But it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares about the ones who leave other people alone.
And that argument just serves to deflect the real world fact that oppression in the name of religion is common worldwide and historically, and is happening right now on the issue of gender identity. This is another case of trying to defend right wing tyranny and brutality with a “bothsides” argument.
You mean the other humans? Since 80% of American are religious.
Which has nothing whatsoever to do wit insulting other people’s beliefs on this message board.
And America is a nation filled with hatred and persecution and oppression, much of which is motivated, excused or exacerbated by religion.
Now, where is the transgender equivalent? If we are going to equate the two where are the gangs of transgender thugs beating people for not being transgender? Where are the massive movements to make hormone treatments or whatever mandatory?
He’s correct that you’re a woman, but I’m incorrect that you have a gender identity?
I think you’re playing with words in a way that’s not aimed at productive conversation, but rather at scoring points.
If you think people in general have “gender identities” that make them men or women - why? What piece of information made you think that? How many people do you think hold to a belief in a “gender identity”?
What does a “gender identity” actually mean to you?
What an odd question. I’m a man, assigned male at birth, and feel like I’m a man. My gender identity is male. I do some stereotypical man stuff – hang out with other guys playing poker, take out the trash, take care of stray spiders. That doesn’t mean that all men do that or no women do, but my household is a fairly traditional one (and my wife has a clear idea of “boy jobs” and “girl jobs”, so I just follow her lead). Other couples split roles differently, of course.
You seem to have a gender identity of “woman”, since you’ve said you’re a woman here. I imagine that, if a coworker constantly referred to you as “he”, it would get on your nerves, because you don’t see yourself as a “he”.
Do you identify as a gender? That’s your gender identity.
Dogs don’t have a gender identity, because they don’t have a concept of gender. Rocks don’t have a gender identity. Infants don’t (as far as I know) have a concept of gender.
But if you have a concept of “man” and “woman,” and if someone calls you a woman you say they’re correct, that means you have an identity connected to gender. You have a gender identity.
To be fair, my gender identity (male) is a very weak identity, and it’s not a significant part of how I think of myself. If I woke up tomorrow morning in a biologically female body, my main concerns would be logistics and curiosity; I don’t think I’d have an identity crisis any more than if I woke up tomorrow morning with brown hair instead of red hair. I’ve been called “she” and “ma’am” countless times over my life, and it’s mostly only awkward because I know how embarrassed people will get when they realize their mistake; other than that it doesn’t bother me.
Aspidistra may have a similarly weak gender identity, and it may make it hard for her to viscerally understand transfolk in the same way I find it difficult.
But my male identity, however weak, is a part of my identity, just like my lefthandedness and my red hair and my nerdiness and various other parts. I don’t have to understand why others feel their gender identity more strongly in order to respect it; I just have to know that if I felt my gender identity more strongly, I’d want others to respect it, as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone.
I would think that someone with a weak gender identity would make it easier to understand transgender and gender fluid people. Anyway, @Aspidistra, how would you react if someone at work kept referring to you as “him”? If someone referred to me as “her”, I would correct that person.
Maybe you don’t have a gender identity, or only a very weak one. That’s okay. Not everyone has a strong gender identity.
I have a strong identity as a man, which happens to coincide with my biologically male body. I feel very masculine – and my body feels right for who I am. That may be true for you, or maybe not. It’s definitely not true for many people out there.
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.
I’d suggest that perhaps @Aspidistra is the opposite of these last couple of “weak identity” claims.
My speculation that she’s not an example of weak gender identity, but rather one so bound up in their notion of self that they simply cannot comprehend the mental state where private parts and mind are out of sync.
IOW, “my gender identity is not some separate thing from my body or the rest of my personality. I am woman top to bottom and through and through. It cannot be different for me, and I assume it cannot be different for others. How could that even be?”
We’ll have to await her response. I think we’re all being sincere here, but I also think we’re talking to one another across a big comprehension / experience gap.
That’s a good point. So maybe an alternate question for @aspidistra would be “how would you feel if, tomorrow, you woke up and your body was biologically male? If that would feel very wrong and like it doesn’t match who you believe you are, then that’s how many trans people feel about the bodies they were born with.”
Honestly for me it’s very difficult to understand. I don’t “feel like a man,” and don’t really understand what that would feel like. It seems a little bit like I’ve been blind since birth and someone is trying to tell me what “yellow” is; I just can’t comprehend it.
But I don’t need to. I just need to understand that it’s important to other people, and it’d be a dick move for me to dismiss what’s important to them just because I don’t really get it.
This was a pivotal moment in my adolescence, by the way, when I realized that I needn’t demand explanation to my satisfaction of someone’s internal state and motives before I respected them. It took being dumped by my first girlfriend for me to reach this understanding, but I took the lesson to heart.
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:
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.
Apologies, I know this question wasn’t addressed to me, but if your definition of gender identity is correct then wouldn’t that make transgenderism a form of body dysmorphia?
Body dysmorphia is distress caused by an inaccurate perception of one’s own body: flaws that only they can see. If they could see their body the way everyone else sees it, they wouldn’t be distressed.
Gender dysphoria is caused by an accurate perception of one’s own body: they already see their body the way everyone else sees it.
Interesting. I wonder if, for you, understanding a non-binary person is easier, whereas that seems baffling to me.
Definitely! I’m pretty sure that if I’d been born 30 years later, I’d identify as non-binary. At this point it’s too much trouble; my apathy keeps me from not having a gender identity.
It’s becoming clearer to me now! Also, @Ms2001, that’s for that explanation – it’s really very helpful!
That’s a great article, and makes more visceral sense to me than a strong gender identity does. Thank you for sharing it!
Note that my visceral understanding of it is, again, not a prerequisite for respecting it.
That’s a useful distinction. Thanks 