across people every day I don't particularly care for but I don't hit them or say mean things about them.
Sure, I grant it's possible to be respectful without liking someone, but you're sort of glossing over how intensely acute the dislike against gays used to be. It's difficult for me to imagine a situation where the equivalent sentiment of "I believe you are degenerate, immoral, repugnant, corrupting our children, and harboring a deadly plague" can peacefully co-exist with societal tolerance. I don't see how that's possible, but if you have any good counter-examples I'd be very curious to hear about them.
Indeed, what you implicitly deride as the "radical solution" ended up being spectacularly successful. If gay marriage polling is any indicator, the US rocketed from near universal scorn (27% support) to broad bipartisan acceptance (71%) in barely over 15 years. That pace is absolutely unheard of within the realm of social changes.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/393197/same-sex-marriage-support-inches-new-high.aspx
"It's difficult for me to imagine a situation where the equivalent sentiment of 'I believe you are degenerate, immoral, repugnant, corrupting our children, and harboring a deadly plague' can peacefully co-exist with societal tolerance."
In that case, God help conservatives in America in the future. *rimshot*
More seriously: you may very well be right, but I dislike the broader culture war implications, that there really is no way for two groups that hate each other to peacefully coexist in the same country; that like Harry Potter and Voldemort (I know, I know, read another book), neither can live while the other survives. You'll probably argue that the LGBTQ community doesn't hate straight cisgender religious conservatives so it's not an apt analogy, that its only ever been one side hating and oppressing the other, but I have seen plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Regarding the "radical solution": you talk about it as if it's over and done with, whereas I see it as very much an ongoing thing. Gay rights activists didn't all close up shop and declare victory after winning the right to gay marriage, they moved on to shaming Hollywood for not having more gay characters in their movies. They switched from demanding tolerance to demanding being centered and uplifted. And they started demanding social (and in some cases economic) censure of anybody who wants to say that they think that since the biological function of human sexuality is to make more humans, that the kinds of sex that don't make more humans are less natural than the kind that does (and that's fine, because have you looked at traffic lately, the world could use a few less humans).
I'm saying this all as a non-religious, mostly blue-tribe cishet male with no kids and no desire for any, who has never had a problem with people being gay, but who definitely has a problem with people trying to force him to believe absurd things because it makes them feel better.
"some people have hobbies, interests, and behaviors that don't conform with the traditional gender expectations associated with their biological sex"
This is... not actually a very accurate description of many/most trans people, unless you're including under "interests and behaviors" things like "looking and sounding like the opposite sex".
A lot of people seem to believe that the common life story goes something like this:
1. A boy is interested in wearing dresses and putting on makeup.
2. He learns that in his society, these are considered girls' interests, and people will hassle him for pursuing them as a boy.
3. He then concludes that he must be a girl, since he has interests that society tells him are girls' interests; or he simply decides to become a girl so he can pursue his interests in peace.
Whereas more commonly, the causality goes in the other direction:
1. A boy sees girls as his in-group, and wants to fit in with them and emulate them.
2. He sees girls wearing dresses and makeup, and learns that in his society, there's a strong association between those things and being a girl.
3. He becomes interested in wearing dresses and makeup himself.
Fair enough. However, the reasonable response of "don't be mean to a biological adult male who dresses like a woman" would still cover this situation, and doesn't require demanding that everybody believe that he is *actually* a woman or be guilty of thought crime.
Depends how you define "don't be mean", I guess.
No one can judge your thoughts directly, right? So if you're worried about being found guilty of thought crime, then what you're really worried about is *doing* something that might reveal those thoughts, and *that* is where the real dispute lives.
The behavior that would constitute "being mean" in your eyes is probably pretty different from what would constitute "being mean" in the eyes of the most radical trans activists. And both are probably different from what would constitute "being mean" in the eyes of me, a fairly chill trans woman who cares way more about the medical aspects of transition than the social aspects and has a healthy sense of humor about it.
Many radical trans activists have taken the position that disagreeing with their opinions is morally equivalent to murdering them because they will kill themselves if the world doesn't enthusiastically agree with everything they say.
One of the things that pisses me off is the combination of motte-and-bailey and weakmanning that goes on. When asked why transphobia is so bad, trans activists can certainly nutpick plenty of examples of disgusting right-wing hatred towards trans people, which bolsters the argument that transphobia is a clear and present danger towards trans people. Then when people want to have a good-faith debate over whether, for example, transwomen should be allowed to compete athletically against biological females in women's sports, the trans activists scream "you're trying to erase our existence you evil transphobe".
Yes, the catastrophizing is a problem.
I would very much like to see these claims substantiated. What's the evidence base that the latter is more common than the former.
Interesting question. The easy answer is, "just talk to a trans person": saying the latter happened "more commonly" was an understatement, because the former is unheard of. I've literally never seen or heard a single report of anyone ever choosing to transition simply as a means to pursue some hobby or interest that would've been non-conforming for their birth sex.
If you want some data to look at, I suppose one place to start would be the US Transgender Survey. The 2015 report (https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf) says only about 55% of trans people were out to "all" or "most" of their non-LGBT friends, 41% to all/most of their bosses, 34% to all/most of their coworkers, and only 25% to all/most of their classmates. Is it plausible that people who transitioned because they feared the social consequences of their gender non-conforming behavior would be able to keep it concealed from so many people they closely interact with in person?
Know plenty of women my age (younger millennials) who identify as non-binary or even ‘demi-girl’ (come on, you’re 32) who are on a spectrum of autism and/or ADD. I guess it’s one way to deal with your problems but I doubt it’s the best way. Just makes me sad, really.
Don’t think there’s all of it, though; zoomers just seem to be grossed-out by sex altogether and I’m pretty sure some of them adopt these sorts of identities to pretect them from the evil eye of being perceived as sexual beings
"I guess it's one way to deal with your problems"?
What does that mean, exactly? You think they're pretending their gender identity is something other than what it really is, in order to alleviate... ADHD symptoms?
As I wrote above (https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/in-this-house-we-believe-in-gender/comment/17251071), there's a correlation between autism and every letter in "LGBT", not only the T. Do you believe autistic people who claim to be gay are just making it up to "deal with their problems" too?
They have a sense of unease and being different and interpret that as being gender-divergent instead of or in addition to being neuro-divergent. I don’t think people have 100% self-knowledge or are capable of diagnosing this sort of thing independently.
Nit sure ‘gender identity’ is a thing in itself for most people either, if I’m honest. It’s a model that works to explain trans people’s experience and but doesn’t really work for people outside of that. I think the whole ‘non-binary’ phenomenon comes from that misapplication of a unsuitable model.
Again, just my observations. I do hope you don’t take it personally.
It's hard not to take it personally when I'm one of the people you're talking about.
I've been diagnosed with both gender dysphoria and autism, about a year apart. I've spent most of my life feeling somewhat "different". I've also spent most of my life wanting to be female.
Those two feelings haven't felt at all similar.
The feeling of being "different" has diminished over time, as I've gotten better and better at dealing with the social situations and expectations that used to be difficult for me. I've had a successful career and long, happy relationships.
The feeling of wanting to be female has... not. Before transitioning, I'd been able to partially satisfy it by experiencing femininity vicariously through a partner, but it never really went away, and I often felt a sense of envy when I met women that was hard to explain. And that desire has always felt very distinct from the ways in which I've felt different: like, I never imagined myself being able to fit in any better as a girl or a woman, or having a different personality in any way. (I think starting estrogen *has* actually made it easier to relate to other people and talk about emotions, but that took me by surprise.)
So the idea that people with ASD or ADHD are misinterpreting their feelings about those conditions as feelings about gender strikes me as far-fetched. From what I've seen, people are more likely to come up with rationalizations to *avoid* concluding they're trans than to support it.
But I think this idea also overlooks the insight people gain as they take the first steps in transition. The first time I was able to squint into a mirror and see a feminine shape reflected back, the feeling was almost indescribable: happiness, comfort, a glimpse into a better timeline. Same thing happened the first time I ran my picture through FaceApp's gender filter: I stared at it for minutes on end, with tears in my eyes, like I'd been reunited with a sister I never knew I had. And, again and again, I would notice that when I thought about the person I might be after transition, so many of the thoughts I always knew I should have which never felt very real -- plans about my future, opinions about the way I look -- suddenly felt real and personal, like I finally had a concept of "me" worth caring about. Those feelings, more than anything, convinced me to go ahead with medical transition. And the way every change I noticed in myself after starting hormones brought a smile to my face convinced me it was the right choice.
I've talked to a lot of people who describe themselves as autistic and trans. None of them have ever seemed indifferent or uninvested in their gender, the way I'd expect them to be if they were simply grasping at it to solve unrelated problems.
"""[Gender identity is] a model that works to explain trans people’s experience and but doesn’t really work for people outside of that."""
In what way does it not work?
I think we need only look at how young kids self-organize to see the impact of gender identity for cis people. As I wrote in another comment here, kids left to their own devices will form same-sex peer groups; this is "one of the most powerful and pervasive social phenomena known to exist in childhood". Typical boys see themselves as boys, prefer spending their time with other boys, learn preferences and behaviors from other boys, and often even shun anything they think is "for girls". What is the psychological phenomenon that makes them identify so strongly as boys, if not gender identity?
"""I think the whole ‘non-binary’ phenomenon comes from that misapplication of a unsuitable model."""
Are you saying people normally don't feel a connection to their gender, but this model makes some of them falsely believe they should be feeling a connection, and so they falsely conclude they must be non-binary?
Interesting idea, but do you really think anyone's transitioning or actively rejecting their gender because of that? Like, most people are fine being referred to by the pronouns of their birth gender, even if (as you hypothesize) they don't have any internal sense of connection to that gender. Why would belief in an inaccurate model make some people uncomfortable being called "he" or "she"?
See, I wasn’t talking about trans people, I was talking about she/theys. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough
Honestly the autism thing really bugs me. A decade ago there was a real movement about how autism in women was massively understudied and underdiagnosed because it’s quite different from male autism, and now that movement is gone not because female autism is better understood and appreciated, but because the concept of womanhood is in crisis
What makes you think it's gone? A quick YouTube search for "autism in women", "autism in girls", etc., turns up lots of recent content, including a TED talk from 2 months ago.
The way to square the circle here is that gender stereotypes are true, have always been true, etc. Trans people are a nice additional proof of this but not really necessary. Of course it is weird that many left leaning people believe both contradictory things but you can paper over a lot of doublethink if you control the entire media and all major institutions of knowledge. Google Rebecca Tuvel if you want an example of it in action.
"Matt Osborne wrote a devastating piece about her very long history of dangerous quackery."
Citing this made me think less of you. In addition to the source being openly biased, they only "quote" her a handful of words at a time (at most - often just one or two!), and I had to put "quote" in quotes, because they don't even cite where she said those things!
Invalid evidence doesn't invalidate the point, but you should be able to find a valid source discrediting her, if she's genuinely this bad.
I initially wrote about Dr. Ehrensaft citing only her own words and her own website. It wasn't until much later that Matt Osborne's post brought to my attention her past involvement with the Daycare Satanic Panic (and linked directly to her own words). I didn't choose to link to Osborne's post until I corroborated that his claims about her work were well-founded. Did I overlook anything?
I did check excerpts from her book to confirm she does indeed use "gender angels" and "gender ghosts", in addition with comparing it to what she writes on her own website. I also paraphrased her report on the Presidio case by reading her own words directly rather than just accepting Osborn's summary (though his was indeed accurate). Do you have any reason to believe that Matt Osborne is misquoting or otherwise misrepresenting Dr. Ehrensaft? I would be happy to acknowledge any errors and add any necessary corrections.
"Do you have any reason to believe that Matt Osborne is misquoting or otherwise misrepresenting Dr. Ehrensaft? "
The point is that it was written so unscrupulously, there was no reason to believe it was an accurate representation. (And if it was accurate, why was it written so unscrupulously? Just to sneer?) We don't need to apply the best evidence rule to blogposts, but that evidence was just not sufficient.
I don't know what you're referring to with 'unscrupulously' but Osborne linked directly to a PDF of Ehrensaft's paper. That's often the best (though not infallible) indication that a writer is not being misleading with a citation, any skeptical reader could check for themselves (as I did).