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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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