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Every Gender Identity Is 'Authentic' - Until It Isn't

Nelson, David A.; Gantt, Edwin E.
http://quillette.com/2023/01/31/every-gender-identity-is-authentic-until-it-isnt/

Publisher:  Quillette
Date Written:  31/01/2023
Year Published:  2023  
Resource Type:  Article

Faddish forms of self-identification often reflect subjective feelings that shift over time. Let's stop treating them as sacred truths.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The question brings us to one of the odder aspects of what some call 'gender ideology- -- the system of beliefs that casts gender identity as a soul-like spirit marker lodged within every one of us, completely independent of biological markers of sex, and utterly unknowable to the world except through acts of self-identification.

The ideology asserts that individuals are capable of unerringly determining their authentic gender identity; and that it is incumbent on everyone else in society to treat them accordingly. But since these acts of self-identification are based on subjective feelings with no associated set of measurable traits or behaviors, the new identities end up being not only ill-defined (especially when it comes to the 'non-binary' label) but unstable. Since the only criterion for gender identity is simply, 'I am who I say I am,' the associated claims are treated as completely unfalsifiable, no matter how many different 'authentic' forms are presented in succession. Even if one concedes that such individuals are acting entirely in good faith, there's no guarantee that today's 'authentic' self won't be denounced as tomorrow's self-deceiving lie.
...

we have observed growing evidence that many young people now view anything that challenges their expressive individualism as inherently oppressive. Moreover, this is an ideological system that, by its own terms, no one is permitted to debate or critique, since a person's supposedly 'authentic' self is, by definition, coterminous with truth itself.

Until it isn't: As with Page, the new authentic truth always supersedes the old one. And in some contexts, one even sees such identity shifting embedded in the movement's typology -- as with 'genderfluid,' an identity by which one supposedly may take on all sorts of (temporary) gender statuses as part of one's overarching genderfluid meta-status. (Like many newly coined terms in this area, 'genderfluid' comes with a dizzying array of sub-varieties, such as genderfruct, xenofluid, lunagender, quasifluid, cluttergender, parafluid, and agentogender.)

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