# Religion, Transphobia and Category Errors

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-transphobia-and-category-errors/1013878>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 4, 2025, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-transphobia-and-category-errors/1013878 "2025-02-04T17:08:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 73

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**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/religion-transphobia-and-category-errors/1013878/73 "2025-02-07T17:04:44Z")

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> [@iiandyiiii](#):
>
> But just because you don’t have a strong gender identity, or just because yours happens to coincide with your body, doesn’t mean that some others don’t have a strong gender identity that may or may not match their biological bodies.

At the risk of muddling things further, I want to add that having a strong gender identity isn’t a prerequisite for being trans. I never had an experience that I’d call “feeling like a man” or “feeling like a woman”, and based on the positive response I’ve gotten when sharing this article with other trans women, I think that’s a lot more common than I expected:

> **[Gender Desire vs. Gender Identity](https://medium.com/@kemenatan/gender-desire-vs-gender-identity-a334cb4eeec5)**
>
> Is wanting to be a woman the same as actually being a woman?

IMO, the concept of gender identity is like the Bohr model of the atom. It’s a simplified abstraction that’s easy to explain, and it’s accurate enough that most people won’t ever need to dive deeper. But if you keep probing at it, eventually you’ll have questions that it can’t answer, but a more complex model can.

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