Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Fried Egg]

Something like 3-4% of the population are homosexual. If the old DSM had been correct, it would mean that 3-4% of the population were mentally ill just because they were gay. That's ridiculous. The great mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist Alan Turing, and so many like him, were not mentally ill but so hounded by their society because of their sexuality that they were driven to suicide.

It's just as ridiculous to call people with gender dysphoria mentally ill. Their suffering is a result of others not wishing to allow them to live as the gender they feel themselves to be and not because they feel themselves to be a certain gender. Their suffering is inflicted by their society.

I still think the analogy between sexuality and gender is over used and not really appropriate. Homosexuals do not need medical treatment to allow them to live the lives they want to. I do not think it's fair to say that society is causing people with gender dysphoria suffering by not providing them with medical treatment they believe they need in order to make others in society see them how they want to be seen. That is not to say that they are not suffering, only that it is not caused by society.

If true cases of gender dysphoria are caused by some kind of mis-match of their physical and brain genders, then it is clearly some sort of anomaly that can never (within our existing technological expertise) be fully rectified. At best you might be able to allow people to "pass" as the opposite gender and even then there will always be limits. To some extent, treatment should include helping such individuals to come to terms with their condition and not expect to ever fully change sex.

[Belinda]

Something like 3-4% of the population are homosexual. If the old DSM had been correct, it would mean that 3-4% of the population were mentally ill just because they were gay. That's ridiculous. The great mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist Alan Turing, and so many like him, were not mentally ill but so hounded by their society because of their sexuality that they were driven to suicide.

It's just as ridiculous to call people with gender dysphoria mentally ill. Their suffering is a result of others not wishing to allow them to live as the gender they feel themselves to be and not because they feel themselves to be a certain gender. Their suffering is inflicted by their society.

The DSM has always been a flawed document. However, people with GD understand that keeping GD in DSM-5 means that they can get health insurance to cover the cost of gender reassignment which would be out of reach for most if they had to find the money themselves. So, people with GD are in a bit of a bind. They are either classified as having a mental disorder so that reassignment is affordable, or they are removed from the DSM and cannot afford the treatment they need.

I am finding it very difficult to assign behaviors to genders. Is there one or more behaviours that define a gender?

What is it like to "feel like" a gender? I don't feel like any gender so I sincerely ask this question.

[Lagayascienza]

Well, I feel like a man. I like to do things men generally like to do, I don't wear a bra and I stand when I pee. I imagine (although I cannot be 100% certain) that it would feel very different, in lots of ways, to feel like a woman. For example, I've had discussions with the women in my life about their feelings around sex. And their feelings are different to mine. Of course, both men and women enjoy sex, and whilst the saying that "men give love for sex and women give sex for love" is an exaggeration, it probably contains an element of truth. Which would make biological sense given the different reproductive roles of the two sexes. To deny that there would be differences in our feelings seems to me as silly as denying that there are differences in our anatomy and physiology, in our hormones and our reproductive roles. Thus, given all these other differences, it would be strange if feeling like a woman were not different to feeling like a man. This difference in feeling is what is in play in "gender identity" and gender dysphoria.

And this brings me back to neuroanatomical differences in the brains of people with gender dysphoria compared to cisgender brains. If a person with male genitalia has a brain that causes him to feel like he is really female, which bit of his/her anatomy do we accord greater significance to, the brain or the penis? It a hard one. No, not that! I mean it's a hard question. But since we cannot change the brain, but can change the genitalia, what is to be done to relieve his/her suffering? I think the answer is clear. In which case, debates about the term "gender identity" become irrelevant.

[Pattern-chaser]

Not so long ago, homosexuality was listed in the DSM-5 until 2013.

Implying that transpeople are delusional because they are listed in the DSM-5 is effectively an appeal to authority, and a most fallible authority that only ten years ago would have people believing that gay people were so because they were mentally ill. Yet many of us - untrained as we are - would have already been well aware that gay people were not deluded heterosexuals.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a classification of mental disorders with associated criteria designed to facilitate more reliable diagnoses of these disorders.

DSM-5 aims to provide diagnostic guidance for these conditions, not all of which are "disorders". Some just describe differences from the norm.

Therefore yes, "implying that transpeople are delusional because they are listed in the DSM-5 is effectively an appeal to authority", and so on. If trans-sexualism (?) is a condition, it is reasonable that it is listed, with diagnostic guidance, in DSM-5. But this doesn't, as you say, give any support to the idea that trans people are delusional.

[Fried Egg]

Well, I feel like a man. I like to do things men generally like to do, I don't wear a bra and I stand when I pee.

What has that to do with feeling like a man? A gender dysphoric man does these things simply as a result of an awareness of the physical facts of their body. It does not seem to have anything to do with one's sexuality or how well one's behaviour fits in with gender norms. I'm sure we all know gay men that are very effeminate but still do not feel any more at odds with their gender than you or I do.

What I am trying to do here is to separate out our social constructed sense of gender identity to get to the bottom of exactly what is an innate sense of their gender that does not arise from anything they have learned, or from a simple awareness of their body. It appears to transcend such things.

All of us are well aware of our sexuality and the feeling that it seems to come from somewhere deep within us not that does not seem to always be the case with gender identity. Certainly, I'm not aware of it in myself.

And this brings me back to neuroanatomical differences in the brains of people with gender dysphoria compared to cisgender brains. If a person with male genitalia has a brain that causes him to feel like he is really female, which bit of his/her anatomy do we accord greater significance to, the brain or the penis? It a hard one. No, not that! I mean it's a hard question. But since we cannot change the brain, but can change the genitalia, what is to be done to relieve his/her suffering? I think the answer is clear. In which case, debates about the term "gender identity" become irrelevant.

But it is important for those that are mis-diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or mistakenly believe they must be gender dysphoric. If there are such people (and the existence of people who regret transitioning suggests that there are) that are appear to be gender dysphoric but don't have the neuroanatomical brain of the opposite sex, then such people's gender identity must be a social construct.

I find it hard to accept that there is an innate sense of gender because I am unaware of it in myself but I think I should accept that there is some evidence to suggest that at least some people do have it. But there is also evidence to suggest that some people develop a gender identity that is socially constructed.

[Belinda]

Well, I feel like a man. I like to do things men generally like to do, I don't wear a bra and I stand when I pee. I imagine (although I cannot be 100% certain) that it would feel very different, in lots of ways, to feel like a woman. For example, I've had discussions with the women in my life about their feelings around sex. And their feelings are different to mine. Of course, both men and women enjoy sex, and whilst the saying that "men give love for sex and women give sex for love" is an exaggeration, it probably contains an element of truth. Which would make biological sense given the different reproductive roles of the two sexes. To deny that there would be differences in our feelings seems to me as silly as denying that there are differences in our anatomy and physiology, in our hormones and our reproductive roles. Thus, given all these other differences, it would be strange if feeling like a woman were not different to feeling like a man. This difference in feeling is what is in play in "gender identity" and gender dysphoria.

And this brings me back to neuroanatomical differences in the brains of people with gender dysphoria compared to cisgender brains. If a person with male genitalia has a brain that causes him to feel like he is really female, which bit of his/her anatomy do we accord greater significance to, the brain or the penis? It a hard one. No, not that! I mean it's a hard question. But since we cannot change the brain, but can change the genitalia, what is to be done to relieve his/her suffering? I think the answer is clear. In which case, debates about the term "gender identity" become irrelevant.

I understand all the feelings you list even though I feel like a member of the female sex. There is no use for the word ' gender' as there already is an understandable word 'sex'.
Some women stand when they pee and some women do not wear bras. If you can't think of reasons why they choose to do so you lack the imagination that would help you out.
True, there are people who persist in believing that behaviours pertain either to one sex or
the other but not both i.e. the exclusive 'or' .I am surprised you number among those, LaGayScienza! Look around at how the more enlightened social world has changed so that women now can behave exactly as men behave and vice versa. There are moves afoot to remove the 'glass ceiling' so woman can exert as much power as men in the market place ..There are moves to criminalise hate speech that is directed towards a perception of someone's gender.

Obviously what is to be done to relieve a so-called 'transgender ' person's suffering is change the culture of belief so that all may say that gender does not exist in that culture of belief. The result is that behaviours are explained by heuristics other than gender.

[Consul]

Now, here's an important fact:

"One can identify with a group without being a member."

(Byrne, Alex. Trouble with Gender. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2024. p. 175)

It's one thing for a "transboy" to identify with girls, and another for him to identify as a girl. He may utter the sentence "I am a girl"; but if this is just an expression of his emotional identification (association/affiliation) with girls or "all things feminine", then it's not a delusion.

It's true that one can identify without being a member but it seems that is not enough for transpeople. I suppose, they might feel like the opposite sex but, if they stay put, everyone will continue to treat them as their birth gender.

The distinction between identifying as sb/sth and identifying with sb/sth is important, and should be analyzed thoroughly. It seems the two are independent of one another, in the sense that identifying as doesn't entail identifying with, and vice versa. For example, identifying as a Russian doesn't entail identifying with the Russians, and identifying with the Russians doesn't entail identifying as a Russian. A transwoman identifying herself with women needn't also identify herself as a woman. Not all transwomen believe or assert that they are women!

A. to identify as =
* to believe or assert that one belongs to a certain group or class (American Heritage)
* to feel and say that you belong to a particular group of people (Cambridge Dictionary)
* If you identify as someone or something, you say that you are that kind of person or belong to that group. (Collins Dictionary)
* to have or assert an identity of a specified kind (Merriam Webster)
* to recognize or decide that you belong to a particular category (Oxford Learner's Dictionaries)

B. to identify with =
* to consider oneself as sharing certain characteristics or attitudes as another; to associate oneself with or admire something, such as a set of ideas (American Heritage)
* to feel that you are similar to someone in some way and that you can understand that person or their situation because of this (Cambridge Dictionary)
* If you identify with someone or something, you feel that you understand them or their feelings and ideas. (Collins Dictionary)
* to feel a sense of unity (as of interests, purpose, or effect) and close emotional association (Merriam-Webster)
* to make one in interest, feeling, principle, action, etc. with; to associate inseparably; to feel oneself to be associated with or part of (Oxford English Dictionary)
* to feel that you can understand and share the feelings of somebody else (syn. sympathize); to support somebody/something; to consider yourself to have a special connection with somebody/something (Oxford Learner's Dictionaries)
* to coalesce in interest, purpose, use, effect, etc.; to associate oneself in name, goals, or feelings; usually used with with (Webster's 1913)

[Consul]

Well, I feel like a man.

…which means feeling manly, masculine, virile.

[Consul]

…which means feeling manly, masculine, virile.

This is not to say that all men feel manly, masculine, virile.

[Sy Borg]

Now, here's an important fact:

"One can identify with a group without being a member."

(Byrne, Alex. Trouble with Gender. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2024. p. 175)

It's one thing for a "transboy" to identify with girls, and another for him to identify as a girl. He may utter the sentence "I am a girl"; but if this is just an expression of his emotional identification (association/affiliation) with girls or "all things feminine", then it's not a delusion.

It's true that one can identify without being a member but it seems that is not enough for transpeople. I suppose, they might feel like the opposite sex but, if they stay put, everyone will continue to treat them as their birth gender.

The distinction between identifying as sb/sth and identifying with sb/sth is important, and should be analyzed thoroughly. It seems the two are independent of one another, in the sense that identifying as doesn't entail identifying with, and vice versa.

I find it strange that hetero and homo orientations are not questioned, but transpeople are ruthlessly questioned - but they have existed for a long as gays. It's just something that happens to certain people who manage to win life's booby prize. To top it off, everyone thinks they are mad for it. Poor blighters.

[Consul]

The gender theorists Briggs&George are unhappy with the term "gender identity", so they devised an alternative gender model based on the term "gender feel(s)":

"We've pointed out some costs of the "gender identity" framing – but what's the alternative? …[W]e propose framing things in terms of gender feels: attitudes about one's relationships to various nonsubjective aspects of our shared material and social reality, which we'll refer to collectively as gendered traits.
…
[Gendered] traits (like having a Y chromosome, wearing dresses, or being a man) are properties of people and are not primarily subjective psychological states; someone’s having or lacking a particular gendered trait is part of shared social or material reality. …We’ll divide traits into three buckets, which we'll call sexed biology, gendered behavior, and (belonging to) gender categories." (p. 32)

"A gender feel about a gendered trait is an attitude or disposition about the fact or possibility of one's possessing that trait." (p. 38)

"A gender norm is a social expectation linking two or more gendered traits, which is considered generally applicable or binding." (p. 65)

(Briggs, R. A., and B. R. George. What Even Is Gender? New York: Routledge, 2023.)

Source: R. A. Briggs & B. R. George. What Even Is Gender? New York: Routledge, 2023. p. 87

[Sy Borg]

Reverse engineering. Attributing adult conceptions to children.

Another example of such reverse engineering of ideas is the notion of "biological machines", when machines are merely an attempt to mimic small actions that are performed by life. Life came first. Likewise, in this situation, a child's instinctive impressions came before the concepts in the above image.

[popeye1945]

Do you believe that people can/do have an innate sense of gender (i.e. sense of being male or female) that may be in contrast to the physical sex that we happen to be born with?

By innate I mean something that does not arise from experience / social conditioning.

Certainly it seems undeniably true that some people do feel that their physical sex is in contrast to their internal gender identity (sometimes referred to as "gender dysphoria") but that leaves open the question as to whether this arose because of an innate or acquired sense of gender. That also is quite apart from the question of what (and if) something should be done about it.

Personally, I do not feel that I have an innate sense of my gender. I know I am a male because of what everyone has always told me I am and what I know of human biology. I do not understand how my sense of my own gender could be any more than what I have been taught to believe but I accept that others might feel differently.

And does it even matter? However our sense of gender arises, would it make any difference to how we view/treat people with gender dysphoria? Personally I don't think so. But when I first learned about the concept of an innate sense of gender I was intrigued because it was not something I was aware of in myself.

Sexuality is involuntary in general, it is not an intellectual decision to be attracted to the opposite sex. It is the will of the species. Based upon I assume, that male and female are two aspects of one thing, the species. An anomaly which would be gender confusion is consistent, which would in my mind make it natural. Perhaps if the gender confused did not themselves procreate, probably early in that confusion, it would not be passed on. As it stands sexuality is not perfect in form and chaos is produced when people expect it to take on the form they decide is proper. Everything that meanders from the norm makes people uncomfortable even fearful, sad but true. The present political movement is just a form of chaos and disturbingly irrational. For those stressed over their sexual identity my heart goes out to them, but, unfortunately, it is their cross to bear.

[Consul]

"First, gender feels can be attitudes or dispositions. We are using the word “attitude” in (roughly) the broad sense common in analytic philosophy, so that it encompasses not just emotionally laden states like desiring an attribute or disliking an activity but also emotionally neutral states like believing a proposition or knowing a fact. One might not be fully conscious of all of one’s attitudes or dispositions, and gender feels are meant to include attitudes and dispositions independent of whether one is explicitly conscious of them, oblivious to them, or in active denial about them. We take a broad view of what sorts of dispositions should be included here. For example, some people report that exogenous estradiol or testosterones make them feel more (or less) at home with the way they feel in their bodies or afect their emotional state in any of a number of other ways. This suggests that some of us are disposed to feel more comfortable at some hormone levels than others. We count such dispositions as gender feels, even if they are never manifested, since they are about estradiol and testosterone levels, which are part of sexed biology in our society."

(Briggs, R. A., and B. R. George. What Even Is Gender? New York: Routledge, 2023. p. 38)

Given how Briggs&George conceptualize gender feels as a substitute for gender identity, I see a similarity with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus (singular+plural = habitus). He calls genders "sexually characterized habitus", and we may correspondingly interpret attitudinal and dispositional complexes of "gender feels" as gender habitus (sexual habitus). Bourdieu regards genders as social constructs; but given the below-quoted, I'm not sure whether he thinks the two sexes are social constructs too. (I hope he doesn't.)

"The biological appearances and the very real effects that have been produced in bodies and minds by a long collective labour of socialization of the biological and biologicization of the social combine to reverse the relationship between causes and effects and to make a naturalized social construction ('genders' as sexually characterized habitus) appear as the grounding in nature of the arbitrary division which underlies both reality and the representation of reality and which sometimes imposes itself even on scientific research."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001. p. 3)

As for Bourdieu's habitus-conception (that is widely used in social/cultural science):

"…the habitus of the agents, functioning as systems of schemes of perception, thought and action."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001. p. 8 )
——————
"The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations…[.]"

(Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. 1980. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. p. 53)

"…the habitus, acting as a system of cognitive and motivating structures…"

(Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. 1980. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. p. 53)

"The habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices – more history – in accordance with the schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action…[.]

(Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. 1980. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. p. 54)

"As an acquired system of generative schemes, the habitus makes possible the production of all the thoughts, perceptions and actions inherent in the particular conditions of its production – and only those. …[T]he habitus is an infinite capacity for generating products – thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions…."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. 1980. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. p. 55)
——————
"The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition) produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structrues predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations…."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. p. 72)

"…a habitus, understood as a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions…."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. pp. 82-3)

"The word disposition seems particularly suited to express what is covered by the concept of habitus (defined as a system of dispositions). It expresses first the result of an organizing action, with a meaning close to that of words such as structure; it also designates a way of being, a habitual state (especially of the body) and, in particular, a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. p. 214n1)

[Sculptor1]

When males dogs try to screw each other, they are not thinking about what they are doing, This practice is common enough. GIven the realites of evolution it is a misnomer to say that such practices are "FOR" an purpose, but we may reflect upon what advantages such preactices may have.
Since evolution is the result of practices which are consistent with survival, the only way we moght say that homosexual practices are "confused" or "diseased" is if they have negative consquences on survival.
Dogs screwing do not have any negative effects on reproductive success or survival. There is always an excess of sexual energy available and females are limited to a few litters of pups per year. But male dogs that screw are not fighting and are bonding. It does not take cuh imagination to see how such practices might be of great positive use to the survival of the pack.
Ancient Greek warriors would commonly bond with shared sexual experiences and this was part of a hugely successful military practice of the Phalanx.
So not only are "deviant" practices perfectly natural they may be part of a survival strategy.