What is Gender and Dysphoria? My proposal for a definition

==~•The Big Question•~==

What is gender and (gender) dysphoria? Gender Identity Theory's biggest propositions. 

==~~•Intro•~~==

Before I say anything about this hugely prominent and controversial movement in recent times, I would like to clearly state my intentions considering the sensitive topics related to it. I am going to try organise this so the first section is purely analysis of the Gender Identity Theory while attempting to be unbiased, the second section will be my political view. Despite that, I mainly disagree with the mainstream view about gender. 

==~~~•Definitions•~~~==

Gender Identity / New Gender theory is the term I use to encompass the recent cultural, ideological movement that you probably heard of from pride marches and people talking about identity, gender, and pronouns. The theory's main points are that: gender and sex are different, gender is a spectrum, trans people struggle with their gender, there are more than 2 genders, and that many people suffer gender dysphoria in some way. I will explain and talk about all these in this blog and in further blogs. 

It is also called gender ideology, radical gender theory, transgenderism by opposition (generally) and doesn't really have a name by those who support it that I know of; other than maybe trans rights activism. It also relates to terms you may have heard like gender fluidity, gender non conformity, and cross gender expression (expressing opposite to your sex's expectation so feminine men and masculine women).            

Gender fluidity is the idea that gender changes, transgenderism is the idea that you can change your gender, I will call transitionism the idea that people who suffer from gender dysphoria should ideally transition through changing clothes, hormones, or surgery. 

==~~~~~~•Analysis•~~~~~~==

Okay so I'm first addressing the main concept in New Gender Theory which is that sex and gender are different and/or separate. 

1. Gender is a social construct

One perspective, which I believe is the most mainstream and is definitely the major view in my experience of talking to people in real life, and in dms, is that sex is the biological markers for men and women: chromosomes, genitals, and hormones. Meanwhile gender is the societal construct of stereotypical features associated with men and women, typical gender ideas include: girls liking pink, men wearing suits, women being more nurturing. 

It has also been described by people on both sides as your gender expression and public image. 

Taking on this view, gender dysporia is often argued as a mismatch of gender and sex that causes depression and discomfort in terms of their gender. This may seem complicated as there are varying ways of saying what I just described, but the mismatch of sex (penis, vagina) and gender (dominant men, nurturing women) clearly doesn't necessarily cause dysphoria as it just means they could be a feminine man or a masculine woman. It means that if you have any cross gender expression, you are transgender; a man who likes pink is a girl or should ideally transition to become one in order to deal with the dysphoria. 

This can be considered a hypocritical contradiction as many advocates of this view also believe in cross gender expression by supporting femboys and dominant women. 

It also doesn't support the usually argued gender spectrum, the idea that people can express and also said to be, on a spectrum of masculinity and femininity. This is due to the fact that from this theory, only 100% masculine men are men and vise versa. 

Ideas of what is masculine and feminine differ by person and over time, meaning trans people are portrayed as 100% subjectively trans which doesn't make sense. You could be seen as trans by a different culture or time period yet not suffer from dysphoria at all. 

Many of these cross gender features like women being assertive not only arent reported to cause dysphoria or any negative feeling, but are claimed as positive or part of people's personality. For example: Finnster, Jordan Peterson, James Charles, Judge Judy. 

Some gender attributes are strongly evidenced to be affected by sex such as the psychological difference in big five personality trait agreeableness in men and women. 

2.) Gender is a feeling

Another idea, often said alongside the point that gender is a social construct or to describe the concept of "gender identity", is that gender is a feeling or sense of self. The most descriptive version that I'm aware of hearing is that gender is your own sort of sense of being connected to your birth gender (your sex's associated gender e.g. if you are the male sex then it is how much you identify with masculinity) and how much you identify with any gender in particular. 

This is described in so many different ways and many say things like gender dysphoria also being this feeling of disconnect or misalignment between your gender and sex, but not necessarily because they don't match.

This fixes the problem of anti cross gender expression by describing a completely subjective and independent sense we all have that is often framed as a journey of discovery with you and your gender. This means gender is something innate or already existing, or that we all have an objectively subjective feeling that cannot be invalidated by others. This ignores the idea that gender is a social construct instead of a fully personal construct, unless you make the distinction between gender identity and gender expression where gender identity is this feeling I just described and gender expression is how you express your gender identity with masculinity and femininity with no requirement of corresponding to the gender identity. This is logically impossible as you can identify as the male gender identity (e.g. wearing boys clothes) and desire to present using female gender expression (e.g. wearing girls clothes) without having dysphoria according to this belief. This really just seems like gender identity has nothing to do with anything, seeming like this innate subjective entity that doesn't mean anything or refer to anything about you. 

This is portrayed using phrases that promote individual freedom and purely individual judgement over your identity such as: "only you can say what's right with you and your gender", "no one can tell you how to be a boy", "any gender you decide to express as is valid in your own way". 

This idea of a subjective individual sense that is objectively correct is impossible in any other context, you cannot feel like an Emo and present with optimistic attitude and angels clothing while saying you identify as an Emo because Emos have set cultural stereotypes and simply saying you identify as that doesn't correlate with how identity works. Identity is determined in this case by how much you resemble culturally established features of the stereotype Emo, even if you don't want to be. If you have black hair and saying depressing things you will likely be called an emo even just for a joke. It's possible to strongly like, agree, want to associate with, and become the features of particular gender stereotypes, but it is culturally and socially objective at least in part, whether you fit in to them. Identity is created, built up, worked towards, I cannot say my subjective sense of selfness identifies as an optimist but want to express that by saying negative things all the time while being logically correct. What you can argue is that optimists should say negative things as it is honest and meaning you can be prepare for the future; you can change the cultural bounds and ideas about certain categories and so on but you cannot change the fact that happier people are more likely to be optimistic, non cultural features (happiness in this analogy) affects the stereotype or cultural idea (optimism). 

This version of gender also doesn't invalidate ideas like cat gender, helicopter gender, star gender and any other form of gender that many who advocate new gender theory dispute. 

3.) Gender is related to complex brain structure and neurochemistry

This idea is a lot rarer but parts are mentioned by other new gender theorists even when they believe gender is something else. It is uncommon (though I have heard it from at least 2 people on discord and YouTuber Professor Dave Explains) to say gender is found your brain; structure and chemistry, as it suggests that gender dysphoria is a malformation whereby the brain develops as the opposite gender's structure. It also means gender is largely biological if not fully, and may suggest a lack of free will with one's gender. 

The main problem is the often vague definition of what brain structure means and the lack of explanation of what "opposite gender's brain" means. It could mean varying brain function ability level, women have better developed brain areas related to facial recognition for example, it could mean varying behaviours and mindsets. 

If any of these versions are true, it means you cannot change your gender and could suggest you have zero free will with gender as it is all determined to brain structure. It also means transitioning via changing clothes and pronouns etc should have no theoretical euphoric effect on your gender or dysphoria, or at least nobody I'm aware of has presented evidence or ideas for such effects. One idea could be that the natural behaviour associated with your gender's brain is being denied and so the dysphoria comes from those natural behaviours being stopped and bullied out of you as boys shouldn't be nurturing for example. This assumes behaviour is 100% biological and means the cause of dysphoria is the anti cross gender expression harassment or culture as is commonly said when talking about the high trans suicide rate. It also means medical transition may have a solid benefit relating to sexual behaviour being better suited if you have your brain's gender's genitalia. It denies the idea of gender identity vs gender expression in a sense that gender identity can't be anything like xenogenders. I am very uneducated on this view so I would take explanations. 

==~~~~~•My View•~~~~~==

Gender dysphoria is not the mismatch of gender and sex, it is not a mystical sense of self that has the godly ability to decide your gender that innately removes the need for criticism. Those ideas are appealing as they have an explanation of an objectively true subjective feeling that illustrates a journey of self discovery and victimhood. The person has total control over their expression with it being hyper validated by people who "aren't bigoted". 

Since there are no consistently established rules that I'm fully aware of, with the cause of dysphoria and gender identity's relation to gender expression, it means more research or theorising should be done before trying to justify neo pronouns as a valid utterance and getting angry if people think otherwise. 

Here is my proposal for a definition of gender and sex: sex is the biological classification (male or female), gender is a description of your masculinity / femininity. You would say my sex is male and I have quite a masculine gender if you were a boy that liked lifting weights a lot for example. Gender is a spectrum with masculine on the left, androgynous in the middle, feminine on the right. You are not a gender, you are a certain amount of feminine vs masculine. Some things are blurry or are considered to be on both sides. Carl Jung believed us to all have an anime and animus, a feminine and masculine part in our psyche which are both necessary and powerful. And denying either would be cutting off a part of ourself. Gender dysphoria is a rare mental disorder by which you should have absolute empathy for, people should be able to have cross gender expression and medical transition should only be allowed if you are 18 or over unless you have parental consent to do it at 16 (willing to debate this). Dysphoria is also a feeling that many experience when they feel they aren't as masculine/feminine as they'd like or feel pressured to be, a man who isn't buff may feel dysphoric at times but they are not a woman. It is insulting to claim dysphoria is an issue of identity misalignment or anything different to a medical issue, despite it sounding nicer. 

No matter your view or my view on this, I encourage you to have both a bit of empathy and productive debate with those you disagree with as I have tried doing through dming people and speaking of my opinions in conversation. Speaking with your enemies may teach you why they believe what they do so you can learn a lesson or better arrange your opinion, even if you stay on the same side of the arguement. And disagreeing is no reason to generalise their opinion as homogenous and harass people based on your stereotype of the opposition. 

It can be extremely difficult to talk about these opinions, but I encourage you to tell your truth and make it so your orient yourself towards the truth. Assert yourself and open your ears, if not but for a minute. It's easy to say to do this when there are legitimate consequences if you oppose new gender theory, you don't need to go out your way to cause conflict, but at the least; politely assert your opinions instead of just nodding your head when asked. 

==~~~•Summary•~~~==

New Gender Theory is the recent movement that has followers enforcing many ideas with 3 main versions for the definition of gender and dysphoria: dysphoria is not the mismatch of biological sex and socially constructed gender features as it is offensive to people with cross gender expression, gender is not a feeling that allows you to decide an internal sense of identity that cannot be questioned or judged in any way as that is either impossible or not recommended as skepticism is necessary, and gender is not fully complex neurochemistry that makes expression uncontrollable. 

What I've taken from what I've seen of these ideas is that they are inconsistent, hypocritical, logically impossible, offensive and underdeveloped for the practises they are meant to justify so I encourage anyone to contact me to give me a better version or general debate. 

Thank you for reading, I wish you all well no matter your experience with gender, I'm very willing to debate my points and explain or take feedback on them via my discord: pebis#2175. 7