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

[Consul]

I've never said that all transsexual men/women, including post-operative ones, ought to be "purely treated as" men/women in all social situations. I only said that they are not really women/men.

Note that only a small minority of transsexuals has had genital surgery!

[JackDaydream]

I've never said that all transsexual men/women, including post-operative ones, ought to be "purely treated as" men/women in all social situations. I only said that they are not really women/men.

Note that only a small minority of transsexuals has had genital surgery!

How relevant is genitals/genitalia to the daily aspects of life? It may be important in the consideration of having a sexual relationship but apart from this how important are genitals. Some transgender people have experienced being asked what genitals do they have? To what extent does anyone have the right to know what genitals/genitalia a person has as an aspect of private or public life?

To what extent is a person's gender a matter of genitalia, just as the issue of chromosomes, the foundations of gender, even for someone who comes from the perspective of materialistic reductionism? What about people whose genitals and chromosomes conflict, as you have argued previously that 'true' intersex involves the mixture of ovarian and testicular basis? The many combinations and variations from genitals, glands and hormones may show a problem for a precise basis of the binary of male/female, even for someone who adopts the approach of reductionist materialism?

[Belinda]

I knew nothing about the John/Joan case until I read about it in this thread and so I looked into it online. It’s really heartbreaking what that poor guy had to endure (before he died by suicide) because of a botched circumcision and misguided treatment by a psychologist/sexologist who believed gender identity was learned/socially constructed rather than innate and who used this child in an attempt to prove his theory. This case demonstrates that gender identity is innate and not learned. It has a biological basis and will be there at birth waiting to develop into awareness. It’s horrible to think that, until 2013, John, because of his gender dysphoria, would have met the DSM criteria of someone with a psychiatric condition when all he had was the normal developing awareness of his innate gender. Gender dysphoria should never have been listed in the DSM as a “psychosexual disorder” just as homosexuality should never have been so listed in the DSM.

The specific cause of gender dysphoria remains uncertain but what does seems clear that, as with non-gender dysphorics, there is also a biological basis, rather than a psychological/social basis to gender dysphoria. Indeed, neurobiological research into gender dysphoria has demonstrated “distinct gray matter volume and brain activation and connectivity differences" in people suffering from gender dysphoria when compared to controls; and this "leads to the concept of brain gender”.*

So, the science seems to indicate that gender identity is there at birth waiting to develop into awareness and that it is not learned or due to psychosocial factors. Since it is not possible to address the underlying biological cause of gender dysphoria, the result will be that the small percentage of children born with gender dysphoria are likely to experience considerable suffering because of it and that, therefore, gender reassignment rather than trying to force a kid to be what he/she does not feel him/herself to naturally be, is the best option.

I don't know enough to say what age is optimal best for gender reassignment in people with gender dysphoria but I imagine fairly early intervention would reduce suffering.


*ltinay M, Anand A (August 2020). "Neuroimaging gender dysphoria: a novel psychobiological model". Brain Imaging and Behavior. 14 (4): 1281–1297. doi:10.1007/s11682-019-00121-8. PMID 31134582. S2CID 167207854.

A recently published study (Colizzi et al. 2014), where 118 patients were followed before and 12 months after HRT revealed that 14% of the patients had comorbid Axis-I psychiatric diagnosis. Psychiatric distress and impairment were found to be higher in the beginning phase of the study but after HRT, there was a significant improvement in major depressive disorder, anxiety and functional impairment.

Similarly, Fisher and colleagues' (Fisher et al. 2013) 2013 paper suggests that the dysfunction and impairment in the transgender population is highly associated with lack of HRT, which may suggest that at least a fraction of the impairment that was documented as comorbid Axis-I psychiatric disorders could in fact be impairment from GD. Finally, a metanalysis done by Dhejne and colleagues (Dhejne et al. 2016) reviewed 38 longitudinal studies that investigated psychiatric comorbidities pre and post gender affirmation treatments in transgender people with GD. The results of this analysis indicate that depression and GAD do have higher prevalence in transgender population but this finding was isolated to baseline (pre-gender affirmation treatments) where after gender affirmation therapies, rate of psychiatric comorbidities decreased to cisgender population levels”

Dogs are mammals. Of my ten dogs only the ex female sighthound looked at herself in the full length mirror. The others were GSDs and GSD crosses, and one terrier, ex males and ex females.

Scottish and English babies typically learn 'mummy' and 'daddy 'not the other variants. Moreover I met one baby from a children's home for orphans whose first word was 'poss' for 'porridge.'

As to your most important point , about the John/Joan case , I see no reason that a dearly -held set of identifying concepts, whatever they be, cannot possibly be culturally determined . There are many religious martyrs , martyrs to a single belief , and national martyrs .

Among the Mende of Sierra Leone it was (for all I know still is somewhat the case) that an older woman in virtue of her age becomes an honorary man with accompanying privileges and responsibilities. (Little).The older woman takes precedence over a younger woman of any religion or skin colour.

I imagine that, more than surgical intervention, cultural intervention such that gendered choices are honoured would reduce suffering.

I wonder what difference it would have made if Joan had been told that she had been born

Good. I want more people to know about the John/Joan case. My brain blew a fuse when I first found out about it.
There has never been a more clear example of the reality of mental gender. With John, his feelings can't be argued to be delusional, which is the standard lazy position regarding transpeople (and gays in some circles too), that is becoming increasingly popular today and yesterday's knowledge is forgotten.

What you call "mental gender" is sexual self-representation—species of which are sexual self-conception (self-image), self-perception, self-cognition (self-knowledge), self-conviction (self-belief), self-interpretation (self-understanding), self-identification/self-classification.


Sexual self-representation is part of a person's mental reality, but it's not a "gender". In the case of transsexuality, one's sexual self-representation doesn't correspond to one's sexual facts, but that is not a mismatch between different genders.

Mental gender is part self-perception, part inclinations and, I expect, part aptitude. I'm not interested in this plethora of distracting labels you are applying to the situation. In your effort to invalidate what you appear to see as postmodern delusion, you over-complicate things, adding extra criteria that's simply not necessary.

Brains are obviously gendered, whether you like the term or not. The evidence provided by history (and simply observing people and animals, as per the above post) makes this obvious. Mentally, there is overlap between men and women, much more so than physically. The most masculine female will be enormously more stereotypically mentally masculine than the most feminine male. Some people's brains are oriented so far in the direction of the opposite physical gender that they decide it's more comfortable to live in that gender, and not be subject to expectations they can't deliver.

I don't see why they should be invalidated by people who know precious little about them - but that's their situation.

I wonder what difference it would have made to John if he had been told the error at some stage, especially early on before too much physical interventions had taken place to 'normalise' him by making him into a 'girl'. Of course, it can only be speculation. With intersex people some were left in the dark and gradually more openness and choice.

The aspect of being given choice is a cultural factor. Some trans people have lived in cultural settings, especially extreme religious families, leaving them with great conflict of choice. Being able to see other people transition and being 'trapped' in a family they are made to feel pressured not to be able to follow an authentic pathway has been a source of conflict, just as gay people being stuck in the closet. On the other hand, the possibility of treatment too early or without enough therapeutic intervention, especially with puberty blockers hinges upon the issue of people being given choice. The whole nature of choice and informed consent is where the nature of gender becomes an ethical issue and one involving cultural values and understanding in the interpretation of knowledge.

Dogs and humans are both mammals. If a secondary sexual characteristic is innate in dogs then it's probably innate in humans.

As I wrote , I've lived beside de-sexed dogs of several breeds and have noted that a behaviour such as regularly looking in mirrors was innate in a sighthound but not in guarding herding breeds and a terrier, therefor the indication is that interest in a reflected image is innate according to breed but not to sex.
True , the domesticated dog is an artificial product , however none of my dogs was taught to look at a reflected image either by its mother or by me. What we can take from similar findings is that mammals vary which innate characteristics individuals actually inherit , and those inherited characteristics don't correlated with biological sex.

Moreover the most innately aggressive dog I ever had was an untrained entire bitch, and we may see this happens with human females too. It follows that if human cultures permitted females to be aggressive such individuals would actualise; think Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale. Gender is not a useful heuristic to apply to free developed societies.

Neither is gender a morally desirable heuristic. From the above reasoning I learn that a developed free society and culture should change so that adults who for any given trait are at the edges of the bell curve are permitted to be themselves within the law.

Gender is a useful heuristic for societies at subsistence level . When roles are restricted by childbearing and physique then gendered roles may well be necessary for survival.

[Sculptor1]

Irrespective of whether it's innate or not, I have no difficulty at all with accepting transsexuality as a mental phenomenon!

Tut tut.
You are confusing brain structure with "mental".

I'm a reductive materialist, so I do think all mental phenomena are neural phenomena.

Yes but some things are less plastic than others. And we are internested in indelible and innate propensities.

Think of yourself. Do you really think you could chose to change your gender? When you were a child do you think your gender was totally due to your parents treating you like your physical sex. Is that reasonable?
ANd when the many people who feel they are unhappy with their asigned sex - do you think they are just suffering from a mental problem? When they say that they never felt happy in their assigned gender - you want to tell them that they just have a mental confusion; that they can be "cured".
And what about homosexuals. Are you going to say that is "mental" too?
GIven the horrific prejudices, and abuses towards homosexuals so you really expect us to beleive that these are just mental abberations?

I no more chose my gender than I chose the shape of my nose, my hair colour or eye colour.. I would never have chose the persistent unbidden erections and obsessions with the female form. It's absurd. I have no hesitation in thinking that this is exacly the same for all LGBT+ people - these are not choices; these are variations of the human form.
You can call them mutations if you will, but pretending they are mental problems would be unfair and bigoted.
I going to suggest that the tendency to pedophila is also unchosen. Such practices are harmful and need treatment. Trans and homosexuality is not harmful in any way except through lack of understanding imposed up them by bigotry , expecially religious bigotry.

[JackDaydream]

I knew nothing about the John/Joan case until I read about it in this thread and so I looked into it online. It’s really heartbreaking what that poor guy had to endure (before he died by suicide) because of a botched circumcision and misguided treatment by a psychologist/sexologist who believed gender identity was learned/socially constructed rather than innate and who used this child in an attempt to prove his theory. This case demonstrates that gender identity is innate and not learned. It has a biological basis and will be there at birth waiting to develop into awareness. It’s horrible to think that, until 2013, John, because of his gender dysphoria, would have met the DSM criteria of someone with a psychiatric condition when all he had was the normal developing awareness of his innate gender. Gender dysphoria should never have been listed in the DSM as a “psychosexual disorder” just as homosexuality should never have been so listed in the DSM.

The specific cause of gender dysphoria remains uncertain but what does seems clear that, as with non-gender dysphorics, there is also a biological basis, rather than a psychological/social basis to gender dysphoria. Indeed, neurobiological research into gender dysphoria has demonstrated “distinct gray matter volume and brain activation and connectivity differences" in people suffering from gender dysphoria when compared to controls; and this "leads to the concept of brain gender”.*

So, the science seems to indicate that gender identity is there at birth waiting to develop into awareness and that it is not learned or due to psychosocial factors. Since it is not possible to address the underlying biological cause of gender dysphoria, the result will be that the small percentage of children born with gender dysphoria are likely to experience considerable suffering because of it and that, therefore, gender reassignment rather than trying to force a kid to be what he/she does not feel him/herself to naturally be, is the best option.

I don't know enough to say what age is optimal best for gender reassignment in people with gender dysphoria but I imagine fairly early intervention would reduce suffering.


*ltinay M, Anand A (August 2020). "Neuroimaging gender dysphoria: a novel psychobiological model". Brain Imaging and Behavior. 14 (4): 1281–1297. doi:10.1007/s11682-019-00121-8. PMID 31134582. S2CID 167207854.

A recently published study (Colizzi et al. 2014), where 118 patients were followed before and 12 months after HRT revealed that 14% of the patients had comorbid Axis-I psychiatric diagnosis. Psychiatric distress and impairment were found to be higher in the beginning phase of the study but after HRT, there was a significant improvement in major depressive disorder, anxiety and functional impairment.

Similarly, Fisher and colleagues' (Fisher et al. 2013) 2013 paper suggests that the dysfunction and impairment in the transgender population is highly associated with lack of HRT, which may suggest that at least a fraction of the impairment that was documented as comorbid Axis-I psychiatric disorders could in fact be impairment from GD. Finally, a metanalysis done by Dhejne and colleagues (Dhejne et al. 2016) reviewed 38 longitudinal studies that investigated psychiatric comorbidities pre and post gender affirmation treatments in transgender people with GD. The results of this analysis indicate that depression and GAD do have higher prevalence in transgender population but this finding was isolated to baseline (pre-gender affirmation treatments) where after gender affirmation therapies, rate of psychiatric comorbidities decreased to cisgender population levels”

Dogs are mammals. Of my ten dogs only the ex female sighthound looked at herself in the full length mirror. The others were GSDs and GSD crosses, and one terrier, ex males and ex females.

Scottish and English babies typically learn 'mummy' and 'daddy 'not the other variants. Moreover I met one baby from a children's home for orphans whose first word was 'poss' for 'porridge.'

As to your most important point , about the John/Joan case , I see no reason that a dearly -held set of identifying concepts, whatever they be, cannot possibly be culturally determined . There are many religious martyrs , martyrs to a single belief , and national martyrs .

Among the Mende of Sierra Leone it was (for all I know still is somewhat the case) that an older woman in virtue of her age becomes an honorary man with accompanying privileges and responsibilities. (Little).The older woman takes precedence over a younger woman of any religion or skin colour.

I imagine that, more than surgical intervention, cultural intervention such that gendered choices are honoured would reduce suffering.

I wonder what difference it would have made if Joan had been told that she had been born

What you call "mental gender" is sexual self-representation—species of which are sexual self-conception (self-image), self-perception, self-cognition (self-knowledge), self-conviction (self-belief), self-interpretation (self-understanding), self-identification/self-classification.


Sexual self-representation is part of a person's mental reality, but it's not a "gender". In the case of transsexuality, one's sexual self-representation doesn't correspond to one's sexual facts, but that is not a mismatch between different genders.

Mental gender is part self-perception, part inclinations and, I expect, part aptitude. I'm not interested in this plethora of distracting labels you are applying to the situation. In your effort to invalidate what you appear to see as postmodern delusion, you over-complicate things, adding extra criteria that's simply not necessary.

Brains are obviously gendered, whether you like the term or not. The evidence provided by history (and simply observing people and animals, as per the above post) makes this obvious. Mentally, there is overlap between men and women, much more so than physically. The most masculine female will be enormously more stereotypically mentally masculine than the most feminine male. Some people's brains are oriented so far in the direction of the opposite physical gender that they decide it's more comfortable to live in that gender, and not be subject to expectations they can't deliver.

I don't see why they should be invalidated by people who know precious little about them - but that's their situation.

I wonder what difference it would have made to John if he had been told the error at some stage, especially early on before too much physical interventions had taken place to 'normalise' him by making him into a 'girl'. Of course, it can only be speculation. With intersex people some were left in the dark and gradually more openness and choice.

The aspect of being given choice is a cultural factor. Some trans people have lived in cultural settings, especially extreme religious families, leaving them with great conflict of choice. Being able to see other people transition and being 'trapped' in a family they are made to feel pressured not to be able to follow an authentic pathway has been a source of conflict, just as gay people being stuck in the closet. On the other hand, the possibility of treatment too early or without enough therapeutic intervention, especially with puberty blockers hinges upon the issue of people being given choice. The whole nature of choice and informed consent is where the nature of gender becomes an ethical issue and one involving cultural values and understanding in the interpretation of knowledge.

Dogs and humans are both mammals. If a secondary sexual characteristic is innate in dogs then it's probably innate in humans.

As I wrote , I've lived beside de-sexed dogs of several breeds and have noted that a behaviour such as regularly looking in mirrors was innate in a sighthound but not in guarding herding breeds and a terrier, therefor the indication is that interest in a reflected image is innate according to breed but not to sex.
True , the domesticated dog is an artificial product , however none of my dogs was taught to look at a reflected image either by its mother or by me. What we can take from similar findings is that mammals vary which innate characteristics individuals actually inherit , and those inherited characteristics don't correlated with biological sex.

Moreover the most innately aggressive dog I ever had was an untrained entire bitch, and we may see this happens with human females too. It follows that if human cultures permitted females to be aggressive such individuals would actualise; think Margaret Thatcher, Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale. Gender is not a useful heuristic to apply to free developed societies.

Neither is gender a morally desirable heuristic. From the above reasoning I learn that a developed free society and culture should change so that adults who for any given trait are at the edges of the bell curve are permitted to be themselves within the law.

Gender is a useful heuristic for societies at subsistence level . When roles are restricted by childbearing and physique then gendered roles may well be necessary for survival.

The question of the idea of 'gender' as a heuristic may be important here. It involves the interaction between biology and cultural ideas. I could write more here, but will stop here, so as to ask about biology and culture in the development of the concept of gender. Survival is important and to what extent is the idea of gender a biological given, as in the biological dichotomy between male and female essential here? The concepts of male and female may exist as ideas in nature or human understanding.

I don't wish to go into a philosophy tangent here, but am wondering to what extent the idea of the male/female dichotomy is an aspect of 'nature', or human understanding? This may involve the issue as to what extent sex/gender exist as qualia, of division and aspects of the constructive aspects of understanding.

It does raise so much to think about in the nature of evolution, biology and consciousness. There have been those who have questioned gender, such as Joan of Arc. It does involve so much about the underlying basis of gender in biology and the question as to whether the concept of gender can be deconstructed and superseded in human understanding? What would it mean to be human if the idea of gender became as irrelevant as eye colour or skin colour? How essential is gender and gender identity in human identity and experience? To what extent is this connected with sentience and its basis in human narrative identity construction?

[Consul]

"What is gender?" is the wrong question because there is no one thing that answers to the name "gender" (or, for that matter, to the name "gender identity")."

(Briggs, R. A., and B. R. George. What Even Is Gender? New York: Routledge, 2023. p. 2)

(Thus speak two gender theorists!)

"The concept of gender, then, has ultimately served to pry a wedge between body and identity. Whereas sex once simply referred to a bodily given, a fact of nature, here the power of the body to constitute identity is diminished. “Woman” no longer refers simply to one’s sex, but rather to one’s gender, which has become an amorphous cultural construction that has a tenuous relationship to bodily sex. Once this distance between bodily sex and identity was enabled via gender, it did not take long—merely a few decades—for gender to shift meanings once again, becoming entirely disconnected from sex, which has paved the way for an even more fragmented and unstable understanding of personhood. Because gender is no longer anchored in maleness or femaleness, it is endlessly malleable; it is a concept that can be continually altered and redeployed, and we are witnessing in real time the wild proliferation of its meaning.

The various pop narratives about gender often speak as if gender is something real, even as the concept itself resists the slightest hint of realism. Some examples: Gender is a spectrum; Gender is fluid; Gender is innate; Gender is in the brain; Gender is a construct. While the emphatic rhetoric suggests that the truth of gender is at last being unveiled, it is increasingly difficult to settle on a definition of gender at all, because there are multiple and often contradictory definitions on offer.

Let us take a brief and non-exhaustive tour:

1. There is the decidedly “un-woke” definition that sees gender as a simple synonym for biological sex. This is the view of the uninitiated man-on-the-street, who checks the “M” box on a form without dwelling on the question.

2. Then there is the second-wave feminist definition that defines gender as the social and cultural accoutrements of each sex. Once cutting-edge, this definition is becoming outmoded, although still prevalent among feminists of a certain age, and the APA.

3. A further iteration is the now-classic one offered by Judith Butler, godmother of contemporary gender theory. Butler argues, at least in her earlier works, that gender is an unconscious and socially-compelled performance, a series of acts and behaviors that create the illusion of an essential identity of “man” and “woman.” In this view, gender is entirely a social construct, a complex fiction that we inherit and then repeatedly re-enact.

4. And one can find yet another definition in the standard transgender narrative—gender as the sex of the soul, the innate manhood or womanhood that may or may not “align” with the sex of the body. In this understanding, gender is decidedly not a mere construct, but is rather a pre-social reality—the inner truth against which the body must be measured.

5. Even more recently we have the cute and overly-complicated understanding of gender popularized by the “gender unicorn” and “genderbread person” memes (the latter of which has already undergone four separate revisions). In this model, personal identity is collated from a menu of attributes, each of which runs along a spectrum. Gender identity, à la the transgender definition above, is located in the mind; gender expression, a trickle-down version of Butlerian performativity, refers to one’s external appearance and acts; sex, which is “assigned” rather than recognized at birth, is confined between the legs. Rounding out the list is “attraction,” which is further parsed into two subcategories: physical and emotional.

This is the terrain of “gender” in our time: impossible to map, bewildering to navigate. Gender has come to mean whatever we want it to mean, and thus it means many things at once. And yet this unstable, incoherent concept has supplanted bodily sex as the ground of manhood and womanhood—leading to an increasingly fragmented and disincarnate understanding of human identity. To invoke Chesterton once more, we don’t know what we are doing, because we don’t know what we are undoing.

There is a profound irony here. Through the vehicle of feminist theory, the concept of gender displaced manhood and womanhood from bodily sex. And now, unmoored from the body altogether, gender is defined by the very cultural stereotypes that feminism sought to undo. In other words, when a girl recognizes that she does not fit the stereotypes of girlhood, she is invited to question her sex rather than the stereotype."

(Abigail Favale: "The Eclipse of Sex by the Rise of Gender." 2019. Church Life Journal: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articl ... of-gender/)

[Consul]

"…4. And one can find yet another definition in the standard transgender narrative—gender as the sex of the soul, the innate manhood or womanhood that may or may not “align” with the sex of the body. In this understanding, gender is decidedly not a mere construct, but is rather a pre-social reality—the inner truth against which the body must be measured.…"

(Abigail Favale: "The Eclipse of Sex by the Rise of Gender." 2019. Church Life Journal: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articl ... of-gender/)

The following definition corresponds to the concept of "gender as the sex of the soul":

"Gender identity/gender-role identity—One’s perception of oneself as psychologically male or female."

(Helgeson, Vicki S. Psychology of Gender. 5th ed. New York: Routledge, 2017. p. 71)

Unfortunately, Helgeson doesn't present any definition of psychological maleness/femaleness. Do you have any?

"X is psychologically male" =def "X …?"
"X is psychologically female" =def "X …?"

[Consul]

"Sex is an important biological concept, and it is, of course, central to human reproduction; gender is a diverse and malleable superstructure erected socially on this biological base."

(Dupré, John. "A Postgenomic Perspective on Sex and Gender." In How Biology Shapes Philosophy: New Foundations for Naturalism, edited by David Livingstone Smith, 227-246. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. p. 246)

"Gender refers to the learned overlays that turn a biological female into a woman and a biological male into a man."

(de Waal, Frans. Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2022. p. 12)

De Waal's statement reminds me of this:

"One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychical or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilisation as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine."

(de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949. Translated by Constance Borde & Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. London: Vintage, 2011. p. 293)

In my understanding, Dupré's & de Waal's concept of gender had best be replaced by the concept of sexual habitus (the female/feminine habitus vs. the male/masculine habitus), with the concept of habitus used in Pierre Bourdieu's sense to refer to an acquired, internalized complex of psychosocial dispositions.

"In [Pierre Bourdieu's] hands, habitus is a mediating construct that helps us revoke the common-sense duality between the individual and the social by capturing ‘the internalization of externality and the externalization of internality’, that is, the ways in which the sociosymbolic structures of society become deposited inside persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and patterned propensities to think, feel and act in determinate ways, which in turn guide them in their creative responses to the constraints and solicitations of their extant milieu."

(Wacquant, Loïc. "A Concise Genealogy and Anatomy of Habitus." The Sociological Review 64 (2016): 64–72. p. 65)

"The conditioning s 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 that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively 'regulated' and 'regular' without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor."

(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, tend to guarantee the 'correctness' of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules and explicit norms."

(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. Through the habitus, the structure of which it is the product governs practice, not along the paths of a mechanical determinism, but within the constraints and limits initially set on its inventions. This infinite yet strictly limited generative capacity is difficult to understand only so long as one remains locked in the usual antinomies – which the concept of the habitus aims to transcend – of determinism and freedom, conditioning and creativity, consciousness and the unconscious, or the individual and society. Because the habitus is an infinite capacity for generating products – thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions – whose limits are set by the historically and socially situated conditions of its production, the conditioned and conditional freedom it provides is as remote from creation of unpredictable novelty as it is from simple mechanical reproduction of the original conditioning."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. 1980. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. p. 55)

"The habitus – embodied history, internalized as a second nature and so forgotten as history – is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product."

(Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. 1980. Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. p. 56)

[Consul]

So what exactly do you want to call gender identity, gender awareness, one’s sense of one’s gender, the feeling of being a certain gender? And can you tell us why your term is better than another for everyday purposes?

First of all, I'd like to use "gender" as a synonym of "sex"; so gender identity = sexual identity (whatever that is).

"Using 'gender' to mean anything other than sex is to obscure important issues for no good reason."

(Byrne, Alex. Trouble with Gender. Cambridge: Polity, 2024. p. 195)

"Social change has linguistic repercussions…. The latter-day upheaval in sexual mores has increased the frequency of occasions for referring politely to copulation, and has thus created a demand for a short but equally polite word for the practice. The word sex has been pressed into that service, and thus rendered less convenient as a means of referring to the sexes. The resulting need has been met in turn by calling the sexes genders."

(Quine, W. V. Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. p. 78)

[Consul]

You say that you are introducing the terms for 'clarification' but for whose purpose? Your basic argument is probably similar to that of JK Rowling, who is currently challenging anti-hate law in Scotland, by her argument that people should not be objected to in free speech in argument for calling a man a man.

It is a complex issue because freedom of speech is important. However, one of the problems is that there is a blurry line between the use of so-called 'fact' and the expression of hatred, as well as prejudice and discrimination.

Freedom of speech isn't important to the Woke Left, who think it's very dangerous (to minorities)—hence that god-awful "anti-hate law" in Scotland, which is actually an anti-free-speech law.

The word "hate crime" has undergone what Nick Haslam calls concept creep. Here's the official definition of "hate crime" as used in England & Wales:

"The police and the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:

"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity."

There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike."

Source: https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime

So even unfriendliness and dislike can now be sanctioned as hate crimes!
Also note that all that matters is the alleged victim's subjective perception or interpretation! The danger of misperception or misinterpretation with regard to the actions and intentions of alleged perpetrators is neglected.

"Abstract: Many of psychology's concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena. The concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction, and prejudice are examined to illustrate these historical changes. In each case, the concept's boundary has stretched and its meaning has dilated. A variety of explanations for this pattern of “concept creep” are considered and its implications are explored. I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. Its implications are ambivalent, however. Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood."

Nick Haslam: Concept Creep: Psychology's Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology (2016)

[JackDaydream]

To Consul (and I am not quoting you because links are problematic),

Ideas of biological essentialism may be based on materialism, so if adhered to may be incompatible with the idea of 'soul'. Some may see soul as being based on metaphysics and others may see 'soul' as the essence of feeling, based on bodily sensations. This may demonstrate the ambiguity of the idea of gender as an idea, in the construction of ideas about the 'mental' life, body and brain in the construction of human identity, especially in relation to the idea of gender.

So, I am arguing that idealism and materialism are both relevant for thinking about the idea of gender. However, it may be extremely complex and I am unsure about the foundations of materialistic fundamentalism in this? Does it rule out reflective consciousness? To what extent is each of us in this discussion about gender aspects of biology, as in the thinking of materialistic determinism? Or, is there something more?

It is a difficult area in some ways and may come down to the question of whether gender is physical, and how does this solve this question of what is 'sex' and -gender? It goes back to ' the sociology of Anne Oakley, as this as a prerequisite for both the philosophy of feminism and postmodernism, which may involve the deconstruction of cultural ideas. All of these views impact on philosophical understanding, subjective and objective, in the consideration of gender identity construction and the question as to whether 'gender' is innate.

[Consul]

Note that only a small minority of transsexuals has had genital surgery!

How relevant is genitals/genitalia to the daily aspects of life? It may be important in the consideration of having a sexual relationship but apart from this how important are genitals. Some transgender people have experienced being asked what genitals do they have? To what extent does anyone have the right to know what genitals/genitalia a person has as an aspect of private or public life?

When it comes to sexual partnership, the question of genitals is relevant and legitimate (in case there is doubt).
Anyway, when it is said that transwomen are women, this is meant to include all of them, even those with completely male bodies, who haven't undergone any artificial corporeal feminization. Is it not understandable that many women don't want to share women-only spaces particularly with this group of transwomen?

To what extent is a person's gender a matter of genitalia, just as the issue of chromosomes, the foundations of gender, even for someone who comes from the perspective of materialistic reductionism? What about people whose genitals and chromosomes conflict, as you have argued previously that 'true' intersex involves the mixture of ovarian and testicular basis? The many combinations and variations from genitals, glands and hormones may show a problem for a precise basis of the binary of male/female, even for someone who adopts the approach of reductionist materialism?

The biological definition of sex (the two sexes) in terms of gametes (gamete-producing organs) is sufficiently precise for all scientific purposes, and it is based on the sex-related discoveries of modern (evolutionary) biology.

[Sy Borg]

Consul, I know you are busy, but I'd like to see your response to Sculptor's most recent questions of you.

He questioned whether you think your sense of gender was purely due to how your parents treated you.

Children look at others and figure out who they are most like. Imagine being an unusually androgynous and sensitive little boy who looks around and sees that he is more like the girls than the frightening and violent little brutes he's been lumped in with, and wishes he could just hang with them.

Or imagine being an unusually androgynous and robust little girl who looks at the boys, and figures that they have all the fun and that girl games are boring.

There is tremendous variety in humans in all manner of ways.

[Consul]

Think of yourself. Do you really think you could chose to change your gender? When you were a child do you think your gender was totally due to your parents treating you like your physical sex. Is that reasonable?
ANd when the many people who feel they are unhappy with their asigned sex - do you think they are just suffering from a mental problem? When they say that they never felt happy in their assigned gender - you want to tell them that they just have a mental confusion; that they can be "cured".
And what about homosexuals. Are you going to say that is "mental" too?
GIven the horrific prejudices, and abuses towards homosexuals so you really expect us to beleive that these are just mental abberations?

I no more chose my gender than I chose the shape of my nose, my hair colour or eye colour.. I would never have chose the persistent unbidden erections and obsessions with the female form. It's absurd. I have no hesitation in thinking that this is exacly the same for all LGBT+ people - these are not choices; these are variations of the human form.
You can call them mutations if you will, but pretending they are mental problems would be unfair and bigoted.
I going to suggest that the tendency to pedophila is also unchosen. Such practices are harmful and need treatment. Trans and homosexuality is not harmful in any way except through lack of understanding imposed up them by bigotry , expecially religious bigotry.

Yes, we all haven't freely chosen our sex, our sexual identification, or our sexual orientation. I generally don't believe in libertarian free will, ultimate self-creation, or ultimate moral responsibility.

From my materialist perspective, calling something mental is not synonymous with calling it nonphysical; so my distinction between the mental and the physical is to be read as an intraphysical distinction between the psychophysical (psychoneural) and the non-psychophysical (non-psychoneural), or the merely physical (neural).

When I call homosexuality and transsexuality mental states (that can and usually do manifest themselves in certain forms of behavior), I'm using "mental" in the general sense of "of or relating to the mind" rather than in the specific sense of "of, relating to, or affected by a psychiatric disorder".
Nevertheless, they are two different kinds of mental states, the one being a sexual orientation and the other a sexual identification.

As far as I know, many young gender-dysphoric people "grow out of" their gender dysphoria without any hormonal or surgical treatment, especially as there are different possible causes of gender dysphoria. (See the Littman quote in this post of mine!)

Anyway, I'm no scientific expert in these matters, and I don't know whether homosexuality or transsexuality is innate or not. In either case it makes no moral difference.
(Note that the question of the innateness of transsexuality is different from the question of the innateness of one's knowledge of one's sex!)

[Lagayascienza]

From my materialist perspective, much of what you say above is correct and terminology seems to have been the main stumbling block. However, I question your assertion that many young gender-dysphoric people "grow out of" their gender dysphoria without any hormonal or surgical treatment.

There is a useful summary on WIKI dealing with the question of desistence and persistence. It provides links to the original research papers quoted, some of which I have read. It states:

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, most children have a stable sense of their gender identity by age 4. They explain that research shows prepubertal children who assert a transgender or gender diverse identity know their gender as clearly and as consistently as their cisgender peers.[10][11]

Other research has shown that if gender dysphoria persists during puberty, it is very likely permanent.[12][13][14] Factors that are associated with gender dysphoria persisting through puberty include intensity of gender dysphoria, amount of cross-gendered behavior, and verbal identification with the desired/experienced gender (i.e. stating that they are a different gender rather than wish to be a different gender).[14][15]
A systematic review of research relating to desistance was published in 2022. It found that desistance was poorly defined: studies sometimes did not define it or equally defined it as desistance of transgender identity or desistance of gender dysphoria. They also found none of the definitions allowed for dynamic or nonbinary gender identities and the majority of articles published were editorial pieces. They stated the concept was based on biased research from the 1960-80s and poor quality research in the 2000s. They concluded there was a "dearth of high-quality hypothesis-driven research that currently exists" on the subject, and suggested that desistance should "be removed from clinical and research discourse to focus instead on supporting [transgender and gender-expansive] youth rather than attempting to predict their future gender identity."[22] According to a review published in 2022 considering more recent studies, the majority of pre-pubertal children who socially transition persist in their identity in 5-to 7-year follow-ups, disproving the results of the prior studies.[14]

10 Rafferty, Jason. "Gender Identity Development in Children". American Academy of Pediatrics.
11 Rafferty, Jason; Committee on Psychological Aspects of Child and Family Health; Committee on Adolescence; Section on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health and Wellness; et al. (2018
12 ameson L, de Kretser DM, Marshall JC, De Groot LJ (2013). Endocrinology Adult and Pediatric: Reproductive Endocrinology. Elsevier Health Sciences. p. 483. ISBN 978-0323221528.
13 Dulcan, MK (2015). Dulcan's Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Second Edition. American Psychiatric Pub. p. 591. ISBN 978-1585624935
14 Roberts, Christina (11 May 2022). "Persistence of Transgender Gender Identity Among Children and Adolescents". Pediatrics. 150 (2). doi:10.1542/peds.2022-057693. ISSN 0031-4005. PMID 35538638. S2CID 248694688. The majority of pre-pubertal children who socially transition persist in their identity in 5-to 7-year follow-ups.
15 Ristori J, Steensma TD (2 January 2016). "Gender dysphoria in childhood". International Review of Psychiatry. 28 (1): 13–20. doi:10.3109/09540261.2015.1115754. PMID 26754056. S2CID 5461482.