# Gender identity - is it even a debate at all? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 26, 2010, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366 "2010-04-26T02:53:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/141 "2010-05-05T10:32:00Z")
smiling bandit in a nutshell: He value his feelings on truth more than other people’s feelings. ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/142 "2010-05-05T17:04:56Z")
I hate to pile-on but there’s a lot that I wanted to reply to just didn’t have the time. But I have to reply to this: > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > The only oddity would be that I’d be annoyed is someone randomly replace just one aspect of my body with a woman’s (or a sheep’s, or Napoleon’s): it wouldn’t match and it wouldn’t work as well. I’d have only part of the function and it might not even be a function I choose to want. You can choose what you want??? I am so envious! ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2010, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/143 "2010-05-06T06:42:40Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t really feel like looking it up, but I recall reading about the proportion of people who had regrets. The early cases were like 1/5 but I recall reading that it’s dropped to like 1-2% in the present day. Maybe that’s b/c a lot of TS folks in the early days may have actually been GAY! They thought " oh maybe if I get surgery to become a man or woman that will align my desires. Remember gender roles until quite recently have been very very strict. ---
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2010, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/144 "2010-05-06T16:01:50Z")
Some in this thread are expressing the bizarre theme that if they were differently-sexed, they’d consider it at worst a mild inconvenience or annoyance. There seems to be a huge incapacity, there, to understand the minds of others: if this were the actual reaction of transfolk, why would they undergo hugely invasive surgery and face no end of social censure? It’s not a minor issue, like waking up one morning with blue eyes rather than brown. Beyond that, a good portion of the posts in this thread just make me think “longer than we thought…” Depressing. ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/145 "2010-05-06T16:13:35Z")
I agree; if a person were suddenly a different gender (and comfortable with it) then surely they wouldn’t be the same person, right? ---
**Author:** ![Dotbat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f17d59/32.png) [@Dotbat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dotbat)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/146 "2010-05-06T20:55:20Z")
> [@](#): > > And doesn’t it seem like that group tends to be VERY obessed with recreating a strict stereotypical gender role? (ie fancy dresses, long fingernails…the type of person who is a 20/30 something Fifth Ave shopper who watches Sex and the City and drinks cosmos and loves expensive shoes Maybe it has something to do with the possibility that a man who feels like a woman feels it on a biological level (ie - They feel like they should have a vagina, breasts, the ability to have children, or just a vague sense of not being masculine) but do not have a good grasp of what it is to be a woman in a social sense and so cling to what society tells them womanhood is like? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2010, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/147 "2010-05-06T21:06:25Z")
> [@umop\_ap\_sdn](#): > > I agree; if a person were suddenly a different gender (and comfortable with it) then surely they wouldn’t be the same person, right? Why? Let’s put it this way. If I got my arm chopped off in an accident, I’d be the same person right? I might wish I had two arms, but eventually I’d have to get comfortable having one arm, because I’d have no choice. I can imagine living the rest of my life with a female body, and while I don’t particularly want to, the thought doesn’t fill me with horror either. I mean, I’m a man, but only because I just happen to have been born that way. I can imagine being different than I am now, and still being myself. Maybe that different me wouldn’t really be me, but in that case I’m not the same person as the child I was 40 years ago. It seems to me that the changes between me as I am today, and what I was when I was three years old are a lot greater than the difference between me and me if I was a woman. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/148 "2010-05-07T00:14:55Z")
Your analogy falls apart with the fact that not everyone who has an arm chopped off adjusts well to it, even after many years, even though they have no choice. They remain miserable. I am open to the possibility that there are people adaptable enough that if they did suddenly wake up in the body of the opposite gender they’d adjust. Such people, however, will not be seeking surgery or be considered transsexuals as they will have adapted to their body’s gender. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/149 "2010-05-07T03:34:21Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > I can imagine living the rest of my life with a female body, and while I don’t particularly want to, the thought doesn’t fill me with horror either. I mean, I’m a man, but only because I just happen to have been born that way. I can imagine being different than I am now, and still being myself. Maybe that different me wouldn’t really be me, but in that case I’m not the same person as the child I was 40 years ago. It seems to me that the changes between me as I am today, and what I was when I was three years old are a lot greater than the difference between me and me if I was a woman. That’s personally how I feel about it as well. My question is, how much does it matter what you personally _think_ it would be like? It seems pretty clear that you and I don’t really have anything major consciously tied to our gender, but it’s also the case (apparently) that neither of us has any queerness about our gender. I never think about myself as me, the man, I just think about stuff. I can honestly claim, then, from my perspective, not to give a shit about gender. I had a hard time, given that this was my frame of reference, allowing much room for the idea that other people had different experiences; it’s very difficult not to universalize my own thought processes and values and levels of significance and make judgments about what it and what isn’t true of other people based on what I _know_ about human nature as experienced in my own human body. But then, I don’t really think about lots of things, I’ve found, and in almost every case the things I don’t think about turn out not to be a fundamental characteristic of humanity, but rather just something about the life I fell into. I didn’t think about my race until I was confronted with it through external, atmospheric pressures (which is to say, until I realized I was the only white dude around), didn’t think about being American until I wasn’t surrounded with Americans, bla bla bla. The kind of things most people learn, eventually. What I’ve come to believe is that my lack of gender-queer identity, which manifests for me, as far as I could ever tell, basically as a total lack of gender identity, is just another one of those conditions of privileged ignorance; a thing I never thought about because I didn’t have to, because I had it made already. I’ve got balls, I act more or less the way the other ones with balls act, it makes sense to me that I should like sports and girls, and I do like sports and girls, and I’ve got hair on my face. I’m a guy. This is how this is. Like anything else, the only thing that served to change that perspective was other people smarter than I am telling me about their (different) experiences. When I found myself surrounded by people who were equally capable of articulating their own gender experiences, and whose feelings on the matter were no less real and no less inevitable than mine to me, I eventually had to just kind of make a choice. Either all these people who had thought about this stuff more than I had, and who already had answers to my instinctive, bullshit, uncomfortable reactions _that made sense to me even though I didn’t want them to_ were just making this stuff up for my attention despite the fact that they seemed kind of bored by it and kind of exasperated by my own heel-dragging resistance to their experiences, or they were the kind of delusional where you use normal, everyday examples and rational arguments to make perfect sense to a somewhat unwilling listener… or they were just describing a plain truth about their existence. This is how this is, they were telling me. And so I kind of just don’t really care what I feel like is true on the matter anymore. Why the fuck would I know? ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/150 "2010-05-07T03:51:23Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > What I’ve come to believe is that my lack of gender-queer identity, which manifests for me, as far as I could ever tell, basically as a total lack of gender identity, is just another one of those conditions of privileged ignorance; a thing I never thought about because I didn’t have to, because I had it made already. I’ve got balls, I act more or less the way the other ones with balls act, it makes sense to me that I should like sports and girls, and I do like sports and girls, and I’ve got hair on my face. I’m a guy. This is how this is. Good post. This isn’t too different from my own experience. I never even thought about gender identity before I met my dysphoric friend. And then I thought about it, consciously. I _like_ being a guy. Other than a general need to lose weight, I’m _comfortable_ with my body and wouldn’t trade it for another. And if I can be that positive when I think about it, why can’t someone else feel just as strongly, but negatively? I helped my friend through all the stages of transition excluding the surgery, which she’s simply not in a good position to get yet. The change in her demeanor from being unhappy with herself to happy and content when people started treating her as female was real. She’s never once regretted her decision or had second thoughts, and if she had the money she’d finish the transition as soon as possible. Being female is as natural to her as being male is to me. Even if I had certain ideas about what should be, what is is simply too apparent to ignore. ---
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/151 "2010-05-07T05:30:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Why? Let’s put it this way. If I got my arm chopped off in an accident, I’d be the same person right? I might wish I had two arms, but eventually I’d have to get comfortable having one arm, because I’d have no choice. > > I can imagine living the rest of my life with a female body, and while I don’t particularly want to, the thought doesn’t fill me with horror either. I mean, I’m a man, but only because I just happen to have been born that way. I can imagine being different than I am now, and still being myself. Maybe that different me wouldn’t really be me, but in that case I’m not the same person as the child I was 40 years ago. It seems to me that the changes between me as I am today, and what I was when I was three years old are a lot greater than the difference between me and me if I was a woman. like I said, “a huge incapacity to understand the minds of others.” You may be able to idly consider the notion of living in a differently-sexed body, but that’s obviously a luxury based in the fact that it’s not something you actually have to deal with. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/152 "2010-05-07T06:09:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > I can imagine living the rest of my life with a female body, and while I don’t particularly want to, the thought doesn’t fill me with horror either. I feel the same way emotionally; I have no abstract objections to femininity, and tend to regard my gender as just a background fact. When I imagine myself suddenly turning into a woman the idea doesn’t horrify me. However, the evidence is that people who actually face the situation of being in a wrong-gendered body instead of sitting around speculating about it DO find it horribly unpleasant. Judging from that, I can only come to the conclusion that if you or I suddenly had our brains stuck in a body of the opposite gender we’d be as miserable as the rest regardless of how we feel in the abstract about it. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/153 "2010-05-07T13:36:36Z")
Eh, I don’t think so. We have evidence that SOME people are very unhappy about it. But it seems to me pretty likely that there are other people who have atypical gender expression who just shrug their shoulders and get on with their lives. If someone wishes they were another gender and it’s making them seriously miserable, then that person has a serious problem which has to be dealt with seriously. If someone wishes they were another gender and it gives them mild discomfort, then they have a mild problem. ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/154 "2010-05-07T15:36:32Z")
Also there are all those gay men who thought “if only I were a woman I could be with men” and got the surgery only to end up regretting it. Surely they _thought_ that they didn’t have a gender identity and could live comfortably as women but when the time came to actually do it they realized they had been mistaken. ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/155 "2010-05-07T16:28:44Z")
So here’s a question I haven’t seen answered yet: Are there any studies newer than \*\*Shodan’s \*\*1981 link concerning the suicide rates or other mental-health outcomes among transgender people who have vs. haven’t had reassignment surgery? ---
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/156 "2010-05-07T17:40:27Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Eh, I don’t think so. We have evidence that SOME people are very unhappy about it. But it seems to me pretty likely that there are other people who have atypical gender expression who just shrug their shoulders and get on with their lives. If someone wishes they were another gender and it’s making them seriously miserable, then that person has a serious problem which has to be dealt with seriously. If someone wishes they were another gender and it gives them mild discomfort, then they have a mild problem. Maybe there are some who view it as a “mild problem,” but that’s irrelevant. The fact that people go to some pretty extreme measures to correct the disjuncture they feel between their physical and intrinsic sexuality shows that they don’t take it lightly. I guess I don’t understand this unwillingness to accept the reality of gender dysphoria. Who does it harm to acknowledge that others feel this way (aside from the inane claims about “truth” elsewhere in this thread, that is)? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/157 "2010-05-07T20:20:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Some in this thread are expressing the bizarre theme that if they were differently-sexed, they’d consider it at worst a mild inconvenience or annoyance. There seems to be a huge incapacity, there, to understand the minds of others: if this were the actual reaction of transfolk, why would they undergo hugely invasive surgery and face no end of social censure? It’s not a minor issue, like waking up one morning with blue eyes rather than brown. Obviously, transgendered folks don’t have the same view of it that I do, and equally obviously, I don’t understand how their mindset works. But I’m _trying_ to understand. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366/158 "2010-05-08T14:08:38Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > However, the evidence is that people who actually face the situation of being in a wrong-gendered body instead of sitting around speculating about it DO find it horribly unpleasant. Judging from that, I can only come to the conclusion that if you or I suddenly had our brains stuck in a body of the opposite gender we’d be as miserable as the rest regardless of how we feel in the abstract about it. The law persecuted Alan Turing for being gay, and for some utterly whacked-out reason I cannot begin to fathom, the court had him either go to jail for being gay, or take estrogen. He chose the latter. Not clearly understanding what all that entailed. The feminization of his body was deeply distressing-- he complained to his friends, “I’m growing _tits!_” He committed suicide before long. After all, he had a male sexual identity hardwired in his body, and when that was violated, he was all WTF. It fucked with his deep down sense of who he was. This isn’t computer science. So as a general rule, until you’ve walked a mile in someone else’s moccasins… or body… it’d be wise not to get too smug about it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gender-identity-is-it-even-a-debate-at-all/537366.md?page=7)