An open fiberglass float pool at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Image courtesy of Justin S. Feinstein , Sahib S. Khalsa, Hung-wen Yeh, Colleen Wohlrab, W. Kyle Simmons, Murray B. Stein, Martin P. Paulus and Wikipedia.
Gender identity is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as “an individual’s self-conception as a man or woman or as a boy or girl or as some combination of man/boy and woman/girl or as someone fluctuating between man/boy and woman/girl or as someone outside those categories altogether.” While it is thought to have a genetic component, no genes have yet been found to underpin it, and a recent scientific paper titled, “Brain Sex Differences Related to Gender Identity Development: Genes or Hormones?” (International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2020 Mar 19;21(6):2123. doi: 10.3390/ijms21062123. PMID: 32204531; PMCID: PMC7139786) modestly concludes that “to provide reliable conclusions, more data are needed.” Anyway, what interests me as a philosopher is whether gender identity is something purely subjective (like my perception of the color of a bank note), intersubjective (like the value that we as a society collectively assign to pieces of paper we call bank notes), or objective (like the length or mass of a bank note when it is at rest). So I came up with an interesting thought experiment involving a hitman, post-traumatic amnesia and a sensory deprivation tank. (Students of philosophy will notice the resemblance of this case to Avicenna’s “floating man” thought experiment, but my purpose is altogether different.) Curious? Read on.
Imagine that you’re walking home one night, and you’re suddenly approached by a professional hitman wielding a steel pipe in his hand. He hits you on the head with clinical precision, and you’re out like a light. When you wake up, you’re in a confused and disoriented state due to the sharp blow to the head that you’ve received. In fact, you’re suffering from a very severe case of retrograde amnesia caused by traumatic brain injury. You don’t remember who you are, and for the time being, you are unable to recall anything about your past. To make matters worse, you’re now floating spread-eagled in a sensory deprivation tank, or “a water filled, pitch-black, light-proof, soundproof environment heated to the same temperature as the skin” (Wikipedia). You’ve been placed there by the sadistic individual who knocked you out. Because you’re spread-eagled, you have absolutely no way of knowing what’s between your legs. There are also heavy weights resting across your chest, making it impossible for you to determine what you do or don’t have up-top. In short, you have no way of inferring your biological sex, and all your memories of being a boy, girl, man or woman, or some combination of the above, are gone.
Now, here’s my question: would you, under these extreme circumstances, still possess a gender identity – that is, some sense of being a man, woman, boy or girl, or some combination of the above, or maybe none of the above? I may be completely wrong and I am open to correction, but I don’t think you would. I think you’d have no gender identity whatsoever.
The next question we need to confront is: what are the implications of this thought experiment for the concept of gender identity? If I’m right in saying that the unfortunate individual in the above scenario would have no gender identity, then that would rule out essentialism, suggesting that gender identity is a social construct, as some theorists maintain. Gender identity therefore appears to be subjective rather than objective. Could it be intersubjective, or is it purely subjective? To answer this question, we need to ask another hypothetical question: what if you grew up in a society that sliced and diced gender identities differently from the way we do in our society, or even one which didn’t recognize the concept of gender identity at all (as most of us who are over the age of 50 did)? I think it’s fair to say that your gender identity might well be different from what it is now, because your social interactions with the individuals around you would not be the same as they are in the society you currently live in. You might categorize yourself completely differently. Gender identity therefore appears to be an intersubjective phenomenon, shaped by your interactions with the society in which you live.
If the foregoing analysis is correct, it would provide a consistent response to a conundrum that’s puzzled me, and I daresay, some of my readers. By now, most of us have heard of therians (individuals who identify as a species of non-human animal) and otherkin (individuals who identify as a mythological or fantasy-based being). Additionally, there are individuals who identify as members of another race. In one recent case involving a white woman who identified as Black, the reaction from the Black community, after she was unmasked, was mixed: some accused her of fraud or of over-identifying with Black people in an extreme case of white guilt, while others praised what they saw as her proven track record in working for social justice. So the conundrum might be neatly phrased as follows: “If thinking you’re an elf doesn’t make you an elf, and if thinking you’re a wolf doesn’t make you a wolf, and if thinking you’re Black doesn’t make you Black, then why should thinking you’re a woman make you a woman?”
The answer that suggests itself is that to belong to a community, you need to be accepted by members of that community in the first place. Elves can’t accept you as a member of their community, for the very simple reason that they don’t exist. Wolves can’t accept you as a member of their community, for two reasons: you don’t live with them, and you don’t share a language with them that would allow you to ask for and obtain membership of their community – although children raised by wolves might be said to qualify as members of their community, especially if they display a pronounced preference for living like wolves (as most did). Finally, most Black people today have no wish to accept as members of their community white people who self-identify as Black but have not suffered from racism while growing up – and why should they? By contrast, most women in our society are inclined to accept biological males who self-identify as women, as members of their community of women. On this intersubjective account of gender identity, the crucial factor is acceptance by the community you identify with. You can’t gatecrash your way into a community, no matter how strongly you may identify with them. (One implication of this account is that a person’s gender identity is limited by geography: different communities of women around the world may impose different conditions for membership on individuals whose biological sex is other than female, and some communities might refuse to accept these individuals altogether. No-one speaks for all of womankind.)
Now, let us return to the hypothetical scenario we began with. Let us now suppose that the sadistic individual who placed you in the sensory deprivation tank decides to ship you off to another country with a completely different culture – let’s say, Uzbekistan or even Uganda, instead of the United States or United Kingdom, where you probably grew up if you are reading this post. Over the next few months, your body (which you are now able to see, as you’ve been released from the sensory deprivation tank) begins to heal from the injuries you received, but sadly, your memory of who you are and what you did in the past does not return. You make new friends, and create a new gender identity for yourself, based on your bodily awareness and your interactions with the people around you. Slowly, you put yourself back together again, but in many ways, you are a new person.
My final and broader question, which I’d like to put to my readers, is: what are the social, psychological and ethical implications of all this? Over to you.
> … then that would rule out essentialism, suggesting that gender identity is a social construct, as some theorists maintain.
I’m not up on this sort of research, but I’m pretty sure the theorists are *defining* gender as a social construct, rather than suggesting it is. It would be interesting if there also is a biological aspect to gender.
I did not find your thought experiment at all persuasive.
Yes, amnesia is possible. But it is unlikely to be as complete as your thought experiment suggests. An English speaker with amnesia is usually still an English speaker. So that part of his personal identity survived the amnesia.
I’m not convinced that there is such a thing as “gender identity”. Yes, we have our own individual personal identity. And that personal identity is certainly affected by our sexuality. But the concept of identity seems too broad to individuate, so I don’t see how we can treat it as a gender.
What I find particularly odd, is that transgender activists want to insist that they are non-binary. Yet the concept of gender-identity seems to make gender a binary entity. Why can’t everyone just be themselves and ignore social stereotypes?
Why can’t we all just get along?
I don’t have an answer, but I understand the question. There are, for some reason, people who can’t resist telling other people what to do, including how to think and feel.
I’m so old I remember being lectured on gender as a social construct. Now it seem it is so strictly determined by some unspecified biological force, that any deviation from binary stereotypes requires treatment by surgery and hormones.
I have done a thought experiment in which I wake up with all my memories intact, but my, and my wife’s naughty bits are switched. Apologies to Kafka.
It would certainly be disconcerting, but the relevant question is whether my identity is dependent on innieness or outieness. I don’t think so.
Hi everyone,
I’m delighted that my latest post has sparked a lively discussion. Let me hasten to add that my own opinions on the subject of gender identity are practically worthless, due to my limited experience: during my 62 years on this Earth, I’ve only met two transgender individuals (to the best of my knowledge). I really don’t get out much. Having four jobs and working seven days a week doesn’t help matters, either. However, I’d like to make some brief responses.
Hi Tomato Addict,
You write:
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica article I linked to earlier, some experts apparently think gender identity is biologically caused:
On this subject, here’s an interesting video featuring computational biologist and neuroscientist Dr. Jack Wathey being interviewed by Derek Lambert of Mythvision on his new book, The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about the Compulsion to Believe. Here’s the link:
At 51:03, he makes an interesting observation:
Now, the study (see also here) by Ramachandran and McKeoch which Wathey cites was done in 2008 – in other words, more than 15 years ago. Not being a neurologist, I don’t know how well it holds up today. But if I understand Wathey correctly, he would predict that in the hypothetical scenario I described above, the individual with retrograde amnesia who’s floating in the sensory deprivation tank should still have an unshakeable sense of their own gender.
Next, Wathey describes another, related syndrome, called xenomelia, or alien limb syndrome:
This research raises troubling questions. As with transgenderism, there is no evidence-based treatment for xenomelia. Apparently, some victims use cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants, in an attempt to deal with the condition. There are some who would say that we should grant these people their wishes, and let them amputate perfectly healthy limbs from their bodies, but this is a view which many physicians (as well as ordinary people) would find abominable. Few would actually approve of such amputations. And yet, when transgender individuals wish to amputate their genital organs, most people in Europe and North America enthusiastically support their right to do so. Why? I don’t know. If anyone has any ideas on the subject, I’m willing to listen. Anyway, I just thought I’d share the above information with everyone, for what it’s worth.
Hi Neil Rickert,
You write:
I don’t feel a strong sense of having a gender identity, either. Basically, I know I’m male because of the equipment I’ve got. But if you put me in a sensory deprivation tank where I didn’t know what equipment I had, and wiped my episodic and autobiographical memories clean (as in retrograde amnesia), I’m sure I wouldn’t have any voice in my head or feeling in my heart that I belonged to this or that gender. I’d have to check what I was.
You ask: “Why can’t everyone just be themselves and ignore social stereotypes?” My sentiments exactly.
Hi Petrushka,
I pretty much agree with your analysis, in answer to Neil’s question. Cheers.
That’s a very interesting case. I don’t know for sure, but I’m inclined to think that in that case, I’d still feel that I was a man, based on my past history (captured by memory) of having a male body.
I like the metaphor of “The Genderbread Person” to convey the basic idea: identity, expression, attraction, and anatomical sex are distinct.
In terms of what gender identity even is, I liked “What Is It Like to Have a Gender Identity?” (PDF).
I think in the case of my thought experiment, I would not feel any need to question my identity. The situation is not really different from being changed magically into a frog or a cockroach.
My real point is I don’t think my identity is tied to my parts. I have only two points of conflict with the trans movement. One is the problem of women’s sports, where I think there will be conflict for some years.
The other is counseling young children down a path that leads to a lifetime of medical intervention. I guess the point of my thought experiment is, I would not be in a rush to have corrective surgery. I don’t see the point.
I don’t wish to argue about these. I just state that they are unresolved for me.
I don’t see why there would necessarily need to be any biological aspect to gender, although for most people the gender they experience matches the sex they were born as.
When we refer to a ship as “she”, I presume this is a gender, not a sex!
I recall seeing a debate, long ago, between Billie Jean King and John Newcombe over tennis prize money. King argued that the best players of either sex are the best players, and the men’s and women’s draws should deserve the same money. Newcombe responded that there is no “men’s draw”, that the two draws are women’s (from which he is excluded), and OPEN, from which King is NOT excluded but elects not to enter because she couldn’t win (and probably couldn’t defeat a single open contestant).
Eventually, King lost every battle (the Virginia Slims circuit died, and the prime courts still have contests between men, and ticket prices to watch the men cost more, etc.) but won the war, and the prize money is now equal (and the men continue to observe that their draw subsidizes the women’s prizes in major tournaments.)
Now that transgender women are starting to win tournaments (in multiple sports), the conflict is even messier. I wonder if I’ll be a spectator when an open grand slam winner declares herself to be a woman (like Bruce Jenner) and enters the women’s draw. Should be interesting.
USTA has a policy already:
“On the league and recreational side of the equation, the USTA takes the position that we do not require confirmations of gender identity status. Above all, we do not want to be an obstacle to recreational participation. We seek to respect all individuals, and we take it on faith that players who compete under these rules are doing so not to gain a competitive advantage, but to enjoy participating in a manner in which they are comfortable.”
Professional or Elite
“1.Those who transition from female to male are eligible to compete in the male category without restriction.
2.Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:
The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.
Hormonal therapy appropriate for the assigned sex has been administered in a verifiable manner and for a sufficient length of time to minimize gender-related advantages in sport competitions.
In the event of non-compliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female competition will be suspended for 12 months.”
I am not an expert, but it sure looks like people who go through puberty as males have a permanent change in muscle mass and such. Doesn’t mean all males can beat all females, but at the top tier, there will be an advantage.
I personally don’t follow sports. I don’t like competition. I learned chess in the fifth grade. I quickly found I took no joy in winning, and certainly didn’t like losing.
Personally, I find it quite strange that the author of the post would categorize his/her/them post in the evolution category and yet would not mention evolution in the post at all…
I think your experiment misses something (well many things, but that is the problem with thought experiments!) namely that “subjective” and “objective” aren’t really separate in this context. Gender identity involves both the way we read others, and how we respond to the way we are read. Stereotypes are involved, for sure, in that socially we signal our gender, and the way in which we want to be read, by various means, from hairstyle to clothing, to pronouns, to interactive style. But that doesn’t mean that a transgender identy is the desire to conform to that a stereotypical gender presentation that is not the stereotype associated with your natal sex.
From my interactions with trans people, including my daughter, it is the reverse. The more accepting others are of your trans identity, the fewer pains you need to signal what it is.
My daughter is no more of a stereotypical woman in presentation, than I am (and I’m not, very), but she has chosen a few key ways of signalling her identity that I don’t have to bother with.
That doesn’t answer your question as to where gender identity comes from or “what” it “is” – but what seems extremely clear to me is that for some people, awareness of their gender – how they “read” themselves, as it were” confilicts with how society “reads” them. As a cognitive neuroscientist, I have some ideas (and I’m aware of some supporting evidence) about what the reasons might be, but it seems to run pretty deep. People who deny they have gender identity are a bit, I sometimes think, like fish who don’t know that water exists, becauses they have no need to know, nor any knowledge of any other medium in which existence is possible.
Which then raises the issue of non-binary identity, perhaps, but not really, if you think in terms of how we read and how we are read, and about how that might be other than the standard model.
It is so easy to hurt people with words that I am reluctant to respond.
I am so nonconforming in so many ways that I have never found a tribe or niche anywhere, including online. If I have a point of view regarding tolerance, it is that I don’t want to tell other people what to do, I don’t want to be told what to do, and I don’t care if I’m accepted.