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[–]Penultimate_Penance 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Great question. How can you tell if someone is actually feeling God's presence or they're just misinterpreting the feeling you get when you have a particularly good day? How can you tell if someone legitimately has an objective gender identity or they're just happier conforming to opposite sex stereotypes? Is it the Holy Ghost warning you not to do something or indigestion? Does someone genuinely feel like a boy inside or are they just into shit that boys are stereotypically into? Did the secret work and you got what you always wanted by willing it to be or did you just get lucky?

The base feelings stay the same, but the conclusions drawn from those feelings can be all over the place. I feel happy while at church therefore God exists. I feel euphoric when I attempt to look like the opposite sex therefore I actually am the opposite sex on the inside somehow. The thing I prayed for happened therefore God answers prayers. See how the conclusion doesn't quite follow in these scenarios? I'd welcome a steel man from the QT side.

Gender Identity as something independent from subjective human belief is unprovable. People believe in weird shit. Gender identity is one of those things and should be treated with the same level of reverence as any other faith based belief, which is none at all.

This questions also opens a lot of other questions. What is gender identity exactly? Can you measure it? How is it even possible for anyone to actually know what it feels like to be the opposite sex? What about people who don't have a gender identity? Should gender atheists be obligated by law to play along?

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Great answer--I'll give it a shot! Love The Secret reference, too 😁

An attempt: Facts over feelings, Pen! But more seriously, the conclusion is what matters most anyways because we don't really know if the base feelings are really the same amongst everyone. My feelings of happiness could feel totally different from your feelings of happiness, so drawing differing conclusions makes more sense than everyone reaching the same conclusion. Because we reach different conclusions, we must have different feelings, right? That's the only way that there would be trans people is because they must feel differently, otherwise everyone really would all be trans or there would be no trans people at all. In fact, that's why there are so many genders and sexualities that we are still discovering. How could that happen if people truly were feeling the same?

[–]Penultimate_Penance 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Because we reach different conclusions, we must have different feelings, right?"

Not necessarily. Technically if we get really philosophical here it is impossible to know if most people who aren't color blind are experiencing the same green as everyone else, or if varying degrees of happiness feel the same to people, but practically speaking there is a common reality where happiness, sadness and other feelings have a consistent definitions/descriptions between people that we can safely assume a shared experience/reality, much in the same way people who aren't color blind can easily recognize the color green and people can easily recognize and relate to standard human emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, etc.

Mormons describing the holy ghost. I grew up Mormon and I've lost count of the ways church members have described and interpreted their feelings and concluded it was the holy ghost. Their descriptions and definitions of the holy ghost and how they know it exists are as vague, and sometimes as contradictory as queer theorists describing gender identity/feeling like a woman.

I have felt ecstatically happy while hiking, while playing my instrument, while playing sports and just in general while completely getting lost in the moment. Many church members have described this feeling as proof of god's existence and proof that the Lds church is the one true church. I did not.

I have felt a sense of foreboding, that something was off and trusted my gut to avoid what would have been really bad situations that I learned about later. I concluded that it was instinct. Members of the Mormon church often interpret this feeling as a warning from the holy ghost and proof that God is looking out for them. I could go on any feeling you can imagine from indigestion, to a profound sense of happiness has been used by church members as proof that there really is a holy ghost out there. (Mormon churches have a once a month testimony meeting that I've attended for 2 decades, so you bet I heard an absurd amount of testimonies.)

When a man says, "I feel like a woman" I can't help, but think about the Mormons who say "I feel the holy ghost". Who knows there might be a holy ghost out there working it's voodoo, but it is an unproven conclusion. Members of the 100s of other religious denominations cite the same feelings as proof that their church is the one true church. They can't all simultaneously be right, but they can all be wrong.

Men who claim to be women cite all kinds of different feelings as proof that they have a mismatched gender soul. I like quite a few things that are considered masculine, but I did not conclude that, because I enjoyed said masculine activities that therefore I am a man. I'm a woman who happens to have masculine interests, much in the same way a man can happen to have feminine coded interests and personality traits. Concluding that they are actually the opposite sex, because of those feelings is quite a reach to say the least. It is impossible to know what it actually feels like to physically exist in the opposite sex's body. A woman will never know what it feels like to exist in a male body and vice versa.