If gender is fake why is gender identity so important? If gender is fake then how some people feel they’re the wrong gender? If gender is fake why is it so important to learn about someone’s gender because using the wrong pronouns will give them trauma?

Get your story straight on gender challenge for leftists (IMPOSSIBLE)

[–] xxx69MyImmortal69xxx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Do you want an honest answer to your questions or are you set on your worldviews?

[–] BearWolf@lemmings.world 8 points 10 months ago (6 children)

I always want to learn more about things. To be totally honest with you, what I'm having the most trouble understanding in the current gender discourse is how can gender be both a social construct/abstraction (in the famous words of Judith Butler "an imitation without an original") but then also gender identity is a deeply-seated innate feeling that people have that then enables the feeling of "my gender is wrong and I need to change it."

I really don't want to be transphobic or even enbyphobic or anything and I will use whatever pronouns people want to be nice. But just on an epistemological level, I'm having trouble understanding it.

[–] xxx69MyImmortal69xxx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Something being a social construct doesn't mean it doesn't matter, especially in this society where your gender is a thing people want to know about so that they can form opinions about you. It is also a way of self expression because with your gender you can signal to the outside world how you see yourself and how you want to be.

If you are forced into a role that does not reflect who you are, you are going to have a rough time, because people automatically assign you traits and how they will treat you based on that role. And then it doesn't matter if gender is a thing imposed on us by nature or something we invented to categorize people.

I'm not sure if this helps but I hope it does at least a little.

[–] BearWolf@lemmings.world 1 points 10 months ago

That's part I understand. What I don't understand is

a role that does not reflect who you are

how you see yourself and how you want to be.

In the context of gender, where do these feelings come from? How do I know if a role does or doesn't reflect "who I am?" Where does how I see myself come from and where does the desire to be how I want to be come from?

You haven't actually answered my question, sorry to say. What I'm asking is where does the feeling of being "forced into a role" come from? How do I know the role is not right for me?

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