… which is Daniel’s polite and civilized way of saying what I’ll put bluntly: no one has actually answered 'zilla’s question about what gender identity is, least of all you. Your claim that the point has already been established is either a deliberate lie on your part or simple intellectual incompetence.
Either way, I don’t believe I’ll bother to engage you in conversation again.
Now, does anyone else wish to explain what they mean by the phrase “gender identity”?
: stepping away from TVAA
That’s not an accurate rephrasing of what I said. I believe that KellyM believes she’s posted his understanding of what it means to feel like a man or a woman; I am not sure whether it’s her fault or my fault that I’m still unclear on her position.
Daniel
DanielWithrow, I think CrazyCatLady’s, Lamia’s, and Kimstu’s posts on that issue are pretty succinct and accurate on the issue, and I have nothing to add to them. If you can’t understand the concept from what they’ve said, there is nothing I can think to say that would help.
I think part of the problem is that (as far as we know) no person can experience both “being male” and “being female” so it’s impossible to compare the experiences to find out what is difference. It’s something you just know (or don’t know) about yourself. I also think most people never question their gender identity (they have no reason to) and so just take that feeling for granted. I can’t explain why many people feel that they have inherent gender, but the truth remains that many people do. What people like TVAA are doing is saying “Prove that you feel that way, other than by telling us what your feelings are”, which is a patently ridiculous demand.
In reply to even sven’s description of what a man would feel after being put into the body of a woman:
I don’t identify with many of your points at all. I don’t wear makeup and dresses to job interviews. Why would I? Why would I buy tight clothes? Nothing hurts when I walk except my arthritic hip joint. Heck, I don’t even menstruate. So, I don’t think you’re painting an accurate picture of what men would experience.
As for the brain not matching the body, here is my question: Most of the time, in science, if we don’t get the results we expect, we change the expectation. If “female” brains are like A, and “male” brains are like B, and we find someone who is biologically “male” with a “female” brain, isn’t that evidence that “male” brains aren’t like B rather than evidence that the person is really “female”?
I’ll use a different example:
We know that men have larger hearts than women. If we found a woman with a larger heart, we wouldn’t say that she had a “male” heart, we’d say that hmm, maybe women can have larger hearts than we thought previously. We change the hypothesis to fit the facts, rather than forcing the facts to fit the hypothesis. If we decided that because her heart was large that she was really male, or even had a male heart, that would be a weird leap.
Why then would the brain, which is just a physical construct like a heart, be different? If we find someone whose brain more closely resembles that of the assumed brain of a woman than the assumed brain of a man, but the person is genetically male, that seems merely to mean that the assumption about who gets what brain is wrong.
Julie
** I’m aware that wasn’t your intention.
However, upon rereading this thread, it is clear that KellyM has not in fact ever answered the question. You’re an intelligent and reasonable person, and your reading of the thread did not convey to you an understanding of what KellyM means; this is because she did not in fact explain what she means.
Now, either she is lying when she claims to have answered the question, or she believes she has answered the question and isn’t intellectually capable enough to realize that she’s done no such thing.
Your position is noted. My position about why you’re unclear is perfectly clear.
It’s not, of course, an exhaustive list of what it is like being a woman. Mostly I working off complaints I’ve heard about being a man and percieved as male when you think that is all wrong. The complaints include stuff like "I hate how I can’t wear clothes that flatter my figure’, “I hate that I don’t have a figure to flatter”, “I hate that I have this wierd penis thing that gets all hard and weird all the time”, “I hate that everyone keeps refering to me as a guy”, “I hate that I have to wear suits to job interviews and wipe off any traces of make-up”, etc. Living as something other than the gender you percieve yourself to be is not a big old happy walk in the park like people seem to think it is.
I think what you guys are missing is that it isn’t one factor, it isn’t one feeling, it isn’t some neat little equations. When you get into stuff like gender identity- stuff that is about who we fundamentally are- well, we just don’t know enough about the brain to reduce it to a simple equation. There are too many complicated factors and it is a realm (like most everything having to do with nature vs. nurture) that we are just barely starting to touch with science. And gender is very much about society. There is no real reason why we divide people up based on their genitals and not based on one of the ten million other differences amongst people. Just now we are learning to stop dividing people up based on race- that a shared set of physical characteristics doesn’t mean you have to build social interactions around them. WHen will the time come for gender?
**
Well, why base it on genetics. Couldn’t the genetics be wrong? They certainly tend to get screwed up a lot of the time. Plus, as you missed earlier, we don’t base gender on genetics. I’ve never been genetically tested, but damn straight I’m a girl. I don’t demand genetic printouts of the people I meet before I figure out what pronoun to call them. Gender is a nebulous concept, based on many factors. It can’t be simplified down to one factor. But it is known that one factor either allows people to live normal lives, or causes them great distress. So maybe thats the one we ought to pay attention to.
OK, let’s see…
CrazyCatLady said the following:
Lamia said the following:
And Kimstu typed thusly:
Now, Kimstu states that her gender idenity is not based on sexual orientation or societal gender roles, but doesn’t really address whether it is determined by her anatomy. CrazyCatLady and Lamia, on the other hand do affirmatively state that their gender identity is not based on anatomy, although they can’t clearly state what it is based on (they just “know” they are women).
Hmmmm… Maybe this whole “gender identity” thing is something only women (or men who “feel like” women) can perceive?
Barry
DanielWithrow, I should expand a bit. I have no idea what it feels like to be a man; I therefore can’t explain what it does feel like to be a man. Perhaps you should ask a man that.
I do know what it feels like to try to be a man when you’re not; it’s kinda like trying to wear a pair of shoes that just don’t fit. (Actually I’d compare it to trying to wear a pair of badly adjusted dentures, but fewer people can relate to that.) Eventually either the pain gets to you and you throw away the shoes, or the callouses finally build up to the point that you stop caring. The former is the path that leads to transition; the latter leads to lifelong depression, and quite often suicide.
Nor is this just a matter of rejecting male social roles. I tried that, and it did not help. Part of the reason it took me so long to transition is that I tried other ways of accomodating my lack of male self-identity before finally accepting that I am truly female (I tried dating men. I tried adopting a “feminine male” role. I tried androgyny.) It wasn’t until I accepted that I really am female and acted accordingly that I found self-peace. I spent many years struggling with depression (and suicidal ideation) because I was denying what I knew to be true from the first time the possibility that I might not be a man was mentioned to me.
My knowledge that I am female is the result of a three-decade-long struggle of coming to know myself. No, I cannot point to specific thoughts or acts or beliefs or practices that substantiate this belief, and I can’t tell you how you can tell whether you are male or female, or even if you’re either.
So if you want to claim I’m delusional, feel free. You won’t be the first. I don’t have an objective basis for that belief; I don’t claim to have “researched femininity” and determined on the basis of objective criteria that I’m more “feminine” than “masculine”. Nor do I have any generic insight into what it means for anyone other than me to be a woman.
One thing I’ve noticed is that I am developing the sense of an impending need to have a baby that middle aged women who haven’t had a baby often have. (This is a cruel joke being played on me by the cosmos.) lee’s baby helps with this, but does not cure it. I find it interesting that catsix, who identifies as female on the sole basis of her physiology and childhood (if I understand her position correctly) also claims, as I recall, to desire childlessness. Two datapoints don’t make a pattern, but this intrigues me.
TVAA asked my opinion:
I vote for “invalid”. I don’t think members of a hypothetical intelligent single-sex species, one that reproduced asexually, would have gender identities. And I doubt that members of a hypothetical intelligent-but-nonsocial species would have gender identities either.
Where people get into difficulties is when they start conceptualizing the problem as either/or or as additive.
Either/or: “Well, is it the biological sex that’s wrong, or is it the cultural beliefs and expectations?”
Additive: “Well, how much of gender dysphoria is due to you being in the wrong body, and how much is due to you not liking how you are perceived as a result of the body you were born in?”
Both formulations miss out on grasping that the meaning of gender lies in the interaction, the relationship of body and culture. Not one or the other, not half in one and half in the other, but entirely in the relationship. Much the way that the area of a rectangle is entirely due to its length and its width without one square millimeter of it being due to only one or only the other.
Well, that’s my take on it at any rate.
Thank you, KellyM – that explanation helps, I think.
First, I don’t want to call you delusional. I may not understand always what you’re saying, but you seem to be very self-aware on this issue, and I’m dead certain that you’re more aware of your own mind than I am of your mind. It would be sheerest arrogance for me to call you delusional, and I won’t do that.
I do wonder what the difference is between “adopting a ‘feminine male’ role” and “accept[ing] that I really am female and act[ing] accordingly.” This is an honest question, not an attempt to suggest you’re lying or being inconsistent; I’m sure there is a difference, but it’s hard for me to see it.
Does the difference have a non-mental component – that is, is it a difference that a non-psychic third party could possibly detect? If so, what would that third party see to differentiate between the two?
If it was a purely mental reason, I guess it gets back to the original question: when you accepted that you really are female, to what does the word “female” refer? In some ways, it comes across to me as a symbol without a referent, something ineffable.
Currently your explanation makes sense to me along this level:
I spent my whole life assuming people were telling me the truth when they said I was galumphious. I tried pretending to be a fleepy galumph, but that didn’t help. It was only when I actually accepted that I was a fleep and acted accordingly that I found self-peace.
As I said before, I don’t really need to know what you mean by fleep or galumph in order to be happy that you’ve found self-peace; it’s curiosity that drives me to ask. And I’m willing to accept that you may be unable to define the terms (in fact, I think you may have said as much in your last post), and if that’s the case, that’s fine – I don’t need to understand what you mean to accept that you do mean something by it.
But if it’s possible to answer the question above, I’m curious.
Daniel
Living as someone in the gender you perceive yourself to be is not a big old happy walk in the park, either. I hate how I can’t wear clothes that flatter my figure. I hate that I don’t have a great figure to flatter. I hate breasts! I hate the amazing size of my feet. I hate that if I weren’t getting a shot every three months then I would be barfing and bleeding all over the place every month. I hate that some people expect me to wear makeup, but I don’t wear it anyway. I hate being called a “girl” or “gal.” I hate that men won’t talk sports with me. There are lots of things about being a woman that I absolutely loathe, and I won’t put up with much when it comes to stereotypes.
That’s fine, but I thought one of the arguments was that even if I treat someone with gender dysphoria as the gender they perceive as correct, many will still not be able to be content. I don’t think saying “society shouldn’t care” helps someone who feels they must change bodies.
It doesn’t matter what “it” is based on. If I go to the doctor and they find I have a large heart they might be concerned that I have enlarged heart–cardiomyopathy or something–but they would never think “Gee, this supposed woman has a man’s heart” or “This supposed woman is really a man.” The heart can display these types of variables and we just say, “Oh this person has a larger than normal heart.” But with the brain, we seem to be saying that someone must be one thing or another. They can’t have variations in their brains without being the other gender?
Evidence that people who are chromosomally one sex or another can have brain characteristics of the other sex simply shows that brain characteristics aren’t as sex-defined as they had thought. It isn’t an argument that the person is really the other gender, just as having a large heart isn’t an argument that someone who presents as a woman is really a man.
Do not mistake me; I have zero issue with anyone taking whatever steps they need in order to feel content and confident in their own skins. I don’t get to decide and judge what others can and should do, and I have great respect for anyone who is strong enough to be his or her own person. That gender dysphoria happens isn’t up for debate, in my opinion.
Julie
At least there are ways we can judge whether someone has a “large” heart – for example, we can compare to the total distribution of heart sizes, or heart sizes relative to body length, or some other method.
But so far we haven’t made much headway in establishing what it means to feel like a “woman” or a “man”.
AHunter3, I would be gender dysphoric in the absence of all culture context. I know this because of the effect that oral hormones have on my mental and emotional state.
My emotional state changed, substantially, after I had been on oral hormones long enough for my serum estrogen level to reach the range considered “normal” for an adult female. During the ramp up, my emotional state was turbulently confused and I suffered from serious mood swings. When I miss several doses in a row or otherwise have problems that causes my intake of estrogen to drop (e.g. the time I had severe stomach flu and wasn’t able to keep down much, which interfered with absorption), my emotional state returns to that same turbulent state. I suspect that if I quit HRT entirely I’d return, over the course of a week or two, to my pre-HRT severe depression. (I have no intention of testing this theory.) My anecdotal personal experience has been confirmed by talking to other transsexuals who have experienced the same thing (some of whom have had to quit hormones, for various reasons), although the experience is by no means universal.
My brain simply works better when washed in an appropriate level of estrogen. This has nothing to do with culture, and everything to do with neurochemistry. No, I can’t prove it (or, rather, I am unwilling to go through the pain that would be required to prove it, scientifically). But I know it to be true.
DanielWithrow, the reason why we use the labels “male” and “female” to describe those two ineffable qualities is that those ineffables seem to correspond, in the vast majority of people, to the male and female sexes, respectively. Further, it is my opinion that those ineffable qualities are what define maleness and femaleness, not chromosomes and certainly not personality trait tendencies or social role expectations or stereotypes.
Huh. Maybe I’m just the color-blind guy asking someone to explain the meaning of the word “purple.”
Your response to hormones is also illuminating.
I think I’ve gotten about as close as I can to understanding this issue; many thanks for your patience, KellyM.
Daniel
Does anybody actually read my posts???
In my very first post to this thread-
The heart analogy was in response to findings that there can be brain differences–which would be judged objectively.
I think DanielWithrow my be right about gender identity and the color purple. Perhaps if you have to ask, you ain’t got it.
I know that I am a woman. I don’t feel any particular affinity for being a woman. I don’t behave in particularly “womanly” ways. I don’t do many stereotypical womanly behaviors. I do know that I have been shaped by my society to react in certain ways to certain things, but I also know that other things haven’t been effective in shaping me.
I don’t want to be a man, though that would be easier in some respects. If I were given an option of being a woman, a man, or neither, I’d probably pick neither unless it would lose me my husband!
So, for me, knowing how I feel, and knowing friends who think and behave in more “feminine” ways, I can’t help wondering whose version of “woman” people feel like.
I don’t even know if my question make sense.
Julie
Hmmmm… Apparently not. Including this one. 
Maybe I missed whoever said they think it’s a “walk in the park”, but I thought most of us were saying not that gender dysphoria is a pleasant thing, but rather that we don’t understand what it means to “feel like” a particular gender.
But again, aren’t you really talking about societal stereotypes? Isn’t that really the problem about which you are complaining? As I said before, I’m not much into watching sports, I feel uncomfortable always being the aggressor in relationships, I have never gotten into a fistfight, and I think people should talk about their feelings. That doesn’t mean I “feel like a woman”, it just means that society’s stereotypes are not true for everyone. And certainly homosexuals do not fit societal expectations of how “men” and “women” behave, but still frequently self-identify as their “own” gender. I agree that gender is very much about society, and people tend to measure themselves against societal expectations. But what the OP is asking is what it means to feel an innate sense of being a “man” or a “woman”, without reference to societal expectations or plumbing.
You seem to be decrying the fact that society forces us into gender roles, yet at the same time you seem to vehemently support the notion that we must self-identify as one gender or the other. I would say you’re working at cross-purposes.
OK, my original question was addressed to the non transgendered people out there in an effort to determine whether everybody except for me has a sense of “gender identity” that isn’t based on anatomy or sexual preference.
But, now that we have some transgendered folks here and the subject has veered a bit, maybe I can try asking a separate, yet related question. When a person suffering from Gender Dysphoria says they do not feel comfortable in their body or that they don’t “feel like” the gender that would normally be associated with their anatomy, what do they mean? Does it actually mean that, for example, you feel like you should have a vagina instead of a penis (or vice versa)? In other words, does having a penis/vagina just seem unnatural to you?
I can certainly understand how feeling that way would make me question whether I was “really” a male or not, but I’m also aware that people have said that one’s “gender identity” supposedly has nothing to do with one’s genitals.
Barry
godzillatemple, my penis has always felt to me like it doesn’t really belong there, moreso as I entered into adulthood. The urge to cut it off has been difficult to resist at times.
This is pretty much the norm with male-to-female transsexuals.