I identified more with girls than boys when I was younger, but it didn't really mean as much until I was older.
Would you say that your situation, whatever it may be, is fundamentally a construction? I've view your opinion as something similar to this given you seem to view gender, sex, etc as morphic but transformative.
For homosexuality it's a lot easier to argue the idea of them having been born that way, while gender identity's more of a societal filter based around where self-identity ended up peer modeling.
It depends on how literally you're taking those arguments. As TC said, it's typically more a sense of entitlement to their feelings, a need to reinforce their validity with consistency in the face of that being one of the primary challenges brought by their opposition, the notion of transtrenders, mental illness, and men in dresses. Being "born that way" wouldn't even be a point of contention were that not used as an arbitrary scale of value to justify the negative emotional response.
Right but that offshoot is built on an already troubled philosophy.
These individuals, gay or trans, are taking on a position that isn't really easily defended. i want to clarify that I only mean those who actually clearly believe that they were born X without question and they do exist given they not only make the statement but become very angry when questioned about the validity of that claim, their anger gives me reason to believe they believe what they say. So, even if the belief is derived from a sense of entitlement the belief still stands for many, but that cause does make sense. Just like for the racial supremacist whom also makes this bold claim to justify his/her own sense of entitlement.
Arguments of mentally ill, transtrenders, etc seem to come from a place of moral objectivism where such X is normal and Y is not therefore Y is in a degenerative category. Such a objectivist view in this context in itself is extremely difficult to uphold. The essentialist response from homosexuals+ and Trans people could be a byproduct of this objectivist view but all they've done is responded a seemingly irrational view with one in kind. This does more harm than good for both parties and I can't view the positions as justified merely because both are poorly made.
This is arguably similar to racial supremacist logic, but no more so than the essentialist idea of gender itself which pushes against the transgender objective, and in doing so creates it. I wouldn't particularly say the transgender perspective is essentialist, so much as it must exist in an essentialist culture. Whereas racial supremacy is an essentialist backlash to a decreasingly essentialist culture.
This idea of essentialist culture is an interesting one. I think it can be argued that the culture as a whole can be viewed as essentialist, and then of course this dominant essentialist thought would imply all the of subpositions. Beyond what is mentioned, argumenrs of race in general take on this form when talking about blackness and whiteness being fundamental and being self-determining: being white is this, being black is this, if you are white you are this, if you are black you are this. All of these are baseless without race not only being substance but a substance that has a causal relationship with essence or vise versa.
To take it a step further, many of the arguments made by some centrists is culturally and politically Essentialist. You have ideas that X set of beliefs is American and Y set of beliefs is unamerican thereby declaring American as immutable.
