What is meant by "I identify as X" gender?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know gender can by a controversial (is that the right word?) subject, but I put this in GQ because I am looking for a factual statement. Of course people can mean slightly different things by saying “I identify as male/female/non-binary/etc,” but I assume the general meaning behind each usage is the same.

So to the actual question, I’m honestly curious what is meant by this phrase since it is beyond anything I’ve personally experienced. I recognize I have personality features that are traditionally considered feminine and features that are traditionally considered masculine, but I have never once thought that I was/should have been born anything but the gender that corresponds to my sexual organs. Is “identifying” with a certain gender just a statement that someone finds the preponderance of their personality features to correspond to a certain gender, possibly even a different gender than their biological sex? Or is it something else?

2

I would interpret it to mean “I identify as X: whatever anyone else says, it’s nobody’s business but mine”.

3

I recommend against assuming this. It isn’t always true. The transgender and other gender-variant / gender-atypical community is not a solidly united and unified cluster of like-minded people and we do sometimes use terms differently.

I will answer for myself and perhaps make a stab towards generalizing about what other folks may mean, but when someone else replies you may see a different answer.

I identify as a male girl. (A gender invert, which I describe as a subtype of “genderqueer”).

When I was roughly in 1st and 2nd grade, I was identified by teachers, parents, and other adults as a well-behaved smart kid who was good in the classroom and could be trusted to be trying to be a good citizen. Most of the other people who were so identified happened to be girls. I considered myself to be in competition with the girls, whom I respected and admired and emulated but towards whom I had an initial attitude of “I will show you a boy can be as good as you”. So think of me at that age as the inverse of a tomboy. You could say “sissy” (I’ve used that term myself), but if you do, say it with pride.

By the middle of 3rd grade, other boys had made it really apparent that they didn’t exactly consider me to be defending the honor of the Boy’s Team in this competition. And I found them embarrassing. So a little bit at a time I shifted towards seeing myself as one of the girls. Not as female. I did not believe I was female (and I did know the difference). It was obvious to me that the more important aspect of “who I was” was that I was “like one of the girls (and definitely not like one of the other boys)”, and not what I had between my legs.

I was not the only one to whom this was obvious: the other boys pointed it out. They apparently didn’t consider this to be a complimentary observation. It was an observation that boys often made about other boys, sometimes in jest and sometimes as a serious critical observation, but the usual reaction was for the boy so accused to do stuff to prove it wasn’t so. I just said “so???”

After a couple years of this, it was totally true that who I was, to myself, was a boy who was not like other boys but instead was like a girl. I was proud of it and went to deliberate lengths to express it. If there had been a socially recognized identity in 1968 for “genderqueer gender invert, male girl”, I probably would have come out by 4th grade.

That’s me. I don’t use “gender” as another word for “sex”. My sex is and has always been male. I don’t think I “should have been female”, I don’t think I “am female inside”, or any other variant way of identifying as female. My gender, on the other hand, was “girl”, or “woman” — that’s an identity, the kind of person I am, where and how I fit in, how I think and historically have thought of myself.

Now for some people who are gender-atypical or gender-variant (or whatever term you choose here), their experience of this general type of thing, perhaps combined with specific feelings about their body itself (body qua body, in other words) leads them in a different direction: perhaps to think of themselves as “really female” despite having been “assigned male at birth”, and they may or may not seek hormonal or surgical interventions to make it easier for them to present as female. “Present as” has to do with how others perceive you, how they are likely to identify you. To bring it into alignment with how they identify to themselves.

Yet other people I’ve known have reacted yet differently to such experiences. I know a gay guy who talks about his childhood and coming out and coming of age (he has a stage act; talking about his sexual orientation is just a part of his routine and he makes it funny & clever etc). He talks about realizing at a young age that he was feminine, like girls and not like boys etc, and to him this is entirely coterminous with understanding himself to be gay. So… you’ve no doubt heard that sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate things, and indeed they are, and yet for some people they are not because they themselves do not experience them as two separate things. This is true for him.

It is also true for a vast number (probably overwhelming majority although who really knows?) of mainstreamish people who are either male masculine heterosexual guys identifying as boys or men or else female feminine heterosexual gals identifying as girls or women. For them they don’t see a reason to have separate terms for sex and gender, and until they first experienced the social presence of gay and lesbian people probably never saw any reason for a separate term for sexual orientation either, certainly didn’t need it for themselves, being male partly MEANT being attracted to feminine girls / being female likewise for being attracted to manly male folks etc.

4

Does the assertion I identify as etc, have any legal standing in any US state? In other words if you identify as female must the authorities treat you as such?

5

IANAL but I believe that there are such requirements in specific jurisdictions on specific issues. For example, the state of Washington enacted a regulation allowing transgender people to use the public restroom facilities of the gender with which they identify. That, ISTM, would seem to qualify as a case of “the authorities” being required to treat you “as such”: i.e., if you identify as a woman then they have to let you use the women’s restroom.

What I don’t know is what degree of identifying/presenting is required to qualify somebody as transgender in such regulations. Are they using the “insistent/persistent/consistent” criteria that doctors use? Is it enough just to say “I identify as” whatever? Dunno.

6

I have no problem with individuals who choose to “identify” as any gender and orientation, but I am caught between what exactly they expect in return and the general push to treat everyone equally.

That is, isn’t it irrelevant if a person is or identifies as one gender or the other, when I am supposed to treat them the same regardless of apparent or declared gender? Or is the real message “I know you can tell I wasn’t born female, but I expect to be treated like a woman (or like everyone else) anyway?” If it’s the latter, I can’t see how “identifying” one’s gender changes the picture at all.

Or: 21st century gender identity vs. 19th century etiquette and roles… choose one, please?

7

That’s probably not a safe assumption. You’re really asking for personal responses, so this is best suited to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

8

I’m totally fine with you treating me as a generic person, with no difference in interpretations or expectations based on what sex or gender or sexual orientation you consider me to be. I can’t imagine how anyone could justify expecting differential treatment, so I think you’re fine with that approach.

9

I think the etiquette is pretty common-sense.

  1. First and foremost: treat us as the gender we identify as.

1a) If you are not certain about someone’s gender identity from their presentation, and there’s a reason to know, a non-bitchy person will not be offended if you ask them “what pronouns do you use?”

  1. Our past is our past. Do not refer to our old names or old gender unless you have previously received unambiguous approval to do so.

2a) If you slip, say “oh I’m sorry” and move on. Don’t draw attention to it.

  1. Our anatomy and medical treatments are not your concern unless there is a clear and imminent public health reason to know.

3a) Folks would never dream of going up to a co-worker and saying “are your boobs real?” or “do you have a penis?”, yet think nothing of doing the same to us.

  1. Don’t treat us as handicapped people. We don’t need special accommodation. It takes the same time to say or write “he” as it does “she” or “they”.

  2. Don’t question our sincerity. We put our family relationships, spousal relationships, connections with our religion and culture, our careers and trades, our health, and even our lives on the line to do this. Almost all of us have been through extensive therapy with trained and degreed psychologists and physicians to get to this point. We know what we’re doing. Lots of people have tried to “talk us out of this,” especially those same therapists and physicians.

  3. Very few of us are activists. Very few of us want to talk about the big “T” in any context. Although one may mean well, don’t come up out of the blue and start asking us about Laverne Cox, or what we think of Rocky Horror (blech), or share a transgender news article with us to “see what you think.” Easily 19 out of 20 of us want to submerge, blend in, and be…normal.

All of the above rules could easily be applied to anyone. You wouldn’t deliberately call your co-worker Bob “she”, when Bob knows darned well he’s a dude. You wouldn’t refer to a married woman by her maiden name constantly if she had left it behind. You wouldn’t go up to Alice in your office and ask “hey, do you have a vagina?” You wouldn’t browbeat your co-workers about their lives and identities by asking “are you SURE you’re Hispanic, and not just some kinda Samoan?” And you wouldn’t go up to a regular person in the office and engage in daily McLaughlin Group political debates about an issue like “so…you’re a Catholic. Whaddya think about all those pedo priests?” unless you knew in advance they wanted to engage on that topic and in that way.

10

Except that it gets complicated, right there. I have no argument with the rest of your post, which is mostly about egregious rudeness, regardless of the genders involved. But this injunction means I should treat you differently as a woman than I might as a man - and that’s generally a contradiction to the modern notion of “treat everyone the same.”

IOW, if we’re to be civil in modern terms, it doesn’t matter what you are - genetically, morphically or identifiably. We should treat you the same. So making a point of “I identify as _____” seems almost a reverse rudeness or presumption.

Sigh. I just try to be polite in all circumstances. Zathras good at doings, not understandings.

11

I think I see where you’re having trouble? Let me try to answer. Others will probably do it better.

Even in a society with gender equality, men and women are treated differently in some areas. Which restroom to use is one. Pronouns is another.

These are areas where we often can’t help dealing with someone as having a gender. In such cases, it’s polite and respectful to treat people’s identified gender as … well, their gender.

That’s not really incompatible with overall gender equality, is it? Correct me if I’m missing something. (Besides the overall complexity of dealing with a world where gender isn’t simple and binary - but we’ve dealt with increasing complexity in so many areas, I think we can handle this one too.:))

12

Since we’re asking questions, can I pop up with one?

There’s a woman in my office who dresses very masculine/androgynous, short hair, etc, and goes by the male version of her name (e.g., her name is Georgia but she generally goes by George kind of thing).

Would it be appropriate to ask her (privately) if she prefers alternate pronouns? We aren’t that close, but if she does I want to be respectful.

Actually, never mind. If she does, and I start referring to her as they/he/ze/whatever she prefers, it would out her to our coworkers and make her have discussions that she clearly doesn’t want to have at work. She’s clearly cool with being treated as a woman at work, it’s not for me to upset that.

If we became friends outside of work, then it might be appropriate at some point, or she might let me know. Otherwise, it’s not really my business, is it?

This post brought to you by Questions That Answer Themselves, the letter P, and the color green.

13

This is me as well. A person would have to work real hard to convince me that it’s just a coincidence that I’m both asexual and androgynous. I understand that either of those can exist without the other. But for me, they feel inextricably linked.

14

When I was in grade school, and we had to go outside for recess, I always hung out with the girls; I was completely indifferent to the kinds of games the boys played. Now, when I go to my cousins’ house for Thanksgiving, the men are in the living room watching football, and the women are in the kitchen preparing the meal and kibitzing. I always head for the kitchen. It’s not that I consider myself a woman, or feminine; my male identity is very solid. But I just don’t feel much in common with the men, and in general they make me uncomfortable. And football bores me out of my skull.

15

One very obvious way where you treat men and women differently is that you use different pronouns for each of them.

But, just in general, if people were never treated differently, there would be no gender in the first place. But there clearly is. You see one person and you choose a gender classification for them. This classification is so primal that, unless you are pansexual, it determines something as basic as your sexual attraction.

If men and women were treated identically, there would never be any reason for anyone to identify as one or the other. There would be no concept of being treated like one gender but actually being another gender.

There have been attempts to try and eliminate gender entirely, and they have always failed. Raising someone without a gender identity doesn’t work–they still wind up identifying one way or another.

Again, that would be impossible if we actually treated all genders the same.

16

This.

And on the subject of the legal ramifications; depending on the state and different situations it can have quite a bit of impact. In PA, and with my particular employer, because the one young man assumed the job under the identity on (note) her birth certificate, there were some restrictions that never could get cleared up well. He found it easier to leave the job and return properly identified than to try to fight everything through HR while working there.

17

OP, you can visit online transgender communities and read many first person accounts and discussions, but I don’t think you’ll find it intellectually satisfying as far as the question in your thread title goes. Most of them are stories of how they perceived themselves to fall short of stereotypical gender roles, but they don’t tend to differentiate themselves from non-transgender cases such as butch women or effeminate men, except to say they feel dysphoria, which is a feeling I’m not sure can be understood through text. This is a problem with qualia in general, like describing colors, or asking what it’s like to be a bat.

Some transmen stories are interesting in the sense that they sound like they wanted to escape patriarchal limits, like they wanted to be a real person taken seriously by society, i.e. a man. Transwomen stories seem to go in circles, since they tend to say they feel like a woman, but it’s not clear what that means. There’s an awkwardness around pigeon holing what women are supposed to act like. If someone says they knew they were really a woman because they were bad at math and couldn’t drive they’d be dismissed as a troll, but if they say they knew they were really a woman because they liked dolls, fashion, or solving conflict by group consensus instead of fighting then everyone will nod sagely. If a woman pipes up and says she doesn’t like dolls or fashion and she loved fighting as a kid and she’s pretty sure she’s a woman too, things tend to get tense or derail, or they’ll conclude being a woman can mean almost anything, which isn’t particularly helpful if there’s supposed to be some gap between feminine and masculine psychology that causes an identity crisis due to a mind/body mismatch.

One could base an entire debate on just this sentence. Generally in mainstream liberal feminism, gender is portrayed as being an internal, biological characteristic, mostly independent of outside influence, often stubbornly so, and usually appearing at a young age, or at the onset of puberty. Hence, dysphoria. The case of David Reimer is an example. Sometimes you’ll hear one of them say they thought socialization was more important, until they had kids who had their own personalities regardless of what their parents did. So they would disagree with you.

In more leftish forms of feminism, a lot more emphasis is placed on socialization, sometimes veering into forms of blank slate ideology (as if often the case in left philosophy). Many there do seem to think that if the patriarchy fell then people would grow up, hormones aside, into androgynous personalities. They usually view gender as not a spectrum but a hierarchy, with femininity on the bottom and masculinity at the top. Moreover, they think femininity itself is an artificial construct to hold women back, e.g. be demure, don’t make waves, exhibit male pleasing behaviors, etc. So they would agree with you.

There’s more internal divisions and splinter groups, but I think that’s a fair general overview.

18

Too late to edit, but I wanted to clarify a sentence:

Many far left feminists do seem to think that if the patriarchy fell then people would grow up, hormones aside, into androgynous personalities, or non-gender conforming people would be more common, accepted, and not suffer from dysphoria due to a lack of social expectations.

19

There are two levels of treatment. Being treated as part of a group (or as an individual), and then being treated fairly.

Despite your saying you just want to treat everyone equally, I would guess that like probably 99% of people if you were talking casually to a group of women you would call them “gals” or “ladies”. By treat us equally, I mean don’t say “ladies…and Una.”

Even if the treatment is unfair, there are two levels of mistreatment. An example I can give from work is our annual gift exchange. Each year in December all the women on my floor get together in a private party to have refreshments, chat, and exchange gifts as sort of a secret Santa thing. The women’s get-together was set up because my company, being mostly engineers and scientists, is about 90% male. So it was meant to be a sort of bonding thing for the 30 or so women on my floor.

On one level one can say “well, the party should be open to all genders, especially men.” But then that also kinda destroys the purpose, to give a minority group a time to just hang out. It’s an inequity that can be debated whether or not it should persist.

But the greater damage and inequity would be “all women are invited…but Una…yeah…I don’t know…” Being included in the event the first year I transitioned was a huge source of satisfaction for me, another official acknowledgement of my new gender role.

So there’s an inequity at play, but I’m being treated consistently within that inequity.

Now there’s a flip-side to this, the bad. As I told in my speech to the national SWE last October, I’ve been the victim of sexual harassment (hands on my body) in the workplace, job sites, or traveling for work (NOT by my co-workers) at least 9 times in 4 years. I’ve been talked down to, marginalized, I’ve been forced to prove myself in many ways I never had to before, I’ve had men who before would have been quaking in their metaphorical boots facing me practically pat me on the head and ask me if they could speak to “the expert.” I’ve had people assume I’m a secretary instead of the project manager, people assume I’m a hired “booth babe” instead of one of the lead scientists of my company. I’ve been offered money for sex by people who thought I was a prostitute. I’ve also had a couple of close calls where I could have been raped, or worse.

That’s also part of being treated as the gender I present and am. The bad comes with the good. I wouldn’t want to be treated any differently than other women.

20

Underline mine. I don’t want to be treated any differently than any other human being who’s in the same place doing the same things. There is no reason anybody, any body, male, female, big, small, cute, beautiful or ugly, should have to put up with that shit. And it goes beyond gender; a lot of the things you list happen to males who are perceived as weaker than their attacker because of size, behavior or job title.

I can see why to someone who hasn’t been automatically recognized as female since babyhood, it can actually be important to be treated as badly as other women. But to me, it’s yet another asshole too many, so my understanding will never go beyond the intellectual level.