Yes, there may be such a thing as an inborn sex identity!

One of the most efficient ways to invalidate gender variant’s people sense of being of a different sex than their biological one, is to argue that gender is nothing but a social construct.

Transsexuals, girlfags, guydykes, crossdressers and crossdreamers are all decieving themselves if they believe their identity is even remotely related to the opposite sex, the socalled experts say.

Indeed, the so-called post-structuralist gender studies has taken the body out of the equation completely, and the recent attacks on girlfags reflects this way of reasoning. Gender has become a fetish.

I find it extremely hard to believe that the symbolic mind cannot be influenced by the instinctive body.

After all, add hormones, alcohol, caffeine, morphine, or a severe disease to a human body, and he or she starts seeing the world in a different way. She may become depressed. She may become euphoric. She may hallucinate. She may find it hard to think coherently. What seemed impossible yesterday, suddenly becomes child’s play.

We know of newly hatched chicks whose instincts make them run for cover when they see the silhouette of a hawk, but not the shadow of a pigeon. The chick has never seen a hawk before and has no theory of hawkness, but the instinct does drive it to action. “Danger! Run!”.

We are also animals. Is it is reasonable to expect that we have no instincts of this sort?

Both pups, kittens and young human beings love playing hide and seek. In the animals it is obvious that the young ones are training for adulthood.

Knowing how to hide for predators and how to catch prey is absolutely necessary. Their instincts drive them to try out this behavior again and again. Indeed, it brings them much pleasure. It is fun. This is what life is about.

Both dogs, cats and obscenely  well paid grown men take much pleasure in chasing balls. The men have developed a complex set of “semiotic” rules and rituals around this basic instinct, but to me at least this is clear proof of instincts influencing human behavior.

So shouldn’t we at least consider the possibility that trans men and trans women are right when they say that they have felt a misalignment between their sex identity and their given bodies since they were kids? Shouldn’t we at least consider the possibility that there is some kind of biological component to our sex identity?

The idea of “a woman trapped in a man’s body” makes sense as a metaphor. But it can not be understood literally, that is, as if trans women embed a kind of internal “Eternal Woman” that contains all the various feminine traits and behavior the Pope, Michelle Bachmann or the Taliban think is God given.

But there may be something that triggers the deep felt sense of being a woman, or – which is just as likely – which influences the way we place ourselves in relationship to other people.

For a more thorough discussion of the possibility of an inner sex, see my blog post on the Transgender and the mind and body conundrum.

See also this follow up on this blog post.