What’s the deal with Gender Woo Woo? :Part 1

I was scrolling twitter when I came across this article from Janice Turner in The Times. 'Civil Servants are being Fed Gender Drivel' It is an article about diversity training in the civil service, and the author is displeased. She often writes trans hostile opinion pieces but one of the things that particularly caught my attention was something I hear a lot when reading Gender Critical writers. That the idea of Gender Identity being innate and having a biological basis is simple dismissed as 'Gender Woo-Woo'.

I've heard this several times this week, usually in the sense that being trans is simply a 'feeling inside someone’s head'. Here we have someone from 'We are Fair Cop' on LBC radio claiming just this last Monday. I heard it again at the Committee evidence for the reform of the Gender Recognition Act, which is currently going through parliament.

It is an interesting premise because it's incredibly difficult to counter. It also feels quite persuasive to someone who has little knowledge of the subject and is starting to look into it. I fundamentally know that I am trans and my perception of myself is as a woman not a man. I have known that as long as I have had a memory. When the concept of gender identity and trans-ness is dismissed as a feeling or a fleeting concept, then it opens the door to debate the place of trans people in world as it’s merely a belief system akin to the earth being flat rather than an integral part to someone’s being.

When I first started trying to understand my gender it quickly became clear to me that most people see gender as something produced by society and the stereotypes it forces on people rather than something that comes from within someone.

Can I give a basis of reasoning that points to the fact that what I experience is intrinsic to my sense of self rather than a passing mood?

Is it wrong for the Gender Critical movement to say it's merely a feeling in my head and therefore not worthy of serious consideration?

If I can’t give some reasoning to refute these statements, then my entire argument is based on trust. Which for anyone that knows me is enough but will never be enough to change the minds of society at large.

It matters because if gender identity is innate and biological it is not merely a 'philosophically constructed ideology' but tangible, real and irrepressible reality.

That matters because if that is true all of the gender critical arguments: that I am a deceiver seeking to gain access to vulnerable people: that I am a pervert corrupted by sissy-hypno porn who is living out a sexual fetish: that I am a gay person confused by the pressures of gender society places on me or that I am a mentally unwell men all fall away. What you’re left with is that I am who I say I am. A women who had the unfortunate pleasure to be born as externally phenotypically male.

So come with me as I lay out some of my thoughts and the rationale that I have that makes it clear to me that my gender identity is real, innate and essential – not an ideology but just part of me.