If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
My feelings have nothing to do with sexism and politics, as far as I know. — A transgender person.
People who identify as transgender, non-binary etc. (not to be conflated with those who are transsexual as a matter of fact) claim to have some deep understanding of their own psychology (or even neurology) such that they are able to claim: their feelings about themselves prove the existence of a concrete and natural taxonomy of people, analogous to the taxonomy of sex. In particular, they call this “gender identity”, and actually want to replace the taxonomy of sex with it, but let’s ignore that for now to narrow the topic. They claim that this has nothing to do with sexism; that it’s natural.
My question would be, why should we trust their judgment? I don’t mean this in a hateful, dismissive way. There are so many good, scientific and political (feminist, not conservative) reasons to question their claim, that it’s quite puzzling why any challenging of their self-declared knowledge of this hypothetical “gender identity” should be seen as narrow-mindedness, bigotry, intolerance, or hatred.
As evidenced again and again, transgender identification is often explained in terms of a desire to adopt superficial stereotypes ascribed to the sex with which the person identifies. This strongly hints towards the phenomenon being related to internalized, subconscious sex stereotyping.
When challenged about this, transgender people tend to claim, in my experience, that their feelings go deeper than attachment to stereotypes, but nobody seems ever able to explain how exactly. I talked to several transwomen about this on the Internet, and it’s more or less a different story every time. The closest I got[1] was someone stating that infants are able to tell apart female and male faces, and may be born with a sense of which group they belong to. While I still don’t think it would justify redefining “female” and “male”, I’d love to see a scientific evaluation of that hypothesis.
All in all, I have a suspicion that feelings of a deeper-than-stereotypes gender identity stems, for many, from identification with a complete, conceptual “female gender” or “male gender” that is felt as being a separate entity from, despite still to a large degree consisting of, sex stereotypes. We say “the whole is more than the sum of the parts.” The “whole” includes the connections and interactions between the parts. It includes the abstract conception of the whole that makes sense to the mind as one unit, independent of the parts. Applying this idea to sex stereotypes, the “whole” would be the complete package of a conceptual “female gender” or “male gender” which is made up from a large collection of sex stereotypes, plus basic biological sex characteristics. That is our collective understanding of “woman” and “man”: mythical figures embodying both the biological characteristics, and the cultural stereotypes associated with, the sexes. So the feeling of gender identity would be nothing more than the identification with one of these mythical gender entities. In the case of non-binary identifying people, it would presumably be identification with some individually held third/non-binary “gender” that’s essentially an amalgamate of different stereotypes and biological characteristics.
So far, all can be explained in terms of subconsciously held sex stereotypes. In particular, the above analysis would explain the connection between claims of inner gender identity, and attachment to superficial stereotypes. It’s unclear why such a feminism-based analysis should be dropped simply because it goes against the beliefs of the people in question. We don’t unquestioningly validate the personal beliefs of masculine men when they say it simply feels right for them to be aggressive and dominant; that it feels like it’s in their essence as “man”. We understand that it’s psychological conditioning beginning in boyhood. Likewise for women who strongly hold on to “womanly” values and feel that is natural for them. Why make an exception for people making these claims of “gender identity”, when they sound so similar to women and men believing in sexism?
Moving on to sex dysphoria, which may be interpreted as proof of gender identity. Firstly, consensus in the transgender community seems to be that sex dysphoria is not a requirement to the claim of gender identity. There are enough people in the trans community, mostly males from what I can tell, whose claim to gender identity begins and ends with “inner feelings” and an attachment to stereotypes and cultural norms of the mannerisms and clothing of women. Secondly, I’d like to say I’m still open to the theory of a sex dysphoria based on neurology; it’s just that I’m not aware of concrete evidence of it so far. (And either way it wouldn’t justify calling males with sex dysphoria female.)
Having said that, dysphoria in female people can be explained fairly well through objectification. It seems to begin ever earlier nowadays that children are exposed to sexual objectification of female anatomy, and similar to anorexia this may explain the development of a deep repulsion towards parts of one’s own anatomy in female people. Not much more to say on that, although I can strongly recommend Glosswitch’s article[2] on the topic.
In males, dysphoria may be explained in a few ways. Firstly, the objectification of female anatomy, as it’s generally tied with sexual excitement for males, may lead to a desire to possess those body parts. This would likely arise during puberty. Another explanation would be the realization that the “female gender” with which one identifies (as a result of subconsciously held sex stereotypes) lacks the genitals the male has, and has a different set instead. This may arise earlier than puberty. While writing this I realize that I haven’t been exposed to many narratives of sex dysphoria specifically, as the focus seems to go almost always to the superficial, stereotype-related aspects of gender dysphoria instead, as far as transgender narratives in news and social media go. It would be very interesting to know what portion of transgender identifying individuals experience(d) sex dysphoria, at what age it began, and what the relevant body parts are. A cogent analysis of possible relations to sexism vs. neurology could then be made.
Lastly, there are claims that there’s strong proof for a neurological basis of gender identity. This claim has been repeated enough times for a large part of the trans community to start believing in it and use it as a central argument. In truth, the situation is much more complicated. Neurological similarities among transwomen and among transmen are found occasionally. Sometimes their brain is found to be somewhat similar to that of the sex they wish to be, but only halfway. Sometimes the findings come out to be related to sexual orientation and not “gender identity” because the study didn’t control for that confounding factor. Sample sizes are always relatively limited. The unknowns of neurology (such as the extent of neuroplasticity with regard to gendered life) make clear-cut interpretations difficult. The TranScience Project offers a fairly accessible summary of the state of research on the topic,[3] admitting that no conclusions can be drawn; the page doesn’t even use the term “gender identity” at any point.
In conclusion, I honestly don’t see why anybody should be forced to believe in the hypothesis of clear-cut gender identity. Why we should be forced to believe the claim that there is some essential spiritual, psychological, or neurological bond between all women and transwomen, and all men and transmen. Like many women, I refuse to believe in such an unproven hypothesis based mostly on subjective notions and feelings, especially given that it could be seen as a form of neurosexism. I can see that everything trans* and non-binary identifying people feel is possible to explain in terms of (radical) feminist analysis, and will stick to that until I have a good reason to change my mind. One must remember that sex stereotypes aren’t something one can stop believing in through sheer force of will, such that any remaining “identification” with femininity or masculinity could then be claimed to be natural; we’re born into a sex stereotyping society, we grow up in a sex stereotyping society, and we breathe sex stereotypes in and out every waking day. We should pay more attention to their possible effects on us.