Choice.

Really, that's the crux of it. A person can choose to identify however they want, there's no set criteria for what would make a person choose to be identified as male or female, it's simply "What makes that person feel more comfortable?"

Now, inevitably this is confusing for people at times, especially when the outward signs would suggest that the person should be considered one or the other based on appearance. But making mistakes is part of life, and if that person tells you they prefer another pronoun, it's just common courtesy to do so.

"Choice.

Really, that's the crux of it. A person can choose to identify however they want, there's no set criteria for what would make a person choose to be identified as male or female, it's simply "What makes that person feel more comfortable?"

Yes. However a person chooses to identify, it doesn't validate their choice.

Everyone should be be treated with respect and and dignity but that doesn't mean their choice should be met with validation.

I have worked as a psych RN. It's OK to validate someone's feelings but it doesn't make it true.

As long as someone's beliefs don't infringe on other peoples rights, that's OK.

So a homeless person demanding others validate their delusion is wrong. But if a homeless person believes they are Elvis or JFK, then just leave them alone and get them help if they WANT it.

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20+ years of experience so I don't know what you're point is.

Enlighten me.

Mostly it has to do with how other people treat you.

If we treated everyone as if their biological sex didn't determine anything about them other than who they are capable of reproducing with, the idea of "not feeling like the sex you were born with" would seem a lot stranger. Most of what people describe when talking about what it feels like to identify as an gender has to do with the expectations, prejudgement, and treatment from others.

It's really a way of navigating and managing other people's expectations for you in a world where many, many people still use sex as a way of categorizing people for things OTHER than procreation, and use gender presentation as a proxy for sex.

seems like they're just bad at english

It seems to me that there's a difference between identifying as female or male, vs. identifying as an historic figure, vs. identifying as an animal or even as another race.

Oh, might be something to do with not being very open to transgender psychology. I would expect a psych nurse to have a bit more compassion, or at least a bit more insight.

>However a person chooses to identify, it doesn't validate their choice.

Their choice does not require validation by you, only respect for their preferences.

I get that you can't distinguish the difference and similarities so I'm not going to spend my time conversing with you. Have a great evening my friend.

Wow. Thanks, "friend"

There's a difference between validation and respect.

I can provide respect of their mindset but that doesn't make true.

Which one “feels” right. As a girl in online gaming spaces ~2006 I got misgendered a lot and it never failed to bother me, because it was wrong. For most of us our gender identity happens to match the psychical body we have, so it’s not usually a problem. For some people it doesn’t, and so it feels wrong to them to be referred to as that gender. (There’s also some people who don’t seem to have any strong gender identity at all, so they generally just go with what society says they are).

Compassion doesn't equate to validation.

Do you think psych professionals lack compassion when they hear a patient tell about their delusions???

We don't do that.

This actually makes a lot of sense. So basically when a man (biologically) says "I identify as a woman" he means "I'd like to be treated like society treats woman". And if we treated people equally without any discrimination or stereotypes based on gender, there would be no need for people to identify as another gender than their biological sex?

Does a transgender female get an opinion about abortions since males don’t but transgender females can never get pregnant?

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As social animals, we largely define our sense of self, our identity, in relation to others. This can be inclusive, "I'm similar to these people", or exclusive, "I'm not like those people". For most of us, our individual identity becomes an amalgam of all the different subgroups we identify with.

Now, pretty much the earliest group we get sorted into and identified by is based on our biological sex, which is normally determined/assigned at birth using our external genitalia. Once that happens, we start getting socialized to think of ourselves as belonging to one group or the other and how to present that identity in socially acceptable ways. For most of us, that works fine. For some, they feel like there is a mismatch between their physical characteristics (sex) and the social expression of that sex (gender) and their internal sense of which group they should belong to.

Ultimately, there is no objective, measurable criteria by which to judge a person's identity, because it is in their own mind. We can only look at what they say and do to determine how "legitimate" their identity claims are.

That's really all it comes down to. If the pronouns you're being called feels bad, and being referred to as the others feels better.

Keep in mind, this is not necessarily what is consciously going through people's minds when they think about gender identity. Cis women certainly don't have to think "I am happy with the way society treats me" to identify as a woman. They don't even have to feel "comfortable" with the way they are treated as a woman. It's hard to separate the "experience of being a woman" from "being a woman" when we are the sum of our experiences.

But that is also relevant to what it means to be trans, because it's not just about identifying as something else, it's also about not identifying as something, too. And again having to navigate a world where most other people are using gender as a proxy for sex and sex as a way to determine part of how they treat you means that there are advantages to having an outward expression of gender that fits with the expectations of others.

I think the reason you don't want to engage is because you know he has a point and you don't have a response to his statement.

Your argument is based on a fallacy. Trans people ONLY want to identify with a gender they feel best fits them. Then people like yourself come along and create strawmans by equating "identifying with a specific gender" to "identifying as a helicopter" and other wild comparisons.

Also, science in genetics refutes your way of thinking.

So what does it matter if it’s true or not if you’re respecting their mindset?

Do you feel the need to call them by their pronouns while telling them that they’re not really the gender they identify with?

This has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

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Sure it does. Does their opinion change in value because their gender changed?