Our preoccupation with gender identity is a cultural step backwards
prospectmagazine.co.uk
prospectmagazine.co.uk
> Yet consider: in order to construct this spectrum, it is necessary first firmly to establish what it means to be “man” and “woman.” Even if you are “genderqueer”—convinced that your gender identity does not conform to the social norms associated with your sex—alienation from social norms depends on the perpetuation of social norms. Thus if you are a gruff, muscular, assertive woman who has adopted the genderqueer label, girlishness must continue to be associated with garrulousness, weakness, and passivity for your identity to scan.
> In short, the spectrum depends on stereotypes.
About a year ago I started to question my sense of gender, and ended up arriving at the "genderqueer" label. But not because it felt most right, just less wrong than the other labels. About six months later I came to a similar conclusion as the above passage: so what if I don't do stereotypical $GENDER things, why should that prevent me from identifying as $GENDER? Doing anything else seemed like a special sort of narcissism, or a hobby -- not sure of the right words, but it seemed like a needless/useless waste of time and energy. That, combined with realizing that I don't want to define myself by my gender, helped me stop thinking about this for the most part and, i think not coincidentally, feel a lot happier about myself.
At a certain point, every gendered action, from saying my name (very female) to walking into the women's bathroom honestly felt like lying! So I transitioned.
I've been so at peace with myself since transitioning! Ironically, I've also been able to be a more effective advocate for all genders because now I'm in the "boys club". By that I mean, pointing out when someone is treating men or women differently just because of gender, but also helping highlight when someone is expecting different treatment just because of their own gender.
I'm both happier about myself and a more effective advocate for treating everyone equally!
> Ironically, I've also been able to be a more effective advocate for all genders because now I'm in the "boys club". By that I mean, pointing out when someone is treating men or women differently just because of gender, but also helping highlight when someone is expecting different treatment just because of their own gender.
That's awesome! I like to think that I'm still an effective advocate for equality despite not identifying as genderqueer or taking any particular pains to present a certain way. As a logical extension of the beliefs and decisions described in my original comment, I try to do my best to set a positive role model by making myself happy while presenting as $GENDER rather than genderqueer. Be the change you want to see in the world, and all that.
While I'm human and may have a visceral reaction to some things, I've also learned to regularly take a step back to check myself and my reactions. Written communication requires this even more so than face to face!
> the "needless/useless" comment was intended to be with regards to my own situation, not a prescription for others.
This is one of the hardest things for many people to understand. In a group therapy setting, one of the most common tenets (next to confidentiality) is the concept of "I" statements. In other words, the speaker should never speak for another person or tell another person what to do. You absolutely used an "I" statement approach, and I really appreciate that you did so!
> > Ironically, I've also been able to be a more effective advocate for all genders because now I'm in the "boys club".
It took me a while to embrace this perspective, precisely because it shouldn't matter. But there are people, men and women, who simply respond better when a person of a specific gender says something. Typically men have more authority. (There's actually a fair bit of research about this. For example, in the 'intelligent agent' community an agent that is given a white male appearance will be trusted more than the exact same agent with the appearance of a white female or a black agent of either gender). So, I've tried to harness this when it seems to be the most effective approach to address discrimination. Every now and then, I suspect the person I'm interacting with will respond better if they know my background, so on occasion I've come out so that I can more effectively communicate with the person.
There are a couple of the reasons it took me so long to embrace this perspective. First, I want everyone to have an equal voice, in other words, I don't want my voice to count more now just because it's deeper and comes from a hairy face; unfortunately, we're not there yet. Second, I just want to be me, I don't constantly want to be in trans/gender advocacy mode. About a year after transitioning, I realized that because I was treated as a girl/woman by the world for so long (and a non-gender conforming one for many of those years) and I absolutely pass as a guy now, I really am in a very unusual place. So as much as I want to just hide out in the closet, I feel responsible to everyone to fight discrimination in a way that very few can.
Based on your language and my time in the LGBTQ community, I'm assuming some things about your age. If I'm correct, just the fact that you questioned your gender and are discussing that process is a very different type of advocacy, but it is absolutely advocacy none the less! It's been nice being able to see the generational differences, and there's been so much progress since I first realized I was different!
Interestingly, my mother went through a questioning period (long before there was any language for it) and came to a conclusion much like yours. So when I first came out to her as a young kid, she thought my questioning was normal, that I would outgrow it, and that it meant she needed to fight even more for women's rights (because she thought that was the root of it for me). In many respects, she was my strongest ally but also the most painful thorn in my side. Several years after I transitioned, there was an incident in which her language actually put my well-being in severe jeopardy. It took that incident before she realized her experience is not my experience, and that neither of our experiences is definitively right or wrong. Rather our experiences, reactions, and identity are simply our own. It was a painful period for both of us, but she's become an even stronger ally as a result.
I look forward to a time when race, gender, age, etc. aren't used to justify violence or discrimination. Until then, I'll keep using my unusual position to advocate for movement toward that goal. Be the change, and all that. Between all of us, progress will continue.
We're all on a continuum of nearly every characteristic about us. I find the constant desire to have to self identify on every variable is becoming tiresome. Had I been at school today, I'm sure I would be diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum, but fortunately I was a child of the 1970s, and unless you were truly afflicted you were just considered "a bit odd". The kids who I teach now mostly find labels they are given as a reason for their behaviour, rather than a starting point for any change they may wish to undergo, and while it's well intentioned, my experience of it (in a school with about 75% with some firm of SEND requirement) is that it is viewed as an explanation of current behaviour, rather than anything constructive. Not in every case, but in the majority.
Right? This is super frustrating to me as a current university student. It seems like gender identity is just another way of tribe-association that is particularly popular among the rich and well-educated. It functions in the exact same way as identifying as a supporter of a particular football or baseball team. Deeply frustrating to have to engage with this, especially because honestly it is tiring and hard to think about.
I don't think there will be an end to all conflict, but we can and should chip away at discrimination. We should also take time to celebrate the wins, big and small.
No, I do not think that genderqueer folks invented this obsession with gender identity. It's very unclear to me how you read that meaning from my original comment.
There was a man I went to school with that was a woman when I first met him. A guy who lived on my floor used go to Bill, but now everyone calls him William. No 'dealing with' required.
Again, not trying to dismiss your experience or to imply anything, just curious.
Gender was synonymous with biological sex until John Money introduced a distinction in 1955. That distinction has been amplified across the decades to a the point where cultural consensus considers gender to be primary and biological sex irrelevant. We can and should ask why this is happening in Western Culture first. The reason is because it is part of a long cultural war that is being fought over the idea that inequalities can and should be fixed by culture and the idea that inequalities will inevitably persist due to our nature as humans. The progressive impulse has animated a lot of positive change in the West but it stumbles when it comes up against actual differences. It either pretends that they don't exist in order to maintain the narrative or it assumes that differences must be bad and opts toward a view that any difference that leaves a group with less perceived power must be eradicated by adopting the trappings of power.
Transgenderism is ground zero for this cultural/biological clash. Boys/Men generate about 17x the amount of testosterone as women http://www.mayomedicallaboratories.com/test-catalog/Clinical.... Estrogen and oxytocin have real effects on self-perception and behavior. When someone says "I feel like a man" or "I feel like a woman" we are hearing them through the filter of their biology (do I feel the urge to smash things or nurture?) along with cultural self-perception.
In non-Western societies, without the overlay of our culture, hormones influence roles and sense of life without much mediation. In the West we struggle with this. Is the burka oppression or a choice? Is it a valid choice to forgo a career and feel fulfilled as a mother and then a grandmother if that feels right to you? Can you be oppressed if you don't feel oppressed? It's hard to escape our narrative and consider it something we impose on our nature.
Talking about appearance (which covers race, gender, basically stereotyping in general) - a human might look at another human, see that they have certain attributes (I dunno, wonky teeth, not well shaven, particular gait, whatever) and decide to box them.
The idea of gender identity seems to be a way of trying to break out of that box of judgement. So yeah, I look like I have a penis, sexually I can interact with those with vaginas and produce children, but that's where it ends, I figure.
What I personally don't understand, at the moment, is what makes it different from anything else - identifying as working/middle/upper class, as a nationality, as whatever, really. They all seem like patterns of the same thing to me. If you're working class and you waltz about in a suit with links, providing you can even afford such a thing, you're not going to be treated well by your peers. And that sucks! But what does the identity help? Being able to find others who want to do the same things?
Is it just that we're doomed to try to simplify our models about society by creating these groups, so gender identity is about trying to move the groups a bit to limit damage? Or what?
Fundamentally I'm not sure I even understand what it means to 'identify' as an X. What if I think that all of the groups are nonsense? That I don't feel working class, or middle class, or male, or female, or whatever? I sort of am one of them, by birth and inheritance, I guess, but my feelings about it seem kind of immaterial?
edit: Turns out that reading the whole article properly, rather than skimming it, means that my comment is almost entirely superfluous. :)
But I don't think the point about the author's personal experience of not "feeling like a girl" proves anything - see "cis by default", or http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gender.... It's possible that there are people who do feel strongly that their body doesn't match what their mind is telling them, and it's a cause of suffering. As I understand it, it really is all about sex in this case (which makes the author's quip about her "true self not having arthritic knees" irrelevant).
The crux of her argument seems to be that because she can't imagine feeling like she has the wrong sex, nobody actually feels like they have the wrong sex, and it's all about identifying (or not) with cultural expectations of femininity or masculinity. But,
> the statistical rarity of true gender dysphoria
So she doesn't actually dispute that gender dysphoria exists.
She asserts that claimed gender dysphoria is more common nowadays and most such claims are not genuine gender dysphoria, presumably because she doesn't believe that sociological changes could influence the prevalence of psychological conditions, and/or people's ability and willingness to identify as having the condition.
> the whole trans movement does seem to have awfully [much] to do with clothes
Clothes are one of the ways people in our culture signal their gender. It shouldn't be surprising if people who believe they are female want to wear clothes which are culturally associated with females. But, if you don't believe that (most) trans people have gender dysphoria then, sure, all you see is people worrying about clothes.
> But I hate to break it to the converts to my sex: women who were born women schlep around most of the time in jeans and trainers. The version of femininity offered up by Caitlyn Jenner is foreign to me—exaggeratedly coiffed, buffed and corseted
But you've heard of the Kardashians, right? It isn't as though almost always looking glamorous when in public is a trans trait. It's a trait that some people have.
If sex is biological expression, and gender is a social construct then I acknowledge sex and reject gender.
It may be anecdotal but the case of David Reimer certainly contradicts her theory.
Reimer was castrated as an infant and raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. He had surgery and hormone therapy. Nevertheless he identified as a boy and displayed many of the same symptoms that trans people do.
I would say his 'self' had a gender.
One thing I did like and agree with about about the piece, though, was this:
> and save the conniption fits; I’m not on social media and > never read online comments)
That's how you deal with trolling!
Comments like this do nothing to generate an intelligent discussion and make one wonder whether you even bothered to read the article.