The left eats JK Rowling over transgender comments

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

My definition of "a woman" would be someone who identifies as a woman.

I identify as a purple housecat with wings who eats only brie cheese with fresh figs.

No, you don't.

 

[Jokodo]

I agree it's arbitrary, but so is using the superficial morphology of the genitals, or the fine structure of the gonads, or the shape of the gametes (if any). But it seems to be what most of the "you're either a man or a woman and that's the end of it" crowd come up with when pressed.

And in every case, whatever you chose as the most important dividing criterion, there will be ambiguous cases - if nothing else, true hermaphrodites with mosaicism do exist. And my only point, at this point, is that "assigned male at birth" is a more accurate descriptor in the particular context than "biologically male". A hermaphrodite with XY/XX mosaicism isn't in any meaningful sense "biologically male" (at least not at the exclusion of being biologically female). Yet, if, and only if, they were assigned male at birth do they have to transition to live as a woman.

Right; but true hermaphrodites with mosaicism are rare enough that we'll have the tail wagging the dog if we let that control our thinking about typical cases.

They are (along with other conditions that make it so that less than 99.9% of people are easily and unambiguously identified as either clearly male or clearly female) common enough to make it so that "assigned male at birth" is a better predictor of whether someone will have to undergo transition to live as a woman than "biologically male".

Which is, once again, my only point.

 

[ruby sparks]

My definition of "a woman" would be someone who identifies as a woman.

I identify as a purple housecat with wings who eats only brie cheese with fresh figs.

No, you don't.

That’s what I was thinking too.

 

[ruby sparks]

My definition of "a woman" would be someone who identifies as a woman.

I identify as a purple housecat with wings who eats only brie cheese with fresh figs.

Regarding your recent posts (and not really the one I’m quoting above) there’s two things you seem to be saying.

One is that transgender isn’t ‘normal’. On that point I guess the question of whether it’s a mental illness or a defect comes up. I can see how it could be said, although it seems controversial, because it was (and still is) said about something else, homosexuality.

The other is that transgender isn’t ‘real’. That’s even more contentious imo.

It wouldn’t matter to me how it’s real (better to say physical perhaps) because, well, I offered the suggestion of, for example, differences by gender in amounts of oxytocin having the sort of effects, in general terms, that we might be talking about. I’m not limiting myself to only transgender persons when I say that, but referring to the gender roles/identities thing in general. And I’m only using oxytocin as a hypothetical/possible example, to illustrate a point in principle.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Honestly, it sounds like begging the question. You start out with the assumption that the wiring is materially and meaningfully different, in a way that dictates behavior and feelings and identity. Then you make predictions about what kind of wiring a person must have, based on your observations of how well they conform to the as-yet-unspecified wiring dictates that you've assumed exist.

I mean, it's nice that you include an element of stochasticism in there, so you're not subject to black-and-white thinking, but you're still assuming that your conclusion is true at the beginning.

My reply was to Loren Pechtel's post, and he seemed to accept that there is different wiring, so there was no point in challenging that. It's like if I'm discussing with someone who accepts common descent, I'm not going to try to establish that it is true.

It is clear to me that there is such thing as female and male human minds - which surely correlate with brains, but if they did not, still the difference would be in the minds.

ETA: Elaborating a little on that:

If we focus on minds, we can identify at least three categories of potential mental differences between human females and human males:

1. Differences in how a person perceives or experiences the world, present or past (e.g., is there a difference between what's like to be a female vs. a male?).

2. Differences in preferences.

3. Differences in mental capabilities.

There is much we do not know about those differences, but we do know some things. For instance:

1. Consider your index finger in your right hand, and your tongue. They don't feel the same. For example, if you touch something with one of them, it feels different from touching it with the other. Or consider your hand and your foot. Again, they do not feel the same. And so on. The extent of the differences between the way two different organs (or generally parts of one's body) feel like depend on which parts you are comparing, but there are for sure some differences between the experiences of having a vagina and having a penis. Now, I don't know how extensive they are, but it's pretty clear that there are differences. For example, the vagina has an inner part with lots of nerve endings that a penis does not have, etc. Now, those differences of course result in different life experiences as the individual gets older, so they accumulate over time. If a female were to change into a male for example (as in e.g., some fish species, or in hypothetical fantasy scenarios like movies or TV), then that person would experience having a penis, but would have the past experiences of a female. This, however, has not happened in humans.

Now, there are males or females that suffered damaged to their sexual organs and as a result, in part they do not experience the world as people of their sex normally do, but sure they do not experience it like the other sex, either. There may well be other differences in the way people experience the world depending on sex, though this is a matter for further research as far as I know.

2. Related to 1., there are mental differences between females and males regarding having preferences about what to experience in regard to their sexual organs (e.g., what they like or dislike about being touch in such-and-such ways in a penis, etc.). But there are more differences of course.
On that note, if you watch a documentary about, say, lions, sure enough you will see that female lions and male lions behave differently in a number of ways. One of them is mating behavior of course. But it's not only mating behavior, but also their behavior regarding cubs, dominance, etc. If, instead of a documentary, you study lions more, then you will see more behavioral differences. Females and males prefer to do different stuff, even when not forced to. But lions are only an example: take a look at chimpanzees, or spider monkeys, or zebras, etc., and there are differences in all of them. Generally, females and males of any species of mammal I'm familiar with (and not only mammals, but at least mammals) exhibit some different preferences, though the extent of the differences is quite variable among species. That applies to all monkeys as far as I can tell. It would be extremely improbable that humans had no such differences, even before looking at specific evidence from human behavior. Unsurprisingly, some studies found differences (e.g., regarding sex with strangers, regarding being people-oriented or object-oriented, etc.), though there is a lot of further work to do. Granted, each individual difference is more prevalent in females than in males or the other way around, but it's not that 100% females (or males) have it (unlike the differences in Category 1. above). But are there females with all of the set of preferences as males, or vice versa (not counting those related to penises, vaginas, etc.)? I don't know. There is insuffient evidence to tell.

3. This one is less clear, leaving aside mental capabilities specifically involving different sexual organs. There is some evidence afaik, but much weaker than in the case of 2. and in any event statistical in nature, so I will leave this one aside (also because it's almost certainly not crucial to the meaning of the words).

Given all of the above, in short, we can tell that there are such things as female and male human minds. This is not to say that each of those mental differences holds for every pair of humans, one female and one male, let alone necessarily. In fact, for every female mental trait X, it is metaphysically possible that a male has X, and vice versa. Moreover, in the case of many of those differences (I don't know which percentage), there are actual instances of such exceptions, but that does not imply there are no such differences.


Now, what if - against all probability - there are no differences falling in the second category?

Well, then, there are still differences in the first one, and perhaps - though we do not know it - in the third one. In that case, clearly MTF transgender people have male minds, and FTM transgender people have female minds to the extent we know. Moreover, as any potential differences in Category 3 are almost certainly not related to the meaning of the words "man" or "woman" - regardless of whether these words have changed meaning -, and there are no other plausible categories that might make such a difference, then MTF transgender people are men, and FTM transgender people are women. Now, given that it's extremely probable are there are differences in Cat 2., it would be an error to just reach this conclusion on the basis of this. That is why I proposed a dual test:

a) An analysis of how people "in the wild" (in particular, not only when defending their ideology) use the words "man" and "woman", considering hypothetical scenarios for different minds and different sexual organs. That's studying the meaning of the words.

b) A study of the empirical evidence that might be relevant, including both psychological and neurological studies. What might be relevant depends on the answer to a), but we can just study all of the available evidence and make assessments conditioned to different possible answers to a).

 

[J842P]

So if we're going to be post-18th-century-scientific, we don't get to decide "biological sex" using "the superficial morphology of the genitals, or the fine structure of the gonads, or the shape of the gametes". We have to decide using the superficial morphology of the genitals AND the fine structure of the gonads AND the shape of the gametes -- AND a hundred other minor details that come in bimodal spectra and that correlate with one another over the population. If we do that, "biological sex" won't be arbitrary, because we won't be subjectively deciding whether menstruation is more important than beards. We'll just be observing that some non-menstruating person has 1 male characteristic and 102 female characteristics.

When I hear it claimed that M2Fs have been shown to have neurologically female brains, I'm skeptical as to whether what the arguer claimed is actually the same thing as what the researchers showed. The researchers presumably made a measurement of some aspect of brain anatomy or chemistry that comes in a bimodal spectrum and that correlates with other sex-linked traits, and they observed that M2Fs tend to land in the normal "female" range of that aspect of brains. But this is not sufficient to imply the subjects have "female brains". To have shown that, the researchers would need to have also studied a hundred other measurable properties of brains.

Of the research into brain differences that I've read, they're doing bad science by your definition (which makes a lot of sense). They identify, ferinstance, 4 very specific elements that seem to be more similar to those specific elements in the brain of a female than a male. But they ignore the other 46 that are more similar to those same elements in the brain of a male. And they completely ignore the 9,950 other elements that show no observable difference between males and females at all. Furthermore, of the 50 out of 10,000 elements that show some degree (albeit minor) of measurable difference between males and females, they can't consistently distinguish between which of those elements are a biological results (driven by hormones or other sex-differentiated attributes) and which are a result of brain plasticity reflecting prior experience and the reality of social gender roles.

On the gross-anatomical front, there are some differentiating features between "male" and "female" brains e.g. gray/white matter proportions. But generally, brains aren't very sexually dimorphic in humans. Finer anatomical distinctions have identified perhaps one or two brain regions with significant, consistent differences, perhaps the most famous is the aptly named sexually dimorphic nucleus which is may be involved in sexual behavior, and is a result that is seemingly consistent across mammals. Probably not a surprise that something like this exists.

I too am skeptical of the studies you describe. I rarely see them even cited whenever they are actually brought up in these discussions anyway. The one I recall seeing I'm pretty sure relied fMRI, which is almost always suspect to begin with -- indeed, there has been a recent brouhaha about deficient statistical methodologies in this approach which would affect almost the entire field. But leaving that aside, yes, I recall reading something like what you described.

 

[J842P]

I still don't see any real harms being presented. Ironically white-knighting women's sports and the idiotic "someone's in the bathroom!" fake boogeyshman aren't legitimate harms. Did I miss someone presenting an even remotely compelling harm to society in any of this nonsense, because those two non-arguments don't even begin to cut it?

I love how it always seems to be men who don't care about women's sports who so stridently decry that women's sports aren't a big deal and no harm is done. For fuck's sake, just because it doesn't affect you and you don't care about it doesn't mean it's not a big fucking deal! This is the kind of bullshit that women have been dealing with since forever. It's an incredibly common oversight by privilege. It's something that doesn't matter to men, men don't think it's important... therefore it can't possibly be important to women, and they're just overreacting. It's just one more case of men shutting down women's voices as not mattering.

It's no different than when I tell my husband that he did something that I don't like, and that makes me mad... and he responds with "Sheesh, calm down, it's not that big a deal!". Well guess what, it IS that big a deal TO ME, or I wouldn't fucking bring it up in the first goddamned place!

So yeah, go ahead and just dismiss the concerns that females raise - the impact on sports and sports-related scholarships and sponsorship; the impact of the feelings of safety, security, and privacy in areas that are designated as female only; the risk of housing male-bodied transwomen in women's prisons. Those aren't "real" arguments, and don't represent "real" harm to society... because they only affect females, and that's just not important.

What's really important is making sure that males don't feel put out in any way, even when they're identifying as women. It's far more important that males get their way than that the concerns and challenges that females place get a seat at the fucking table.

Yeah, sorry, but it seems like the people who make this arguments vis a vis trans people are exactly the opposite of the people you describe. Like, if anything, I would say the people who are most inclined to dismiss problems that affect females are those most inclined to make arguments against trans-inclusion in female spaces. Your diagnosis to me seems too facile. Indeed, it should be telling that there is essentially a civil war along the TERF/Non-TERF line in academic feminism, so clearly, it isn't just "men being dismissive of women's concerns".

It is very clearly politically motivated. I just don't think it's in the way you describe at all.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I still don't see any real harms being presented. Ironically white-knighting women's sports and the idiotic "someone's in the bathroom!" fake boogeyshman aren't legitimate harms. Did I miss someone presenting an even remotely compelling harm to society in any of this nonsense, because those two non-arguments don't even begin to cut it?

I love how it always seems to be men who don't care about women's sports

Nice ironic strawman. Are you a professional female athlete? No? Then don't speak for them just as you are chastising me. No female athlete I've ever known (professional or other) has argued that they should be specially treated due to their plumbing. Why are you?

So yeah, go ahead and just dismiss the concerns that females raise

Show me one professional female athlete who is raising any issue at all regarding the .000000001% chance of a transgender male to female taking over their sport--or the masses of scholarships that are being taken away from anyone--for this to even remotely be considered any kind of real world harm and maybe you'd have some semblance of a point, but even then you'd be arguing for forced segregation because women aren't strong enough to compete against men.

In short, you are the one arguing that female athletes can't cut it on their own.

the impact of the feelings of safety, security, and privacy in areas that are designated as female only

Horseshit. How do you not feel safe by another woman being in your locker room? Your bigoted ignorance about transgendered people does not translate into you not being safe or secure (or private for that matter).

Those aren't "real" arguments, and don't represent "real" harm to society... because they only affect females, and that's just not important.

Address the actual argument, not this bigoted bullshit. If you're not safe, secure or private when there is another woman in your bathroom or locker room then you have no fucking argument.

If you aren't a professional female athlete arguing that your livelihood is somehow being taken away by the millions of transgender athletes that are now plotting to undergo operations just to steal your trophy, then you have no fucking argument.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

Honestly, I remain skeptical on this point. I am perfectly happy to treat trans people with respect and dignity and use whatever pronouns are requested. I just can't really manage to get my mind over the hurdle wherein the only people who are capable of experiencing what it feels like to be a woman inside, in a way that is separated from biology or social gender roles... are all people who are males.

No one is arguing that.

That strikes me as having questionable validity as an entire concept. If feeling like a woman on the inside is a legitimate thing that isn't related to reproductive sex, body type, etc. and is not a simple result of how society treats a person based on gender roles, then it seems like people who are female women and have always been should be capable of feeling that same thing and expressing it somewhat.

Why do you think you aren't? I can't think of an exact analogy, but have you even had a thought during a cold while your sinuses are horrifically blocked about how much you miss being able to breathe normally? When your sinuses clear, you may have a brief window where breathing clearly feels amazing. But very shortly after, you completely stop being aware of the sensation of breathing clearly. It feels so normal and natural that you never have to think of it and largely lose awareness of it. Sometimes it takes something being wrong to bring full awareness of how it should feel when it is right.

I can't dictate to you what you do or do not feel. But if you have any interest in understanding, perhaps question whether that sense of gender identity and expression isn't something you feel, or if it is something you so wholly take for granted that you are no more aware of what it feels like than you are aware of what it feels like to have a properly functioning liver.

On this, I have an entirely unpopular opinion, which is highly likely to piss off a bunch of people.

None of what you wrote beyond this point has much of anything to do with what the experience of gender dysphoria is like.

Brains are surprisingly plastic. The things that we spend a lot of time thinking about, especially if we attach strong emotion to them, change the wiring in our brains.

Try the experiment. Over the course of the next week, when you get up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror naked. Tell yourself that you look wrong, and that your penis is wrong. Tell yourself that you are supposed to be curvier and rounder, and you're supposed to have breasts. Construct a mental image of what you would look like as a woman, and focus on that in contrast to what you see in the mirror. Find every variance, and focus on how it should look. Repeat this a few times a day. When someone mentions your outfit or your looks or glances at your body, tell yourself that they're judging you for how wrong you look. Tell yourself they're not seeing the real you. Imagine how they would treat you if you looked like the woman that you're supposed to be, how they would interact with you differently. Make this a repeated mantra for one week.

Then come back next week and let me know how you feel about your actual body.

I did the opposite for the better part of three decades. I was highly motivated to do so. I was highly motivated to tell myself repeatedly that any feminized aspect of my appearance would, at best, be a joke and would be disgusting to most. Literal decades of this. While it may affect your mood or feelings of self-worth, it doesn't resolve gender dysphoria as a result of being transgender. It is extremely difficult to believe a cisgender person would induce anything close to gender dysphoria as experience by transgender people with such a daily meditation.

 

[Metaphor]

What's really important is making sure that males don't feel put out in any way, even when they're identifying as women. It's far more important that males get their way than that the concerns and challenges that females place get a seat at the fucking table.

On the trans issues that have been raised, I think we are 90% in agreement, though I (being anti-feminist) disagree on this last point.

I don't think men support trans women as women just because trans women are men. I think people who support trans women as women think women are vulnerable and need protection, and they regard trans women as women, therefore trans women are vulnerable and need protection.

And you'll find women among the most vociferous defenders of the rights of trans women to be treated even better than actual women, because they are 'more oppressed'.

 

[Metaphor]

Nice ironic strawman. Are you a professional female athlete? No? Then don't speak for them just as you are chastising me. No female athlete I've ever known (professional or other) has argued that they should be specially treated due to their plumbing. Why are you?

All female athletes are treated special due to their plumbing. We segregate every single sport (except some that nobody cares about, like curling?) by sex.

What you are proposing is that the world collectively and collaboratively colludes to delude itself that we separate sport by gender and not sex. I don't think Emily wants to participate in that delusion, and neither do I.

Show me one professional female athlete who is raising any issue at all regarding the .000000001% chance of a transgender male to female taking over their sport--or the masses of scholarships that are being taken away from anyone--for this to even remotely be considered any kind of real world harm and maybe you'd have some semblance of a point, but even then you'd be arguing for forced segregation because women aren't strong enough to compete against men.

Of course women can't compete against men. That's why sports are segregated in the first place.

Also, female athletes have spoken out--for example against Veronica Ivy formerly Rachel McKinnon formerly Rhys McKinnon--and they are demonised for doing so.

In short, you are the one arguing that female athletes can't cut it on their own.

That's right: they can't. That's why sports are segregated by sex in the first place.

Horseshit. How do you not feel safe by another woman being in your locker room? Your bigoted ignorance about transgendered people does not translate into you not being safe or secure (or private for that matter).

A trans woman is a man, and women generally don't want men watching them while they get undressed. They also don't generally want to see penises in their changing areas.

Address the actual argument, not this bigoted bullshit. If you're not safe, secure or private when there is another woman in your bathroom or locker room then you have no fucking argument.

Trans women are men, and having men in your locker room, if you are a woman, can feel threatening.

If you aren't a professional female athlete arguing that your livelihood is somehow being taken away by the millions of transgender athletes that are now plotting to undergo operations just to steal your trophy, then you have no fucking argument.

Nobody ever said people were transitioning solely to win sports events. That is a fantasy invented from whole cloth in your febrile imagination.

 

[Metaphor]

No, you don't.

That’s what I was thinking too.

Emily's point, as I'm sure both you and Don2 chose to ignore, is that claims are not reality, and it doesn't matter whether that claim is sincere or not.

Is Rachel Dolezal black?

 

[Metaphor]

Regarding your recent posts (and not really the one I’m quoting above) there’s two things you seem to be saying.

One is that transgender isn’t ‘normal’.

It isn't, inasmuch as the overwhelming majority of the population do not think they are and want to be the other sex.

On that point I guess the question of whether it’s a mental illness or a defect comes up. I can see how it could be said, although it seems controversial, because it was (and still is) said about something else, homosexuality.

Gay men and lesbians have different childhood experiences to straight people, but leaving that aside, what particular mental delusions do homosexuals have? When I tell you I sexually desire men, that isn't any kind of delusion. It doesn't break reality. I am not asking you (and don't want you to) call me 'heterosexual'.

Yet trans identified people want us to treat them as if they were the sex they wish they were. And they really think they can become the sex they wish they were. And even if they can't become the sex they wish they were, they insist on forcing the world to pretend they are. The world must not become a parent indulging in a child's play-acting at being a dinosaur.

The other is that transgender isn’t ‘real’. That’s even more contentious imo.

I do not doubt that gender dysphoria is real. So what? Do you believe people who think they've been kidnapped by aliens?

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

No, you don't.

That’s what I was thinking too.

Emily's point, as I'm sure both you and Don2 chose to ignore, is that claims are not reality, and it doesn't matter whether that claim is sincere or not.

Is Rachel Dolezal black?

You can't just throw away the arguments supporting claims to render them equal. If a person claims to be human or gay or literate or an atheist or a wizard, those claims will not all be met with the same level of scrutiny or acceptance. It doesn't that a general principle of claims not being reality (in themselves) could be equally applied. Not all of those claims have the same level of support and plausibility.

Generally, the 'point' Emily raised gets ridiculed or dismissed because it is specious, and because it is perceived as deliberate absurdism and dismissiveness in itself. Reasons which apply to the acceptance of transgender identities do not necessarily apply on the basis of race. They do not apply on the basis of imaginary animal status.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

And they really think they can become the sex they wish they were. And even if they can't become the sex they wish they were, they insist on forcing the world to pretend they are. The world must not become a parent indulging in a child's play-acting at being a dinosaur.

No. No one is required to pretend. The only change to the status quo is the concept that gender identity should play a definitive role with regard to civic and social categorizations.

 

[Metaphor]

Reasons which apply to the acceptance of transgender identities do not necessarily apply on the basis of race. They do not apply on the basis of imaginary animal status.

First of all, people do make sincere claims that they are otherkin. Emily's was not, but dismissing it because it was not sincere doesn't help. What do you do with sincere claims? You surely do not treat those people as if they were the species they are claiming to (perhaps part-time) be.

But I'm interested in why you think there are reasons transgender identities can be accepted, but that those reasons do not apply to trans-racial identities.

 

[Metaphor]

And they really think they can become the sex they wish they were. And even if they can't become the sex they wish they were, they insist on forcing the world to pretend they are. The world must not become a parent indulging in a child's play-acting at being a dinosaur.

No. No one is required to pretend. The only change to the status quo is the concept that gender identity should play a definitive role with regard to civic and social categorizations.

People are required to pretend, but it's significantly worse than that. You wish to use the State to force people to use 'preferred' pronouns and to transform society so that people who do not believe your religion are forced to nevertheless go through the motions or face job loss and permanent social exile. You wish to transform society (worse: maintain the transformation that you have already achieved) to permanently disable women's sense of security in sex-segregated areas, and permanently destroy women's and girls' achievements in sex-segregated sports.

You will win--there are no brakes on this train--but when I draw my last breath, I'm not going to love Big Brother.

 

[Emily Lake]

My definition of "a woman" would be someone who identifies as a woman.

I identify as a purple housecat with wings who eats only brie cheese with fresh figs.

No, you don't.

How would you know? You're not psychic!

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

First of all, people do make sincere claims that they are otherkin. Emily's was not, but dismissing it because it was not sincere doesn't help. What do you do with sincere claims? You surely do not treat those people as if they were the species they are claiming to (perhaps part-time) be.

Sincerity of the claim is not the issue. I can't deny you are human and say 'Well, you seem very sincere in the claim, but someone claiming to be otherkin may also be very sincere. I don't treat them as the species with which they identify, so why should I treat you as human?'

But I'm interested in why you think there are reasons transgender identities can be accepted, but that those reasons do not apply to trans-racial identities.

Because there is a documented history of treating gender dysphoria (though various names for the condition over the ages) which doesn't exist on the basis of Dolezol's transracial identity or transpecies identities.
Because what we know about the determination of sex-related characteristics in humans doesn't necessarily translate to race, and it almost certainly doesn't translate to species. It absolutely does not translate to 'apache attack helicopters' which I put in quotes not because it was said here, but because that is another common variate of the 'I identify as [absurdity]' meme.

 

[Emily Lake]

One is that transgender isn’t ‘normal’. On that point I guess the question of whether it’s a mental illness or a defect comes up. I can see how it could be said, although it seems controversial, because it was (and still is) said about something else, homosexuality.

The other is that transgender isn’t ‘real’. That’s even more contentious imo.

It wouldn’t matter to me how it’s real (better to say physical perhaps) because, well, I offered the suggestion of, for example, differences by gender in amounts of oxytocin having the sort of effects, in general terms, that we might be talking about. I’m not limiting myself to only transgender persons when I say that, but referring to the gender roles/identities thing in general. And I’m only using oxytocin as a hypothetical/possible example, to illustrate a point in principle.

Yes, I will say it's not 'normal', in the understanding that 'normal' is representative of the general expectation of human variation that is common to see. I myself am not normal with respect to my brain function, in that sometimes it goes haywire and I fall down on the floor and flop about for a while. Whether it's a psychological disorder without a physical cause, or whether it's a physical disorder causing psychological symptoms is really a bit irrelevant to me. It's perfectly acceptable to not be normal. It's perfectly acceptable to be an outlier - almost everyone is an outlier in some respect or other. I rather disagree with the core concept of trying to insist that the thing one is an outlier for is 'perfectly normal'. It's not, and that's okay. Don't try to force it to be 'normal'.

As for real? Depends on what you mean. It's clearly a real problem for some people, it's clearly a discomfort and stress that some people experience. Whether or not it's 'real' that they have a different gendered person trapped inside the wrong body... meh. I don't think so, in part because that presupposes a mind-body duality that I'm not really behind. And partly because the differences in male and female brains are pretty much immaterial and have no real meaning once plasticity and experience are accounted for.

I don't think there's actually a "gender identity" that is an innate part of a person. I think it's a social thing - I think all identities are social. Black identity, gay identity, brunette identity, left-handed identity... these aren't innate things in and of themselves, they're artifacts of society creating inept definitions of people in boxes that few (if any of use) actually fit. We're all various shapes of round in societies comprised of nice neat square holes. Some of us can fit into some of the holes without too much pain or discomfort... but none of us actually truly fit our boxes.