“…but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
Yes, sex is real. But even biological sex is more complex than “there are men and there are women” and “men are born [biologically] male” and “women are born [biologically] female”. There are people with different physical characteristics, there are people with a different chromosomal makeup, there are people with a different hormonal balance… There are many factors that affect biological sex.
And that is not in anyone’s head, that’s hard science.
And yes, gender identity is real, too. (Or the woman in that court case wouldn’t identify as a woman so strongly, would she?)
Maybe we are indeed all born this way. Feeling male or female or anything in between or nothing at all.
At least I remember that even as a very young child of maybe three or four years I didn’t feel like a “real girl”. I only pretended to be “a real girl” because I was expected to be one, and I always, always wanted to meet and exceed expectations.
However, I also don’t see why gender identity shouldn’t evolve and change during your life.
For over thirty years of my life I lacked the vocabulary to even fathom what is “wrong” with me or that this “wrong” connects with who I am. There was no such concept as “gender identity” when I was growing up. Or “physical dysphoria”. Yes, there were trans people – men who “wanted” to be women, women who “wanted” to be men. But I never “wanted” to be a boy or a man. I just didn’t “want” to be a girl or a woman. Because that felt fundamentally wrong.
Maybe tests would reveal that there’s something different about my genes or my hormone production or something else on the biological level. Maybe tests would show that I’m biologically female. Maybe the intense physical dysphoria I experience, maybe the way I don’t think of myself as a woman, that I feel agender, maybe all of that is only happening inside my head.
“…but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
x-posted to Dreamwidth & Pillowfort