Gender Identity is the Product of a Disconnected Mind
When the unreal becomes more than real
It’s no surprise that “gender identity” has become a viral concept in an age where so many of us live our lives online. In a sense, we spend a lot of our time disembodied and able to present ourselves in a way that might not totally be real. The problem is that gender ideologues have tried to apply this mode of being to the actual real world, to disastrous effects. The fact that it has been taken up by society to the extent that it has shows a triumph of the disconnected mind, which is a detriment to us all.
The problem with the disconnected mind is that it doesn’t see reality “out there.” It thinks that the only reality is the one that it has constructed for itself. This is a paradoxical and contradictory endeavor because everything constructed inside the mind is based on something from outside.
For example, the very concept of gender identity would not be possible without first knowing what men and women actually are. This may seem obvious, but denying the existence of the two sexes is exactly what gender ideologies are trying to do. Nevertheless, reality was and necessarily had to be their starting point. They took a look at the world and saw not only men and women but the different tendencies associated with each sex.
Some might call these differences “stereotypes,” but, to me, it is obvious that our differences go deeper. No doubt much of what “gender identity” is based on is nothing but shallow stereotypes and fashion choices, but men and women have behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences on average as well.
So, gender ideologues recognize these tendencies that exist in reality. But instead of simply acknowledging that the sexes have statistical differences on average, they constructed “gender identities” out of them. Typical male behaviors and tendencies became the gender identity “man” while typical female behaviors and tendencies became the gender identity “woman.” There was absolutely no need to do this. But, at the very least, these “gender identities” were still loosely connected to the real sexes of male and female. Stereotypical though they could often be, they were at least grounded in something.
But the gender ideologues, because they are avowed postmodernists, went a step further. They divorced “gender identity” from any idea of physical sex and insisted that it stand as a free-floating concept with no connection to the real world. Gender identity became something akin to a soul, though a soul devoid of any divinity. Any gender identity can now inhabit any person, no matter what their physical sex is and no matter how they behave. This is how you get highly feminine girls on TikTok declaring that they are “transmasculine” and insisting on “he/they” pronouns.
None of it makes any sense. Where it at least used to be, for example, that more typically masculine people could be said to have a male “gender identity,” now a female person who acts in a typically feminine manner can have one as well because gender identity as a rule now can’t be based on anything real. Don’t get me wrong—I think the former conception is also ridiculous, but it at least represents a step before the purely disconnected mind took over entirely.
But the representation has now become reality—to devasting effects. This move is what has allowed people to argue vehemently for such nonsensical claims as that sex isn’t real or that women can have penises. It is a perversion of the human ability to conceptualize and represent. Our ability to do this is not bad in and of itself: it has led to much of the success of our species. But it has now run amok.
We need to find our grounding in reality again, for the sake of everyone: for the sake of women, for the sake of men, for the sake of children, and even for the sake of people who identify as “trans.” Nothing good comes from placing ideas, conceptions, and representations over and above what is truly real. We have proof of this in the horrific medicalization of children and in the destruction of single-sex spaces and services.
We certainly don’t need to ignore reality in order to be kind and tolerant people. This is another lie from the disconnected mind. Recognizing what something truly is (for example, that a man is a man) can only be conceptualized as “hateful” by a mind that hates reality because it considers its own ideas to be more real. In fact, this is a fundamentally narcissistic endeavor, which is why gender ideology is so devoid of true compassion.
The person who has ripped concepts away from the shared reality we all participate in and who then demands we apply those concepts in a manner solely according to their personal preferences is entirely self-centered and unwilling to recognize that other people have their own minds and their own points of view. This authoritarian impulse is the true danger of severing one’s connection to reality so completely.
When we lose any sense of something truly objective “out there” apart from ourselves, then we lose the ability to recognize that we must cooperate, compromise, and live with other people. You end up with ideologues trying to force everyone to believe that a man is a woman and punishing them if they don’t comply. This is why I cannot conceptualize gender ideology simply as misogyny, though a very sadistic kind of misogyny is certainly alive and well in the movement.
I think the problem goes even deeper—and by that, I don’t mean to minimize misogyny, I mean to strongly highlight the extent of the issue. It is, as I said, a very narcissistic kind of authoritarianism, and that encapsulates other modes of control, including sexism.
The goal is to control the world at large because the world functioning independently of the disconnected mind presents a threat to it. At every turn, the world and the other people in it have the capacity to show the disconnected mind that its constructs are wrong and hollow. This is why gender ideologues must silence others and shut down debate. Behind the bluster, they are incredibly insecure.
Though they’ve done a lot of damage, I take solace in the fact that you can’t go up against reality and win, not in the long term, anyway. All it takes is enough people to assert that they won’t, in fact, be controlled by someone else’s inner fantasy.
Related Reading:
Trans and the One-Way Street of Compassion
Everyone involved in the gender debate knows that compassion only flows one way. For example, when men and boys want to compete in women’s sports, we are told they must be allowed to do this to make them feel included and protect their mental health. If you bring up the mental health, safety, inclusion, opportunities, and dreams of the female athletes, …
"Some might call these differences “stereotypes,” but, to me, it is obvious that our differences go deeper. No doubt much of what “gender identity” is based on is nothing but shallow stereotypes and fashion choices, but men and women have behavioral, emotional, and psychological differences on average as well."
"By George, I think she's got it!" 😉🙂
More or less in any case, though I doubt you're much able or willing to consider the many places where you're going off the rails and into the weeds.
To start with, you make a very good point there about the many fairly significant "statistical differences on average" between "men" and "women". But those differences, by sex, is more or less exactly what many credible sources MEAN by "gender". For example, something from an old Wikipedia article on the topic:
Wikipedia: "Gender is the range [spectrum] of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender&oldid=1119204255
One might reasonably say that femininity and masculinity are the two halves of a multi-dimensional gender spectrum encompassing a myriad of variations. Kind of like reddish and bluish halves of the colour spectrum -- a binary comprised of an infinitude of possibilities. See my post for some elaborations:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/a-multi-dimensional-gender-spectrum
But one place in particular where you go off the rails is in being too quick to condemn the entire concept of "gender identity", somewhat incongruous or hypocritical given you own, "No doubt much of what 'gender identity' is based on is nothing but shallow stereotypes and fashion choices"
No doubt whatsoever that too many "gender ideologues" -- and various scientific illiterates, grifters, and political opportunists -- have gone off the deep end with the concept -- as your own "something akin to a soul" illustrates. But you might try "steelmanning" the idea, and a good place to start might be the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on "Personal Identity". Paraphrasing them:
SEP [paraphrased]: "Outside of philosophy, the term ‘[gender] identity’ commonly refers to [those sexually dimorphic 'behavioral, emotional, and psychological'] properties to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. My [gender] identity in this sense consists of those [feminine & masculine] properties I take to 'define me as a person' or 'make me the person I am'. ...."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
In which case one might say that your own "gender identity" is "lesbian" even though you may well have other "behavioral, emotional, and psychological" traits that are more typical of "adult human females".
The problem, or misuse, of the concept comes from claiming, or giving any credence to the claim that a "masculine or feminine gender identity" is the same as being male or female. You may wish to take a gander at a very good interview by Stella O'Malley of Heather Brunskell-Evans, and my comments thereon. But of particular note is this comment of Heather's:
HB-E: “So the idea that masculinity is fixed and femininity is fixed, all that's different now is that you can have a boy's body be truly female inside and vice versa, and nobody explains what being truly female or truly male is.”
https://stellaomalley.substack.com/p/silencing-thought-a-conversation/comment/57660136
The crux of the whole transgender clusterfuck: "nobody explains what being truly female or truly male is". And your conception of those categories doesn't appear to have progressed much beyond folk-biology or those in the Kindergarten Cop movie: "boys (males) have penises, and girls (females) have vaginas". Don't think you, and too many others, quite get the idea that there are NO intrinsic meanings to "male" and "female" -- they mean what we want to them to mean, but some definitions are very much better than others. Don't think that clusterfuck will be resolved until more people start giving some thought to the reasons why the standard biological definitions should be the only game in town.
This! "The goal is to control the world at large, because the world functioning independently of the disconnected mine presents a threat to it. At every turn, the world and the other people in it have the capacity to show the disconnected mind that its constructs are wrong and hollow. This is why gender ideologues must silence others and shut down debate. Behind the bluster, they are incredibly insecure."