Just stop with the identities! Stop trying to design yourself to fit a social category. That's an option.
If it's an option, you do it.
Except.. you didn't design yourself to fit a social category did you. Instead, you let
other people design you to fit a social category. You let yourself believe that a small lump of flesh determined some fundamental truth of who you were. You couldn't even manage to question the utterly nonsensical premise of that imposed identity. You think of yourself as a man, but you can't even really explain to me what a man is.
But to answer the question. No. I don't think I will. I was born into the same world you were. I was raised in a similar culture to the one you were. I was fed approximately the same ideas about sex and gender that you were. Those ideas are as much a part of me as they are of you. I can't unsee them any more than you can. I interpret the sex and gender of people I pass on the street and who I know nothing about, because I know the social "language" by which sex and gender are communicated. That is what it means to be a human being living in a society of human beings, our languages and the concepts they contain are not solely our own, they are given to us by others. That is what it means for something to be socially learned, or a "social construct
".
There is no option to step outside of this. There is no way to unlearn the socially learned knowledge that makes up the foundation of our understanding of the world. Even acknowledging it's not real isn't enough to make it unintelligible. What you can do, and what I think all people do to one extent or another, is to take that "prison" of imposed identity and turn it into a home. We all learn to play and express ourselves even in languages we learned from other people, and the language of sex and gender is no exception.
It can be hard, which I think is why some people are more able to do it than others, but it's the only real option that we have.
That child does not exist.
I am describing a case reported on by another therapist who, generally, was quite supportive of the authors of the study you cited.
All of the stuff about sex and identity is projection onto children, but children don't have identities unless you teach them to.
Which you will.
Unless you deprive your children of verbal communication (which is neglect) they will learn your language, and they will learn the concepts that exist in your language, and they will build their little identities out of them, just as you did once. You don't need to teach them anything, millions of years of evolution have molded them into unstoppable little machines for social learning.
It also raises the question of why you would want to deprive children of identity in the first place. When a person fails to develop a stable sense of identity, we describe that person as having borderline personality disorder, which is a truly, truly horrible condition to have and nothing anyone should want to inflict on anyone.
All the weird things people do in their teen years happen then because that's the point in life people look to define their identity. A kindergartener playing with dolls doesn't understand that kind of thing at all. They aren't exploring identities, they aren't trying to find or define themselves, they're just doing what they feel like.
I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong, and
horrifyingly wrong.
Play is incredibly important to children. It's so important that depriving them of it not only affects their mental, emotional and social health, but also has a negative effect on their brain development. It is the most important arena in which they learn cognitive and social skills.
Play is the one arena of a child's life in which they have agency. Outside play they don't really get to be individuals very often, so it should be incredibly obvious that play is incredibly important to a child's exploration of who they are.
You don't know what that is like, any more than I know what it's like for a cis child to go through puberty. I am one person, I know only my own experiences. You are one person, you know only your own experiences. Your singular experience isn't evidence of anything.
It's still more evidence than you have for
anything you believe on this topic, and it would be a start. I'm not the only person you could ask.
Also, I know you think saying things like this makes you sound smart and rational, but I'm afraid the reverse is true. Smart people generally understand the importance and utility of detailed accounts of individual experiences, particularly if the goal is ultimately to help individuals.
That's one of the many logical failures of transgender theory: how could someone possibly know they feel like the other sex, when the only experience they've ever had is that of the sex that they are?
Sexes don't exist, remember. I thought you were above all our primitive notions of identity..
Real answer: this is why you should actually
ask people, instead of just making stupid assumptions. The world is full of people who could explain gender dysphoria to you. The only reason I'm not doing it now is because I refuse to air genuine pain for the sake of your fun.
It would be wildly presumptuous for me to say "I'm a man, so I know what men feel like", it would be way beyond the bounds of reason for me to say I know what women feel like.
Again, men and women don't exist. Those are identities. Keep up. Also..
No. Do you really not get what I'm saying?
"I want to be a man, but men have penises and I don't, therefore I would like gain a penis" is a logically sound train of thought.
"I am a man without a penis, because reproductive organs don't define manhood, but also I need one to affirm my manhood" is not logically sound.
If you genuinely believed it would be presumptuous of you to claim to know how a man feels, you would also understand that there is a difference between
your manhood and manhood in general, and you would therefore understand that the same is true of everyone else as well.
Again, these are imposed identities, but we make them our own. Identity formation is that process of turning social meaning into individual meaning, and it's different for each person. Your manhood necessitating that you have a penis does not mean that mine does, it just means (in this hypothetical scenario) you care about your penis more than I care about mine. That's not good or bad, it's not morally wrong to care about things other people don't, it just is.
You answered your question: in puberty, people struggle with issues of identity. Then they reach adulthood, regain some stability in their hormones, and are left with a stronger sense of self having lived through those struggles. Puberty is uncomfortable, but it is temporary, and is how you reach adulthood.
That's not an explanation for anything.
Again, what is the
mechanism. How does this work? What hormones are we talking about? What are their effects? How does a cognitive phenomenon such as identity proceed from the effects of hormones?
Hmsies.
