d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
Philosophy of science overlaps at times with metaphysics and ontology, especially when scientific practitioners coalesce around a hitherto unknown idea which becomes universally applicable, such as gender identity. My question here is basically whether the people who coined and popularized the idea of "gender identity" went too far when they defined it such that every adult must have one.
I've recently come across a handful of writers who find themselves at odds with the idea that everyone must have a gender identity, and I will excerpt three of them right now, perhaps more to come later.
First up is Shannon Thrace, author of 18 Months, describing an exchange between herself and her (MtF) spouse, whom she addresses throughout the memoir in the second person:
Next up is Robert Wintemute, from his new book:
To put my question on its head: Are Thrace, Wintemute, & Coleman all mistaken (or dishonest) about their own subjective experiences of gender?
While this topic may seem destined to spiral down into the transgender thread from the social issues forum, we may take careful notice at the start that the specific claim being skeptically examined here is centered on cisgender people—no one has argued that transgender individuals might somehow lack the property of gender identity; they must have it in order to find themselves in that category by definition. While the answer to the poll question might possibly have some implications for the policy arguments in that thread, I don't want to revisit any of those arguments here in this one.
I've recently come across a handful of writers who find themselves at odds with the idea that everyone must have a gender identity, and I will excerpt three of them right now, perhaps more to come later.
First up is Shannon Thrace, author of 18 Months, describing an exchange between herself and her (MtF) spouse, whom she addresses throughout the memoir in the second person:
“I have a female gender identity,” you say, after a moment. “Same as you.”
“Wait—no. I don’t have a gender identity.”
“Sure you do.” You seem offended, as though I deny it to prove some sort of point.
But I’m sure I don’t.
“You dress like a woman!” you say, waving your arm widely.
“I buy what’s on the rack. My clothes aren’t some extension of my psyche.”
“Then you don’t identify with femininity,” you say. “But you feel like a woman, inside.”
I know you want that to be true. But I don’t know this feeling.
In fact, I’m alienated by what’s supposed to interest women. The “biological clock” that hastens their plans to have children. The desire for jewelry. The talk of putting husbands “in the doghouse.” And I’m taken aback when I realize I’m being treated like a woman. Like when I returned to college, sure I wanted that computer science degree, and the guidance counselor smiled condescendingly and warned me there was math involved. Or when the window installers wouldn’t talk to me because they thought “the man of the house” should make the decisions. It’s other people who notice I’m a woman, not me.
You scoff when I tell you this. “You don’t have an internal sense, in your brain, that you’re a woman?”
“I don’t.” I see a female body when I look down, but there’s nothing more to it for me.
Next up is Robert Wintemute, from his new book:
I taught an intensive course at the University of Toronto on ‘Comparative Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law’ and began referring to LGBT persons. Uncritically following the trend in the LGB and transgender-rights movements, I thought for many years that I had both a male birth sex and a male ‘gender identity’: my body is male and, in my mind, I think and feel that I am a man. But in 2020, a…woman told me that she did not have a ‘gender identity’. I thought about it and realized that I did not have one either. A quick glance at my genitals when using the toilet in the morning tells me my birth sex (male). Another glance before going to bed tells me that my birth sex is still the same. I do not ‘feel’ male. I do not ‘identify’ as male. I am male.
Finally, an excerpt from Doriane ColemanWP, author of On Sex and Gender: A Commonsense Approach:We can carefully hold two truths—sex and gender—in our hands at once.
I’ll use myself again as an example. I don’t have a gender identity. Please don’t tell me that I do; since this is about my own inner sense of myself, that’s not your place. I do have a sex. I know this because I can see it, whether it’s with my own eyes or on scans and in blood test and urine sample results. I also know from years of experience that my sex is female, that it’s not just a part—a uterus, for example—or even a set of parts—for example, XX, ovaries, and testosterone levels in the female range—but rather a whole form, an integrated system, and that to a large extent that form and system have defined my life. That is, I’ve had a particular set of physiological and social experiences because my body developed as it did, according to my XX blueprint.
To put my question on its head: Are Thrace, Wintemute, & Coleman all mistaken (or dishonest) about their own subjective experiences of gender?
While this topic may seem destined to spiral down into the transgender thread from the social issues forum, we may take careful notice at the start that the specific claim being skeptically examined here is centered on cisgender people—no one has argued that transgender individuals might somehow lack the property of gender identity; they must have it in order to find themselves in that category by definition. While the answer to the poll question might possibly have some implications for the policy arguments in that thread, I don't want to revisit any of those arguments here in this one.
