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The other commentor said this but I don't see why using the concept of gender implies that deviating from gender norms is a sign of trans-ness. Just acknowledging something exists isn't an endorsement of the way its currently treated in society. What I mean by that is that if I use gender to refer to the socio-cultural attributes generally associated with being a man or woman, especially those with no direct link to sex, that by no means entails that I also think it's good that there are such gendered attributes, and if you deviate from what's expected you therefore need a sex change. Indeed, there are many gender abolitionists who would do away with any notion of gendered attributes if they could, which would presumably also render the whole idea of transitioning obsolete, but they still use the concept of gender - in order to criticise it - but it usefully describes an existing phenomenon.
Also, literally no-one of any relevance claims 'you're a boy if you play with trucks'. What gender is for, among much else, is to describe the expectation that boys play with trucks, which exists whether I like it or not, which has no connection to sex that I can see.
Because gender is not primarily discussed as a mere set of behavioral tendencies that might be analyzed by anthropologists in a detached way, it's primarily discussed as a core part of your identity, and "a core part of your identity is not what you think it is" obviously implies making some radical changes to be more in line with it.
Would a clinical psychologist running a gender clinic in a children's hospital, saying things like that at a transgender health conference be someone of some relevance? Would the medical professionals in attendance, giving absolutely no negative feedback to these claims, be someones of some relevance?
I do think that gender is frequently a core part of people's identity, but in the first place I don't think that's something you can ignore by using different words, and secondly that doesn't mean I think it ought to be a core part of someone's identity. 'Your behaviours tend to align more with male gender roles' might be an argument for a woman to transition, but an alternative answer would be to simply stop caring about wanting to align your gender with the one usually associated with your behaviours. Me thinking that latter answer is often a much better response, however doesn't suddenly mean gender or gender roles don't exist, simply because I'd rather they didn't.
Well yes but it would depend exactly how 'like that' such statements actually were.
I'm not sure I agree with "frequently", but the bigger point is "gender will always be there" is only true for the hypothetical anthropologist's word for tendencies in behavior. If we're talking about core parts of identity, it is very much the case that gender might not be there.
a) So it's pretty clear you're using agreement with the idea that there might be some sex-based tendencies in behavior, to smuggle in acceptance for the "core part of your identity" idea.
b) Actually, you'd need to further define "gender roles" for me to agree. To me, the word implies normative prescriptions, not mere correlations, and western societies have spent a lot of time deconstructing the former, so I think to the extent they still exist, they're barely hanging on.
Well if you think "a preverbal child unsnapping a onesie to make a dress / pulling out barrettes out of their hair is a gender expression" is quite "like that", allow me to introduce you to Dr. Diane Ehrensaft of Benioff's Children's Hospital. She recently repeated that claim at a recent National Transgender Health Summit (sorry, no timestamp or clip), where she also said she was transitioning a non-verbal autistic child until the parents pulled them out of the clinic.
I don't disagree with this in a hypothetical sense but that world is borderline unrecognisable from the one that exists today or has ever existed in the modern West. Except for a small number of people widely regarded as eccentric, gender has always been critical to almost everyone's identity in the recent past, and still is.
Perhaps, but I think overall you're being a bit restrictive here. In order for gender roles and gender to be important, it doesn't have to be some strict delineation between male and feminine roles, strictly policed, but could instead be merely about expectations surrounding patterns of behaviour etc. I think 'normative prescriptions' is also a bit restrictive, as such expectations can exist without any individual considering 'normative'.
Watched the shorter clip and her statement, while I wouldn't necessarily agree with it, also definitely was not saying 'your child is a girl is they make their onesie a dress'. I think she was simply saying that children can be cognisant of gender from an early age, and so in doing something like that it's plausible that a child knows the gendered connotations of what they are doing. Again though, that doesn't mean they are a girl, and I don't think Ehrensaft is saying that, the point is just to show that children can be surprisingly attuned to gender norms. You could draw various conclusions from this, but I don't think her statement implies anything close to the level of 'if you want to wear a dress as a young child you're probably a girl'.
I don't think so. How would you go about proving it? One thing you're definitely wrong about is that such people would be regarded as eccentrics, because you wouldn't even know you're talking to one unless they explicitly told you, and few people are going to go on at length about what they don't believe. What's more, as one such person, on the few occasions the topic came up, and I shared my position on gender identity, I never had anyone express any sort of indication that my views are outside of the norm.
No, I'm not. I'm not saying you should use any particular definition, I'm saying you should be clear about which one you're using. I already have the issue that you're conflating "gender" as norms with "gender" as identity, and using the former in order to claim there will always be "gender", but even "gender" as norms will only always exist if you mean "a set of behaviors that correlate with sex" rather than normative prescriptions.
There's a few issues with this.
I don't think there is even a theoretical way to tell the difference. What, specifically, is "being a boy" supposed to mean, if it's not "being cognisant of gender" and "making a gendered statement" (that you are a boy) about yourself?
Even if you were right about your interpretation, you'd still be simply wrong about there being anything definitive about it. Here's a quote from the clip:
Nowhere in the entire clip is she saying anything that would indicate that a kid saying "I boy" is anything other then a boy, and she is emphatically making a case for believing the children when they make these gendered statements.
If she meant what you said, why did she socially transition a kid that had such severe autism that they were effectively non-verbal, and wanted to continue to medically transition her, and finds it very sad that the parents pulled her out? It again seems pretty clear that her whole approach is to believe children when they make these "gender expressions" and making medical decision based on them.
The idea that pre-verbal children are cognisant of a concept that regularly flusters trained academics, when you ask them some basic questions, is itself pretty batty.
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