Innate gender identity
So, this comment on Thinking as a value has been scratching at me all day, so I’m going to argue with it even though it will probably mean repeating things I’ve said about six times before.
Identifying as something in the gender and sexuality sense of the term is in reference to an innate gender identity and an innate sexuality that is immutable with regards to external force even if the experience of them can be internally fluid (see people who have fluid sexuality or are genderfluid).
I don’t believe in innate gender identity unless as a label for a way some people feel. I don’t believe in it as a universal description of how people relate to their own gender.
As such, “identifying as” is often a shorthand to describe quickly this innate phenomenon in gender and sexuality as these are often invisible states of being from an outside perspective.
Sadly, much like “theory” the popular usage of identity clouds the issue and makes it seem part of a spectrum of personal identities one may have that refer to an individual’s community, work, or social behaviors (“I identify as a nerd”, “I identify as a scientist”, “I identify as a feminist”).
Well that is one valid way to use the word. Amartya Sen uses it that way throughout Identity and Violence, for instance.
And this is an especially easy mistake for many people who are cis-identified to make as they can largely ignore their innate gender identity in the same way someone who is straight can ignore their sexuality or someone who is white can ignore their race.
Ok this is where we part company. You are using it as a universal description of how people relate to their own gender. I say no: it’s not universal. The analogy doesn’t work. Yes, white people can ignore their race, but that’s not because they’re overlooking the “fact” that whiteness is their innate racial identity – it’s because their whiteness is the default, and they’re not penalized for it. That’s a different thing. Privilege isn’t the same as innate identity. I have white skin privilege, absolutely…but that privilege is contingent, not innate.
As such, there is little disconnect or need to focus on the innate nature of gender, and this especially becomes true as gender is also a term that popularly gets universalized to not only mean innate gender identity, but also a basket of gender norms and expectations that not all individuals who are cis may be comfortable with.
Well some scholars – perhaps most or all scholars – say that is what gender means – the basket of gender norms and expectations.
And it can be hard to separate that out and see gender identity separate from that conflation when one’s own experience of gender is being perfectly comfortable with gender identity, but having a lot of uncomfortable interactions with expected gender roles.
And this is the part where I get pissed off. Don’t tell me my “experience of gender is being perfectly comfortable with gender identity.” Just stop telling me that. It’s not. That is not my experience. You can tell me what your experience is all day long, but you can’t tell me what mine is. I’ve never been “perfectly comfortable” with my putative gender identity.
Innate is not the same as “always felt this way” or “this is deeply important to me.” Briefly, even very young babies are actively hoovering up every social cue they can spot, and the things they are learning are often amazingly sophisticated (I am not an expert, but have read a bit on cognitive and linguistic development in early childhood). We don’t form long-term memories until about 3 years of age – that’s three years of enthusiastic people-watching and learning. And some of that learning profoundly affects how the brain develops. It isn’t some superficial overlay, it’s not always reversible, and some of it it can last a lifetime. People can’t be persuaded or bullied or therapized out of it. My point being that something learned is not necessarily any less essential for you than something you were born with.
I’m aware of the arguments that prenatal hormones can program gender identity into the brain, and that because genital development happens later, there may be a mismatch. It’s a promising hypothesis, but at this point it is only a hypothesis. Consider identical twins raised together: they are clones, they share prenatal environments and grow up together. It’s a very small literature, but so far it looks like concordance rates for gender identity disorder* are about 40%. Which leaves open the possibilities of substantial effects of genes and environment (including prenatal hormone exposure), but it looks like those are influences; they may be weak or strong, but they don’t necessarily determine outcomes.
*that’s the term they use in the study, which is small, and behind a paywall, so I can’t evaluate it.
Link is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22146048
I don’t dispute that. I don’t dispute that some people experience it as innate.
Maybe you’re not disagreeing with me? I’m not sure if you are or not.
Is feeling of some level of…awareness of people of other genders an innate part of gender?
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear! I strongly agree with you. I was reacting particularly to the passages you quoted that seemed to assume that gender identity is innate. I often find that when people argue that something is innate, they mean that they have always felt that way and that it’s important to them. I was trying to disentangle “innate” and “deeply felt.”
Ah! Yes quite.
Leaving aside whether gender identity (rather than gender identification) is existential or universal* for humans, not all inherent attributes need be innate, and the capacity for some attribute need not be instantiated.
(For example, I don’t think I have a god-shaped hole in my psyche)
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* Universal claims are falsified by virtue of a single counter-example.
Holy wow. I just saw the comment in its original context and I had a strong negative visceral reaction to the notion that gender is innate, so much I had to force myself to keep reading it after clicking away at least four times. And I don’t think it’s a matter of terminology – the author seems to be using “innate” the same way I would – I think it’s a substantive disagreement.
Being at the tail end of raising a toddler, I am very sensitive and aware of just how pervasive gender-based messages are right from the moment of birth. Also, I’ve begun reading Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine and the first few chapters discuss study after study after study showing how the subtlest, barest hint of gender-based stereotypes have incredible power to influence perception and behavior, and it is stunning. So no one is likely to convince me any time soon that gender is innate. Certainly we can talk about how squillions of generations of evolution have caused gender to become more and more salient in human existence, such that it has gained the appearance of being innate even when it is not, but I think that appearance is deceptive.
I hate to dredge up the Rachel Dolezal question, but …. I don’t think it’s all that much more unreasonable to ask what it means for a person who is perceived as one race to identify as another, any more than it is unreasonable to ask what it means for a person who is perceived as man to identify as woman. (Obviously, if you’re asking that question rhetorically because you think both race and gender are innate and you’re insinuating that the subject of your question is lying, you’re being a huge jerk. I feel confident saying that no one here would disagree.)
Race has long been recognized to be an artificial and shifting construct, and of course ethnicity is even more of a mess. My entire childhood through adolescence was spent feeling strongly identified as Hispanic/Chicana while not outwardly displaying or even feeling any of the stereotypes associated with that, and while frequently being perceived as white — facts that troubled me deeply and made me feel like a misfit everywhere including in my own tight-knit family. And that was only further thrown into flux when I was able to study my detailed family tree traced back to Spain and so uncovered facts about my European lineage that were very much in conflict with my whole family’s romanticized Chicana identity. (I’m not even going to go into my struggles with gender as a young person, but they were there, on top of all this).
So say I identify as Chicana. I think you can react in one of three basic ways. First, you can say “great, that’s awesome, whatever you identify as is what you are.” I’m assuming that the person who reacts that way thinks identity is a meaningful thing, or they are just trying to be kind — and yet their position actually makes “identifying” an empty concept, or at least a capricious one. Second, you can say “you either are Chicana or you’re not, it’s nothing to do with how you ‘identify’ and you don’t get to just identify as Chicana if you’re not.” That perspective takes a more rigid view of ethnicity (particularly Chicana ethnicity) than is justified given the messy reality of what ethnicity ever meant or ever will mean. Third, you can say “What’s is a Chicana? What does it mean that you identify that way? Have you always felt that way? Why? Will you always feel that way or can you change it? Why? What are the implications for you and the rest of us?”
I’ve come to think that the ONLY reasoned and reasonable response is the third one. I won’t try to speak for black or trans people, but looking in from the outside it seems that those categories are also exceedingly more complicated than Ophelia’s transgressors want to admit. I think the reluctance to admit that is based in fear, and that’s really unfortunate because to some extent the fear is rational and rooted in self-defense. But thinking people must move past fear.
Oh my god, that was a huge comment. Sorry!!
An interesting comment, though, Jennifer. I read it all.
I cannot take to the innate gender thing, either. I can imagine an innate SEX, as a brain model of the body, and that can go various ways in development and so some people are born trans. But gender seems so thoroughly socially constructed – what even IS there outside social construction? Nothing!
I think some people imagine that socially constructed means easily mutable, but that is not true. I like to analogise to the mother tongue. We all have an innate capacity for language learning, but your mother tongue is both socially constructed and (almost) immutable. English isn’t in my genes, but I’m not about to change being a native English speaker any time soon!
The analogy to language is excellent! What a great example of a social construct that also shapes thought, is fairly immutable, but that can be forgotten and replaced by a new language if you’re immersed in a new country.
Are people unaware that people get penalized for not properly fulfilling their gender roles as determined by culture, *regardless* of their “innate gender”? That is, it doesn’t matter how much a boy feels that he is a boy, people will emotionally and sometimes physically abuse him if he does “girl things”. Men who are neither trans nor homosexual get gay-bashed for simply *seeming* un-masculine. Women get yelled at and get things thrown at them for being too butch, even if they are straight and do not identify as trans.
And then the ones who do successfully fulfill their assigned gender roles are *still* oppressed because the macho male dies too soon, from violence, dangerous lifestyle, or lack of medical care. He has almost no emotional support for most of his life.
The feminine woman does not raise her voice no matter the provocation, she is not taken seriously, she spends far too much time and money trying to impress other people with her beauty, charm, grace, and selflessness.
Ah, I wish I could “like” pretty much everyone’s comments.
Thanks Jennifer–for me, reading about your own personal struggles with an ethnic identity is a good balance/reality check/way to get some perspective, so thank you for sharing them.
Jennifer, shame on you for apologizing for the length of your comment. I’ve read much shorter ones that were nowhere near as succinct.
And it’s not even all that long, as comments go. Plus I have no objections to long comments.
It’s funny, I had the same reaction to the comment we’re arguing with that Jennifer did – that’s why it took me much of the day to get around to arguing with it. I kept clicking away from it through sheer irritation.