Nitpick: Technically, how people choose to dress and behave is generally classified AFAICT as “gender conformity”—i.e., how much one is or isn’t conforming to conventional gender-role expectations—rather than expressing gender identity.
AIUI, a “Gender Critical” perspective would argue that anybody can be as gender-nonconforming as they like. E.g., a woman can have short hair, or a beard (if she’s able to grow one) if she wants to; a man can wear a dress or paint his fingernails pink or whatever.
And non-transphobes generally agree with this. The difference AFAICT is that non-transphobes also acknowledge gender identity as separate from gender conformity, and maintain that transgender (and nonbinary/genderfluid/etc.) people have the same right to be as gender-nonconforming, or gender-conforming, as they want.
So, a cisgender woman is still a woman even if she wears a beard. A transgender woman is still a woman even if she wears a beard. Cisgender or transgender men can wear pink nail polish and still be men. And so on and so forth. In other words, expressing your gender identity doesn’t in any way require being gender-conforming. (Although admittedly, as many transgender people point out, at least some degree of gender conformity is helpful if you don’t want people misidentifying your gender all the time.)
GCs, on the other hand, do not acknowledge that somebody can validly have a gender identity different from their biological sex, no matter how gender-conforming they may be in their manner of presenting as their preferred gender.
Can you give an example of something that fits in the category of gender identity but not gender conformance? It seems to me that even things like pronouns and preferred restrooms are about conformance, not identity.
Yes, clothing is an example of something that is gender conforming, while not necessarily being an example of gender identity. I’m curious about the opposite.
I’m unconvinced by the argument that sex segregation is necessary in sports, though sadly I don’t have much hard evidence to back up my convictions. Organized sports as we know them have been around for what, two hundred years at most? And for the vast majority of that time it’s been considered a male pastime. Men are socialized to care about and participate in sports and women are not. If a little boy says he wants to be an all-star baseball pitcher when he grows up, he’s encouraged, put in youth sports leagues, sent to baseball camp, etc. If a little girl says she wants to be a star WNBA player, is she likely to get similar treatment? The women who do join the WNBA and compete are the exception rather than the rule, women who managed to overcome this social pressure whether by natural talent or sheer force of will.
Also, consider sports where physical sex should conceivably impart no physical advantage. Why are most professional pool players male? Why are most professional bowlers male? Why again for poker, or chess? Why is the men’s marathon world record ten minutes faster than the women’s world record? Is it because men are inherently better at distance running, or is it because the woman who could beat that record didn’t have access to the same resources as a man? Are all male-dominated sports dominated because men are better, or because women have been intentionally excluded? Women often can hope for nothing better than being sent to a segregated ghetto where maybe if they wear skimpy enough uniforms they’ll get a fraction of the attention and resources of men playing the same sport.
In a truly gender-free world would the NBA have more cisgender women in it? In this case probably not. Male hormones promote muscle and bone growth that causes men to be taller, on average, than women. This is already a problem in our world, where women with naturally higher levels of testosterone in their bodies may get disqualified from competing against other women. Maybe in a gender-free world people at a hormonal disadvantage would be allowed to use hormones to even the playing field. Or maybe in this world where no one type of person is more encouraged to enter sports than any other, the playing fields would be more level. Perhaps we would even favor sports where certain physical advantages are less important, or sports with different roles that favor different bodies.
I’m just a cis male, but my gender identity is very strongly male, and my body feels exactly right. If I was biologically female, then my body would feel extremely wrong.
ISTM that that feeling is at least part of the core of gender identity.
Just so you know, the part of your post I bolded above and the quotation marks you’ve used negate any point you thought you had with this posting. The rest of your posting seems to me to be rather ill-informed.
I guess I’m not sure what that means. Male/female, man/woman are just words. They’re words that I was trained through society to associate with different body types, different interests, different clothing, different pronouns, and so on. I acknowledge that the boundaries are fuzzy and that going against the grain on some of these is not enough to change the overall category that someone fits into (or that the person differs on so many axes that they don’t fit into either category). And I acknowledge that we’re seeing finer distinctions between biological sex vs. how we present to society. But what I’m having a hard time seeing is a definition of male/female identity that doesn’t ultimately come down to a constellation of traits which are individually gender-conforming.
Put another way “feeling male/female” is just accepting the premise that gender identity is actually a distinct thing. But what does it actually entail? I can point to concrete traits that are gender-conforming. I don’t know what a gender identity trait would look like.
And to expand on this as well:
Ok, so you have a strong feeling that you have the right body type. But if I am reading Kimstu correctly, that’s in the category of gender conformance. You are fully gender-conforming because your body matches your internal representation (and, presumably, your preferred clothing, pronoun use, etc. match as well). But a gender non-conforming person might identify as female while having traditionally male biological characteristics, and even feel totally comfortable in that body. I’m trying to figure out exactly what that means.
That would just describe any trans woman who doesn’t actually transition beyond pronoun changes and saying she is female.
One’s identity is who they are and who they claim to be. This can be seen as distinct from their choice to then conform to how that identity is supposed to dress and behave.
That said, I would argue that, much of the time, the two are combined into one. Gender conformity is something people do to show their identified gender. But the identity is internal, not external. It is not the dressing like a woman that shows the person identifies as a woman, but the other way around (for most people).
And, yes, gender conformity is one form of gender expression. As is telling people about one’s gender identity, or insisting on specific pronouns.
So, for example, if you identify as a man, that’s your gender identity. If you tell people “I am a man”, that’s an example of your gender expression.
But both of those things can still be valid even if you’re extremely gender-nonconforming according to male gender stereotypes. You can have long hair, a curvy “feminine” figure, painted pink fingernails, dresses and heels—and, of course, biologically female reproductive organs—without that necessarily invalidating either your male gender identity or your male gender expression.
Looks like YOU’RE the cunt – why on earth does it bother you so much? Or anyone else, for that matter? It’s like they’re afraid of catching LGBTQ+ cooties or something. Honestly, I get sooooo sick and tired of this obsession people have with trans issues. NOT trans people themselves. Just the bigots. Good lord, get a life, people.
As for the whole “but then predators can sneak in if we allow trans people to use ladies room!” – wouldn’t that make it EASIER for predators to sneak into the ladies room, if we force trans people to use the bathroom of their Asigned At Birth (ASAB) gender (isn’t that what it’s called?)
I mean, hear me out, for argument’s sake. All these transphobes talk about perverts being able to disguise themselves as women so they can use the ladies room, and you can’t stop them, because apparently, that will just be “discriminating” or something. (I can’t understand their logic)
BUT…then, suppose we force trans people to use the ASAB gender. Well, then some perv doesn’t even HAVE to disguise himself. He can just walk in dressed as usual, and claim to be a trans dude.
Now, obviously this is a ridiculous notion – I highly, HIGHLY doubt it’s going to happen. But wouldn’t that be the logical conclusion to THEIR ridiculous notion?
AFAICT, what this is fundamentally about is a longing to return to the days of transgender invisibility and pathologization. Women aren’t SUPPOSED to have penises, so if we could only go back to denying the right of anybody with a penis to identify and live as a woman, then we could just continue pretending that such people don’t exist and keep putting everybody into one of the same two sex/gender boxes based on their genitalia. (Same with people with vaginas wanting to identify and live as a man, of course.)
The “gender critical” types don’t want to think about the issue with logical consistency, because what they really want is to go back to not having to think about the issue at all.
Why anybody spontaneously reacts this way, I still don’t really get. But there are plenty of people who also long to return to the days of homosexual invisibility and pathologization, of course, so I guess this is not an uncommon impulse. In most cases it seems to be tangled up with genuine, if irrational, “won’t-somebody-think-of-the-children”-type fears.
I guess I don’t understand what it is to feel male. I am male. My body has male parts. They operate the way male parts do. I don’t think I feel male; I just am male. I assume if I had a female body, then it would respond to sexual stimuli in the way that a female body does. In either case, it seems to me that whatever body I had been born with would be what I would be accustomed to.
I can understand what sexual preference or orientation is. I am interested in sex with women, not with men. I can imagine being sexually attracted to men. I assume that were I same-sex oriented, my body would respond to men in the same way that it responds to women, and vice versa. Or if I were bisexual, then it would respond to both, etc. But I don’t think I feel heterosexual; I just am.
I can conceive of how being genetically/physically male or female, I could in either case be heterosexual or bisexual or homosexual or even asexual. But I can’t really conceive of how in any case I would have some inherent feeling about any of it; it would just be.
I take people at their word that they can feel like they have the wrong bodies, but I can’t really conceive of what they mean, because I can’t really say that I feel like I am in the right or wrong body. My body is just what it is, and I assume if it were different, then I would be accustomed to whatever that might have been.
That makes it sound like a kind of catch all for anyone that doesn’t fit neatly into any other category. It doesn’t really seem to nail down what gender identity actually is.
Consider two people, AFAB, and who spent their childhood presenting as female.
Person A tells you they have always had a strong feeling they were in the wrong body. Thay make a concerted effort toward transitioning to a male body. However, they do not particularly care about their mode of dress, hairstyle, etc. They are comfortable with continuing to express themselves as female in that sense. They identify as (trans)male.
Person B tells you they have never felt comfortable with the way society treats them, or any of the typical female expression like having to wear makeup. They transition to wearing stereotypically male clothing and hairstyles, and in general participate in traditionally male activities. They are not particularly concerned about their body, and aren’t interested in any surgical or hormonal transitioning. They identify as (trans)male.
From the above definitions, it appears that both people here would count as gender non-conforming. But what I’m interested in is what it means for them to identify as male. Whatever it is, it seems to be completely different between the two people. But if people’s internal ideas of identity are so diverse, is it really meaningful to talk about it at all?
Oh, absolutely. I just can’t believe the stupid arguments they come up with, since they’er so easy to poke holes in.
That, and as it’s been mentioned time and time again, unless you’re some pervert who likes to try and peek into the stalls, how the fuck would you even KNOW if you’re sharing the bathroom with a transperson? You probably have plenty of times in the past. As long as people flush and don’t make a big mess, I really don’t care.
That being said, I do think, for quite a lot of people, transgenderism is kind of a complicated concept to wrap one’s mind around. But I think for the most part, you do end up being able to tell the difference after a while, whether it’s a case of ignorance or malice.
This is where you trust people to know their own selves and not need to defend it. If a person says they feel male on the inside, whether they are cis or trans, I believe them, barring extraordinary circumstances. I feel female, am a cisfemale, and I’ve never been forced to defend it. If someone says they’re gay or hetero, I won’t make them defend it either. Both are internal states of being and don’t require evidence or proof.
I’m not demanding proof of anyone. I’m interested in what it could possibly mean, though. I can understand, at some level, what it means for someone to feel they are in the wrong body. I can understand what it feels like to not want to participate in traditional gender roles. But I don’t understand, at any level, what it could possibly mean to have a gender identity independent from all these things.
It’s maybe more of a linguistic question more than anything. What are people actually trying to say when they say they identify as male or female? They’re describing some internal state but I can’t tell what it is. All the descriptions so far have been negative–it’s not this, and it’s not this other thing, etc.
Their gender expression is different, sure. And one of them had gender dysphoria while the other didn’t. But I don’t see why that would make their gender identity different. They both identify as male.
Both of them felt some sort of incongruence when being told they were female. And neither felt congruence with being some sort of non-binary. They achieved that congruence by identifying as male. They may have taken different actions to resolve that incongruence, but they still both had the same gender identity.
You can argue that the thought processes of each person are different, but they both arrived in the same place, into the same category. They both identify as male. My life experiences and journey of deciding/discovering my gender identity as someoen AMAB are different, too. But, in that one respect we are the same: we identify as male.
so they can use the ladies room, and you can’t stop them, because apparently, that will just be “discriminating” or something. (I can’t understand their logic)