'Extremely online' isn't just using the internet a lot. It's about whether a person's identity and views are constructed by the internet more than they are informed by the real world. It's about personally seeing the internet as more real than reality.

I liked Irvine Welshes formulation "in a thousand years there won't be any men or women, only wankers" which has always seemed to me a realistic perspective.

I don't think this discussion is complete without including the influence that commercialism has on our gender roles. The question is "am I trying to perform what I believe or what I am being sold?" How much of my identity is just a commercial? Do I like having long hair or am I being told in commercials and movies that long hair is what I should want if I want to exhibit a certain profile? And is this commercialism killing us? Separating us? Helping us? Am I this way because commercialism made me want to be?

I love seeing good faith engagement with the body of Contrapoints' work!

"Gender" is comparable to sex-role-based fashion. Tethered to biological reality in a lot of ways but also highly arbitrary and constantly changing.

As a biologist, i sometimes feel a bit irritated that a fundamental aspect of this debate is often ingored. It is the fact that gender only exist because of sex. Sex is a evolutionary product to facilitate genetic diversity, and as far as we know, the only purpose of having more than one "type" of individuals (sexes) is to procreate. Homo sapiens would have never developed any idea of gender if there would be no sexes (but its doubtful if homo sapiens could have been developed by means of non-sexual procreation, as any higher lifeform on earth reproduces sexually). There simply would be no need for it, except for a tumblr-like stereotyping of often co-occuring traits. That said, what i think, what gender is really about is, that it is basically stereotyping individuals by true and known/learned population-level biological differences, which are transmitted from generation to generation, to a point, where gender often becomes overblown, inflated, socially amplified, fixed, inflexible, and basically a nuisance. Stereotyping often happens as a short cut, a heuristic based on what has been learned before. Think of whom you would approach when you are looking for empathy or for protection or for simply someone who is carrying stuff for you. So, there is some advantage to stereotyping, of course. Learned Experience, i guess. I think this is the fundamental base of gender: Social assignment, sometimes disruptive, so to speak, of biologically "true" sex differences onto individuals as they are growing up. "XY-carriers are on average more aggressive and risk-taking than XX-carriers" is then translated to "Its unwomanly to be aggressive" or "Men are the better firefighters" by tradition, overgeneralization and stubbornness. This is obviously bad for the individual (but it might have even some advantages on the population level, idk, think of the "eggs are valuable, sperm is not"-world. If you look at kindergarden kids, for which the shared sex is the foremost and first tribe to gather around (kids do really not care about racial differences, but they do absolutely care about their genitals), maybe there is. but this is for the sociologists :)

This was a pretty interesting response to the points Natalie has made about gender identity, but Im not too keen on the prescriptions at the end in regards to rejecting medical treatment to align oneself with their gender identity. I don’t think there’s any real evidence that trans people could simply logic their way out of gender dysphoria with the understanding that perhaps we care too much about gender. What we do know is that these treatments do in fact make trans people feel more comfortable in their own bodies. The idea that the risks might be too great isn’t really born out by the evidence with transition having such a remarkably low regret rate (something like 2%, with much of that likely attributable to living in a transphobic society). It sounds a little too much like the tired refrain that trans people often hear that they should learn to be happy being a feminine man or a masculine woman.

I think it's important to also outline the difference in how the very process of transitioning is portrayed, politically: conservatives often portray trans people as though their fantasy (in the case of a trans woman) is: "I wish I was a girl", as a betrayal of sincerity, trying to escape the inner/social role, etc. The more liberal view, aims at a different structure of desire: "I wish I could stop pretending to be a boy", as a call for authenticity, trying to be true to one's "true" self, and so on. To me, the moment of transition proper was not in hormones or in surgery, but precisely in the passage from when I thought, "I wish I was a girl" to "I wish I could stop pretending to be a boy." To exemplify and paraphrase another trans youtuber, PhilosophyTube in her video on Transhumanism, if a person decides to take antidepressants, it is because they recognize that the insecurities and problems that would be there without it are not a core part of themselves, but precisely an obstacle to their true expression - and just as with antidepressants or medicine in general, would be hormonal treatment. This claim of identity is an unconscious assumption of what in us stands for our "true selves" and what are merely "obstacles", which is what transitioning reverses. It's a minor shift in perspective, but it stands for the moment when you retroactively recognize, looking back, symptoms (obstacles) of an issue you now have a name for. For a while, I thought this passage from "wishing I was a girl" to "wishing I could stop pretending to be a boy" - in other words, the change in perspective of this unconscious "identity" assumption - was not just mine but an essential, universal trait of all trans people. The more time I spend on online communities, however, the more I think the truly radical position would be to think of both trans women who say they were always women and trans women who say they only became so, as both valid. It's a strange difference to reconcile, but I think it's possible.

Totally hit the nail on the head, with age, Hans. Wonderful work, sir. Fair, well thought-out, well described. Higher resolution perspective.

I am here for this one! Great content as always. You have successfully nabbed my attention.

I enjoyed this video greatly; the terms "sincerety", "authenticity", and "profilicity" in the sense you use them are a great enrichment to my toolbox of concepts. Also it seems like you're becoming more confident in front the camera which is nice to see. I appreciate your videos independently of production value but it's a beautiful extra

When does something become part of one's identity? Since very young age I have been aware that I can be knocked down and physically hurt by men to a degree that is not so with girls and women. I would call this sex awareness, but I don't know if this physical vulnerability is part of my identity as a woman. Part of my sex awareness has been also the knowledge that I can get pregnant. I chose not to, but was it ever part of my identity? I don't understand why there is so much noise about identity. Yes, I identify as a woman and as a citizen of my country and as a speaker of my language. But these are not things I have created or constructed myself, they are a given and therefore require almost no validation from my part. It feels to me that identity is a construction and I haven't done much constructing.

As a trans woman (I prefer the term transfeminine person) I endorse this video until its last few minutes. The bit about not submitting one's body to "invasive medical regimes", as others have pointed out, seems overly simplistic, given that such regimes have been shown to increase trans people's mental and emotional well-being. I haven't had surgeries, but I have gritted my teeth through over 100 hours of hair removal and I can say without doubt that I am consequently more at home in my body. But worse still is the final directive: "Reject gender metaphysics and theology." Personally, I agree with Natalie Wynn on this topic, but as she herself says, she is a somewhat unorthodox trans person. A large percentage of trans people DO seem to embrace gender metaphysics, and I am not confident that, based on a few Contrapoints videos, we can disregard them entirely. I think we'd do well to remember that humanity's understanding of these topics is in flux, and developing more rapidly than at possibly any other time in history. I don't think it's the time for blunt prescriptions like this one, especially if they are put forth by cisgender people. Aside from that, I enjoyed the video. Thank you. I will count you as an ally. EDIT: I don't know if you include hormone therapy among invasive medical regimes, but if so I think it's also worth pointing out that, contrary to widespread belief, cross-sex hormones do not just affect physical attributes and appearance, and therefore are not just concerned with gender profilicity. Feminising hormones, I can say from experience, affect emotional state, personality, sexuality, the nature of sexual ideation. They are not merely conerned with appearances and many if not most trans people understand that fact.

One confusion (which seems really inexcusable) is not using clear language to distinguish sex from gender. When someone says "there's no essential maleness", do they mean no essential male sex, or no essential male gender? (I try to use male/female for sex, man/woman for gender). He *seems* to use all these terms to mean gender, and not have any words for sex. So, when he says that babies are not born "essentially male or female", I assume he's referring to gender. Another problem is the term "chromosomal sex" vs just "sex". Sex is defined by "what type of gametes do you produce" (or "what gamete-producing organs do you have", etc...). So, bodies have "sex". If you have a Y chromosome, you cannot have organs that produce female gametes. Your body cannot be female. Similarly, if you don't have a Y chromosome, you cannot have organs that produce male gametes. Your body cannot be male. (Note I did not say, e.g., "this makes you a male". My statements include intersex people as well.) Finally, he talks about gender related characteristics without any reference to reproduction. This just silly. That would be like comparing hammers and screwdrivers without discussing their ability to drive nails or screws. Sex is the hardware of reproduction. Gender is the software of reproduction (with thanks to the Dark Horse Podcast for these definitions). This whole discussion is interesting, but seems to be in denial of reality by ignoring biology and reproduction. He comes close with his analogy of aging -- you might feel young, you might identify as young, but biological reality is you're not 18 any more. But he doesn't follow that analogy to the logical conclusion: that the biological underpinning is as important as how you feel: You might feel 18, but in reality you're 55. Similarly, you might feel like a woman (gender), but in reality you're a male (sex). Ultimately, it comes down to this: which distinction is more important to society: sex or gender? I just heard a recommendation for increased screening for breast cancer for "women over 40". Pretty clearly, that's "woman [sex]", not "woman [gender]". And, for that matter "40 [actual age]" not "40 [feel like age]". Do we really wanna go full on "birthing persons" and pretend we don't have a word for that category of person?

It's a fascinating debate and I admit I have a few ideas about it that may be a bit disorganized but well, here we go. I believe that one fundamental aspect that has changed, and we continuously forget, about how we talk about social issues like trans matters, is that there's a big difference between how we talk about it on twitter, in which there's an audience, and how we used to "fix the world" when we talked about it in a bar with a few friends. We have really become a society of spectacle. And it's not a minor factor. Now, I believe most people in social media are (hyper-)aware of this and the reason why many trans activists demand social recognition is not so much to be personally validated, I don't think a singular trans individual does feel particularly attacked because Matt Walsh or JK Rowling on a personal level don't want to recognize them (maybe just a little bit, as Contra exposes/jokes) but because they understand this problem as a cultural battle that, unless fought and won, may result in very real and negative consequences, not just on the cultural, but the institutional, legal, medical, etc... levels.

The bit at 8:20 on aging hits close to home. I'm convinced I stopped growing up in my mid teenage years, I've just been faking it and getting wrinklier ever since.

Gender is at the same time an insubstatial vapour without essential qualities and the basis of trans presentation, to the point state-funded surgery is necessary to allow better conformity to it. How does that work?

lmaooo the images when the professor talks about ages

If the feeling and identity of gender is transient, changing and/or socially induced, on what exactly do you base the need for serious medical intervention?

Why do we feel so strongly about our identities if there is no true self? It might sound idiotic, but I have always wanted long hair. I have very weak hair and it thin and looks like a cobweb... but in my mind I had long beautiful hair. I used to pull pants on my head to pretend its my hair. And I thought growing up I can find a hairdo and get over myself, but at 30 started to wear wigs. I discovered hair extension a year ago and never go back!! its me. How am I to udnerstand this?

Great and "overdue" video. The overlap between your profilicity theory and performative gender theory is pretty clear. I kind of like how you conveyed a good chunk of Contrapoint's work on gender in your own style. It's like a secondary source for people who don't feel her own style of making videos 🤣

The assertion that there is no true gender essence aligns with Buddhist thought, which teaches that there is no unchanging self/ego separate from the flow of consciousness. Thanks for this fascinating deeper dive into this important topic.

I don't know what i think or feel about this video yet, but i do know i will be watching it a few more times. Thank you.

I have to admit, I am a bit confused, so if I got something wrong, please correct me: so, we distinguish between biological sex and gender which is a societal/sociological/psychological component. Most people would say there are only 2 sexes. But are there only 2 genders? If there are, I assume they are what has in a given time in a given culture been perceived as masculine or feminine, correct? And here is where I don't get it: we then start talking about gender identity, which i must assume is not exactly the same as gender, and I have to wonder, isn't an assertion of being transgender just an affirmation of traditional gender roles and simply finding out I'm the "wrong" role, rather than rejecting or altering those roles? in other words, isn't it the case that those who transition because they feel they are the wrong gender, a case of buying into old- and often overhauled - tropes? as for the gender sex distinction, even if we say gender is not the same as sex, don't we have to acknowledge that biological sex influences gender? For example, we know that in every culture throughout history, women have assumed the roles of those who give birth and take care of children, not because someone decided so (unless we say that someone is a god), but because biology prevents men from assuming this role. now, im sure we can debate about to what extend culture shapes those roles, but I don't think we can deny that sex does shape gender roles based on what we know from history.

This was a really good video. As a trans person, personally i see an "ideal" version of gender, to be no idea of gender at all. Where people can be who they want to be, and present how they want to present. But at the same time living in this society where gender is seen as ridged or specific, almost real even. As a person who doesn't align with my socially predefined gender. it can be useful to use traits attributed to the other gender, as a way to separate my current presentation from my last. basically i use "gender" to my advantage, well hoping to stab it in the back.

I really enjoyed this video, Prof. Moeller. Would you consider speaking on the topic of non-bindary identity in the context of profilicity as a follow-up? Thank you!

I don’t believe that all aspects of what we call masculinity and femininity are merely socially constructed, and I don’t think this is gender metaphysics, which implies that it is not in this reality. I think we actually do have innate patterns of behavior. We have much deeper psychology than who we believe ourselves to be. So what I am saying is that even accounting for socialized gender, or if someone identifies with a different gender other than how they were assign at birth, or how one chooses to perform gender. I think there are spontaneous patterns and unconscious aspects of behavior that are innate to their biological sex. This is partly informed by Jung’s analytic psychology but a great deal from experience. I think there is an unconscious and that we can repress things in the unconscious. I met a Syrian refugee an artist and he suffered from war trauma. He asked me a question. He said, you studied psychology, I want to know why is it when an adult man cries women run away. But when a woman cries women runs to comfort them? This struck me because, I, having suffered from Trauma experienced something similar. I said I don’t know. But I noticed this too. I think men ought to be there for each other when we go through grief. So what would be the innate pattern her? I think women may have a spontaneous harmonization with one another. And the may recoil from the tone of may grief. Maybe they fear the grief may turn violent. But the recoil from male grief seems like a real pattern. Obviously people believing in rigid gender stereotypes is silly and destructive and not very fun, it’s shallow. But not considering that there might be dimensions which are spontaneous and unconscious I think we might be missing dimensions of ourselves. and this is not to say that these deeper reflexes are “authentic”. I don’t believe in an authentic self because the self exists in consciousness. I am talking about spontaneous aspect or unconscious dimensions that we may or may not identify as an aspect of ourselves.

As an XY-chromosomal person who indentifies as a man, I cannot express how much I agree with the last statement about genuine pretending. I have increasingly felt more gender fluidity in me as I aged, but never dared to act on it for being afraid that that was not who I actually was (authentically and essentially, which I then still believed in). I would actually admit that your videos helped me to eventually decide to go crossdress to a party (in that community and for that party that was acceptable and even normal). Not as a joke, I really wanted to try to be seen as somewhat of a woman (even though I didn't shave my beard). The strangest thing happened. In my daily life it became much easier for me to act genuinely masculine. Before, there would always be a part of me that felt betrayed if I acted too masculine. I didn't like masculine behavior, and didn't want to be identified with it. But now, after stepping into the role of woman, it was easier too to step into the role of man. It felt like it wasn't part of my identity; just something I did. This all ties together with my personal philosophy. I often find that people are too much invested in finding the truth or whether they deserve something, while all that matters is the question: "do you want it?" Similar with gender. Don't ask "am I truly a (wo)man?", ask "do I want to be?" Do you want to be seen as a (wo)man? And can you reach that goal? Then go for it. This also goes for my leftist goals. Don't get trapped in hour-long discussions with your liberal uncle about whether the workers deserve more rights or are just spoiled. Ask "do I want more rights?", and "is it within my power to achieve that?" It is an unspoken rule among many people across cultures or genders or any social denominations that it's taboo to say you want something. That should be abolished. That's my philosophy. I guess that's simply a hedonistic or even Machiavellian philosophy; but I didn't study philosophy, I'm just interested.

29:16 Small point here, but what she calls 'extremely online' is not normal. It's less a function of how long the person uses the Internet for than a function of what kinds of corners they frequent online. E.g.: Using KZfaq for 3 hours a day is *NOT* extremely online, but using 4chan for even half an hour a day is.

The only way I can make sense of the word "gender" (when it is not a synonym for "sex") is that it is empirical observations and culural beliefs about how behaviours and subjective experiences comparatively trend in the sexes. Either way, the words boy/girl/man/woman refer to the sexes, whether they are or are not having experiences or engaging in behaviours that are more typical of their sex. It's as correct to say Natalie was born a boy as it is to say Natalie was born a baby.

I love when I see Prof. Moeller doing the "in quotes" gesture. I like to image he is performing a butterfly as in Chuang Tzu dream.

Maybe I've missed it in the beginning, but do you ever define what you mean by "gender"? This made the whole video barely comprehensible, for the difficulty in parsing out what you mean by it each time you use it (and that's multiple times per sentence). Sometimes it's like you are talking about sex, other times social roles and stereotypes, or personality, fashion and other forms of self-expression, etc - all interchangeably referred to as "gender" here. Regarding the comparison to age, sure we can "feel younger" than our age because we've been younger, and remember what that felt like. However, one can't have any idea what it might "feel like" to be older, or the opposite sex, or a different person, or struck with a disease one has never had - not anything that one has never been, much less what's impossible to become. One can certainly imagine what it would be like, but that's just fantasy. (And insistently "identifying as" something you blatantly aren't is colloquially known as "lying", and someone will always take exception to that.)

Does this disagreement between Contra and Abigail Thorn have much to do with their stances regarding authenticity versus profilicity as it pertains to their understanding of their own trans identities?

Great analysis, thanks professor

As a person who _felt_ sympathetic towards trans people and their struggles, but never really _understood_ the issues well, I was very tired of listening to polarizing radical views from both sides. But this video was very helpful for me to understand what all of the identity politics are really about. Sincerity, authenticity and profilicity is GENIUS.

This is a really clear showcase example for your theory, and a good analysis of CP's position! I wonder now what the long-term consequence of this turn may be with regard to gender, e.g. whether established gender signifiers through profilicity will experience a dialectical albeit fractured resurgence, but also if profilicity really is a (more) stable mode for an individualist society than authenticity, as its requirements seem less obtrusive and more playful than that of authenticity's as well as offer new channels for interpersonal association. But also may make people more atomized and judgemental due to profiles being linked to choice, morality and responsibility rather than authenticity's kinda neutral predetermination.

I'm a socialist worker stuck in a capitalist country. Can I get a mode of production transformation?

Now I know why Contrapoints is an ex philosopher.

This is such a useful framework! Thanks for sharing!

Where do we draw the line for overcommitment? For example, when is the case for top or bottom surgery considered overcommitment? I guess drawing that line is better left as homework of each individual and their relationship with their gender profile

i don't think bringing up traditional third genders is done to "idealise them" as much as it is done to show that what we call "trans gender" now is a normal part of the human experience globally, and different cultures have recognised them (even if their theory of gender culturally is different to ours) showing that in fact our own binarism of gender in the west is particular and socially constructed. So while Contrapoints will have a different view on gender, she will also see this as an example of how other communities do not deny the existence of so called "trans" identities, i.e. those that do not conform to a gender binary.

To me, "human adult female" is still the only definition that makes sense, is not circular (women are all people who identify as women), or behaviourally essentialist (women are people who like to wear makeup, paint their nails and watch sex and the city).

I forgot why I loved this channel!!

"and in that clip too she adds that she too cares about social validation.... by JK rowling." FUCKING CLOCKED this really is the eternal trans struggle: even if you absolutely despise someone as a person, you will still care about if they see you as your gender, probably even moreso than with the people who are your allies. its just so hard to divorce yourself from the feeling of "oh i'll show them, if they just see me as [gender here] i've done it." gender really isn't just what's on the inside, it's a continuous societal conversation and trans people won't go away as long as gender is as deeply rooted in our society as it is. we're here to stay.

Regarding the "gendered body" idea, I imagine it could be useful to mention that, as most would probably agree, XX people and XY people (chromosomal Females and Males) can not only change their gender associated bodily features medically and through fashion, makeup etc., but also that these features vary naturally already. Meaning, there can be women most would agree look somewhat "unfeminine" and even "manly" and vice versa. So, to someone who would attempt to discredit this differentiation between chromosomal gender and the "gendered body", this could be an example to show that they themselves already dont think about and experience it as "essential" as they might believe and/or argue for. Like, how could one argue there is only males and females in an essential and binary way, while at the same time they already commonly differentiate grades of femininity and masculinity regarding actual bodies of people.

The problem in my opinion with many feminist of gender theorists is, that they often seem to aspire to come up with universally true ideas. But people aren't universally all the same. If you want to overcome gender roles to become an authentic individual, good on you. But if you are a trans (or cis) person and are psychologically fulfilled by embracing a very traditional version of gender roles, then also, good on you. There just is a lot, that has to be answered by each individual themselves.

Hey! Where can we get the profilicity t-shirt from?

What exactly is an authentic self supposed to be? I feel in one moment something different feeling "right" for me than in another, as well as with different situations. Bringing that in congruency is not always possible, yet as our brain tries to dissolve any cognitive dissonance, we forget/ignore or reframe our memories to suit our perception and identity. What meaning should the concept of authentic self have to me?

Gender isn't just the social role or the expression of it it's also the feeling of your perception of yourself in relation to those things. Gender dysphoria is just the distress of failing to perceive yourself in accordance to it. So it **can** require to be perceived as your gender by others for you to be able to feel comfortable but it doesn't **have** to. I think you are confusing the contingent ways people find to make the feeling of gender congruent with one's perception of themselves with what people think their gender is. I think that's a common pitfall cis people fall into because they never had to feel what incongruence feels like so for them it's a very abstract theoretical problem. In the same way that it's a lot easier for white people to just go "I see no color I only see humans" but that's some bullshit because in both cases there are political and social pressures that forces you to feel these things and the way you respond to that is necessarily part of your identity. Of how you construct, perceive and express yourself. And you can't just will that out of existence. Like even as someone who feels agender I experience dysphoria, mostly social dysphoria, because even that feeling of disconnect from gender norms still create situations where there is a clash between how I perceive my identity and how I'm perceived and how I express myself. But I also think that rejecting gender as a purely oppressive construct that restrict your true self misses the mark, because it's also a way to relate to others, to construct shared signifiers, and to communicate things about yourself to others aswell as formalizing them for yourself (so it can be a tool of self discovery) gender is a cage when it's wielded as a normative force but it's a tool not all that different from language itself when it's allowed to exist more freely

Hey, very good and clear reasoning there. I really liked it. Two thoughts have arised in my mind, though. First: If profilicity is wanting to be "seen as", and therefore engaging in an tecnological performance that produces correct gender social recognition, isn't profilicity a immanent version of sincerity? Aren't we nurturing the traditional gender roles by craving for what's socially expected of a man or a woman? Second: In my experience, I really can confirm these philosophical positions being supported. But I don't think that they are that solid and defined. I think that we spontaneously "transition" from one position to another, and even mix them together.

I think this is a fair handling of ContraPoints, well done. I've got a lot of affection for ContraPoints, I have been following Natalie's channel since the beginning (I.e. the "before times") and the performativity has definitely changed a lot since then. In the beginning the videos were mostly just a discussion of ideas without really situating herself within the discussion. (Hence the channel title) As an aside - personally I can't quite give up on the idea of an ontological true self that one could (and should) try to be authentic to - I just think it's the sort of true self that escapes naming and definition, that is quite a bit more vast than the small world we have conscious awareness of, and which (rather flippantly) produces our story telling (rather than being produced by it.) Authenticity to me is best embodied when you stop trying to name everything.

I firmly believe that even if we had no concept of gender, everyone was just people, but male and female bodies still existed, trans people would still exist. They would say their sense of self was incongruent with the biological sex characteristics of their bodies. I do not fit the social roles and expectations of womanhood at all but I still identify as a woman because my sense of self is mostly congruent with having a female body. I think this sense of being a certain sex is inborn and stronger in some than in others. There is the case of John Reimer who had a botched circumcision and was “given” a vaginoplasty and raised as female, given female hormones to go through female puberty. Despite this, he maintained the sense that he was male. When he found out the circumstances surrounding his birth it confirmed this for him and he re-transitioned into a man. This to me is very clear evidence that this sense of self is inborn and at least in some people immutable.

Fascinating video! I'm a big fan of Contrapoints and I found this analysis extremely illuminating. On the one hand, I do fundamentally agree with Prof. Moeller and Contrapoints that we should reject gender metaphysics. On the other hand, if a person from an early age, develops their gender identity incongruently with their biological sex, and it's a reliable fraction of the population in whom this occurs regardless of social conditions, then this calls for a scientific - neurological - explanation. Indeed, exactly analogously with sexual orientation, brain differences correlating to differences in gender identity have been reliably identified (see for example research by Dick Swaab). So, while we should reject all notions of "gendered souls" or indeed whole "gendered brains", the neurobiological evidence gives us important clues as to just *how* contingent and socially malleable gender identity might be in general. Personally, I identify as a man, as gay and as a rock climber. I've been rock climbing very frequently for 20 years, so my brain must have changed physically to encode the learning I've done over this time: there'll be - in principle - a neuroanatomical signature that marks me out as a climber. This is obviously totally socially contingent, and yet also woven into my biology. There are also brain features that correlate to my sexual orientation (somewhere in the hypothalamus for starters), but this aspect of my identity isn't socially contingent: it's not changeable, it developed early (the signs were there before I ever experienced sexual desire), it goes against all my social conditioning and is certainly not under my conscious control. Similarly, my gender identity as a man is socially contingent in how it manifests, but there's northing I could do, or no social conditions I could be subjected to that could make me identify as a woman. I could change my identity as a climber by stopping climbing and taking up a different hobby, but there's nothing I can do to change my sexual orientation or gender identity. It's too deep in the brain, those systems developed too early on. This is why conversion therapy (both gay and trans) doesn't work. I think that there is a risk that in rejecting gender metaphysics and gender identity under authenticity, we may throw away too much. This is where I'm uncomfortable with Prof. Moeller's apparent scepticism of gender-affirming treatment (e.g. surgery) as "over-identifying" with one's gender. If incongruent gender identity occurs due to early brain development, it's very deeply laid down and can't be changed; and in our highly gendered society life's going to be much easier to live if a trans person "passes". So scepticism towards surgery simply isn't warranted in those cases (but this is clearly not the case for everyone who identifies as trans). It should go without saying that anyone having any irreversible medical intervention should have all the required support to make absolutely certain it is the right thing for them; but I think I would rather trust trans people's perspectives on their healthcare than even the most insightful academic philosophers.

This is really interesting. Without wishing to be reductive, it makes me think about the difficulty I had as a cis straight woman when I was trying to work out why marriage was so important to me - despite understanding in a feminist way the constructed and fraught nature of the history of marriage, I still wanted to do it because of a deep psychological and social desire that made my relationship feel incomplete without it. I desperately wanted to sign up to the legal and social position of being married to my spouse. I would have found it heartbreaking and difficult to have not been allowed to square this circle of my own identity. I think we all construct our identities in the confines of our society, but that doesn't mean we can control what we want our identity to be and the freedom to self define and to fulfil the roles that we crave should be an absolute right in a free society.

Ok so we have qualified what gender may or not be in relation to 'the self'. The next question is how it can and has become a legal category and how these legal categories affect legal issues. Does gender have to be legally recognised?

The main mistake here is the presupposition that all construction is contingent; that there are no - as it were - a priori constraints on construction.

There may not be a true gendered self, but my body feels horrible to be in if it's running on testosterone and far less horrible to be in if it's running on estrogen. I didn't publicly change my gender expression even among family for months after starting HRT, and it hadn't changed my body enough to impact how I viewed myself, but it still radically improved my daily conditions to the point where I had stopped self harming for the first time since my early teens. I've detransitioned since (primarily due to social pressure, being visibly trans is miserable and isolating at it's best) and it's only reinforced my views on it. Some people really just operate better and are far happier if they take hrt, just like any other medical treatment. I think it's easy for conversations about trans people (which will always be nearly entirely held by cis people, just by the numbers) to over-fixate on social aspects of gender because everyone experiences social pressures around their gender, but only certain trans people have experienced what actually changing the hormone you run on feels like and how monumental of a difference it makes in your daily life.

What's always been curious to me is how in the social world: gendered language doesn't seem to function as a noun. We (i.e. the general peer) don't refer to a person's gender as a separate identity in the social world; instead, we seem to use gender as a kind of social adjective. What seems to be the disconnect for me, is the lack of coherent descriptors (and tangible organisation) within social life. It would explain why people feel so underrepresented and others so unaccepting/dismissive: no one knows how to understand, or how to describe a some-gendered person, outside of the normal processing. For example in dating, for a heterosexual man, the descriptive meaning of 'woman' has changed. Or in the medical profession, professional sports or in public situations like toilets or changing rooms (all ongoing debates). We don't seem to 'use' gender to refer to identity, identity (at least this curated type) feels like it has no functional meaning outside of the first person. We seem only to use it as a descriptor, in a third-person arena, to understand each other and our relationships with the social human world.

What I don't understand (and maybe someone could helo me?): If we reject the idea of a gender essence, then how can there be gender dysphoria? What makes trans people want to transition (or even identifying as trans), if not some sort of gender identity baked into them? Or a different question wich boils down to the same topic I think: if we lived in a world with no gender roles what so ever, would there be trans people?

Thank you for this incredible, analytical and good faith argument!!

Did Nick Mullen coin the term "extremely online guy"?

Oh this is gunna be good!!

I love you, bro! Thanks for doing this for free

This was really, really good. Question: do we have a chance of rejecting/not accepting profilicity in the future? I guess my approach to identity is authenticity (though I agree there is no true self), at least I tend not to participate in the acts of profilicity (which I guess in itself could be considered profilicity), and I don’t think I want my children to, would it be possible to raise them with accordance of authenticity? Sincerity lived on in the age of authenticity, will authenticity survive profilicity?

Small nitpick, sex is defined through gametes, not chromosomes. Crocodiles for example don't have their sex instantiated through chromosomes, but they still have males and females. Also, I'm skeptical that "gender identity" exists at all. Rather it seems that people have traits, which in turn are gendered, which is not the same thing as "being" a gender. The genders are masculine and feminime, not male and female, those are the sexes.

I have a theory that the mechanisms of Profilicity ergo the validation feedback loops may exhasperate mental health conditions related to self, i.e. dyshorias and that rising mental health issues in young and always online people are in part at least a product of this.

Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong but does your warning against over identifying with your gender means you oppose gender reassignment surgery? If so, I would strongly disagree

profilicity seems to be like a definition of the worst evils of social media. Hyping yourself and selling your brand and worrying about how others think about you rather than what you actually want.

I have class dysphoria

How about the issue of forced validation of another’s gender identity?

Life is a 10 acre farm; in sincerity everyone grows corn; in authenticity you let the land grow what it wants; and in profilicity you grow what you can best sell. How's my metaphor?

where can I get that ugly merchandise, and does it also come in white?

5:01 I am afraid that this is factually wrong. Many supporters of gender theory will precisely start a discussion about how biological sex is not clear, intersex, blah. So Contrapoints is retreating here to the proverbial motte, only to go to bailey again, when she talks about sex "assigned" at birth. Why use this phrase if Contra agrees that biological sex is binary? Or does she not? This is the core of the problem with the discussion.

omg, i feel the same way you do; I'm 59 but i swear to God i feel 36, a huge libido, hyperactivity, overthinking, hyperfocusing, so yeah, we keep adding layers of identities, and we could even "feel" so many different perspectives, experiences, but I guess a lot of people deny themselves this. I also think that the reason for the culture wars, especially when it comes to have a little f....ng compassion towards other humans, it's our internal animal instinct of violence, rage will fix everything.

Could You, please, explaine what do You think about the case of Armie Hammer and his absolutely carefree and uncurated confessions on Finsta or other social media? Is it possible that narcissistic/psychopathic people are really authentic? Is it also a body suffering which make us authentic?

About Profilicity: In Portuguese (at least in Brazil - not sure about other places) there's an expresion like "That dude is a 'young lady''. That expression (Aquele cara é uma moça) is not offensive but actually a compliment - it means the dude is polite, trustworthy and pays attention to the need of others. It's actually a compliment. It's something like 'gentleman' but with some different aspects. It's a feminine characteristic, though. Am I right to think that would be an example of Profilicity? Thanks!

There's a contrast between the video essay styles of Contrapoints and this channel - Natalie is an entertainer, focused on costuming, lighting, and background to add to what she says, and what she says is part of the performance. This channel is less about theatrics and performance. I wonder what it would look like for Carefree Wandering as a channel to put on such a performance lol

I think it is important to use scientific research as a foundation for the gender/sex contretemps. There are two sexes but there is a tiny percentage that do not conform to this dichotomy; broken X, etc. MRI examination of female/male brains show vast differences in processing and areas of activity, especially in temporal and linguistic tasks; even here there is a continuum ( normative curve) with the 75% under the curve but a significant percentage of outliers. Autism dominates in the trans community - it is 3 times more likely ( 400%) for a transgender to be on the autism spectrum - understandable when autism expresses as a inability to relate to social constructs. Gender dysphoria have always been around - 1 in 20, 000 on average for most cultures.

What's the difference between curating a gender profile and conforming to gender roles, though? When contrapoints talks about presenting in a meticulously feminine way, is that not conforming to a gender role?

Gender profilicity (and profilicity in general ) seems to be dialectical especially with regards to interpersonal relationship of the general peer. If this is what you have in mind, You might also be interested in Frantz Fanon’s, work especially chapter in Black Skin, White Masks. particularly the chapter titled The Black Man Recognition and the part on Hegel. In that part of the book, Fanon is working through the security and the pitfalls of a what you might call a “racial profile,” with some attention to the social, historical, political and material conditions that produce race

Probably the best video I've seen on the topic. Really well articulated. There's one bit in the conclusion I'm not so sure about though. Giving the example of "surgery to make your body fit a gender profile" - this is actually one thing which I think while it may seem as the most extreme example, is actually more do with biology or sex, rather than gender itself. As far as I'm aware there's an emerging literature on "gender" dysphoria and "brain sex" - where our brains have an inbuilt sense of what our body should be like, and gender dysphoria - or the type where you don't feel your body is the right sex (so, im really not sure why its called gender dysphoria, shouldnt this be sex dysphoria?). There is a medical aspect to the act of gender surgery, and I don't think it's always to do with aligning appearance to preferred gender expectations. Without knowing this I found it really hard to square the circle of trans peoples' experiences of gender dysphoria and I think without it, it can easily lead to a "gender essentialist" perspective. That trans people are proof that we "really are" wo/men (if you believe their testimonies anyway), because from a very young age they "knew" and "felt" like they were the other gender... So, surgery I see not as an act of performativity (though of course it really is as well for many, as contrapoints' statements show i think), but a medical procedure because of a mismatch of brain sex and body sex.

I believe Gender is largely imposed by society. When I talk to people about their own feelings about gender I often find that a sizeable portion of them don't really ever question how they feel about their own gender. With our society removing most of the limits of how one can act within his own gender, we see the very concept of gender losing it's substance. When we picture a man or a woman, we have certain expectations about them in terms of their behaviour and their role. With these expectations removed, we lose the meaning of gender. I find it interesting that binary transgender people exist and I am fascinated by them. Some of them don't reject gender entirely, some even defend it. Listening to multiple transgender people reveals how different their beliefs can be, they vary wildly. It suggests that there is something more to this phenomenon, something we have not figured out yet.

great video! one thing, i understand that the point that she was trying to make in 20:39 was that, when GCs say "we need to abolish gender", they don't actually mean it. they don't say that when cis women do it, only when trans women do it. that's what she says after the cut, it's more of a point about hypocrisy rather that an actual concept that she was trying to demonstrate. i still like the spin that you gave it tho, i think it's food for thought!

Yes xx are females and xy are male biologically- so yes, babies are born for the most part, essentially male or female by definition of the chromosomes. Just because we use male and female for social construction and biological life doesn’t make them interchangeable and every circumstance. So you’re saying just Cozumel is born with an xy chromosome they are not biologically male- yes, yes they are by your own definition. Of course, I understand. The problem comes when we expect male and females to perform certain roles. Or even the ability for a society to accept people who are not part of the gender social binary.

If someone was born isolated on an uninhabited island, would that person have a gender?

I think many of us would love to hear this explored and broke down in to more digestible terms. I’ve sent this to Benjamin Boyce, would be great to hear you discuss this with him.

Could someone please spell for me the name of the person mentioend in 5:39?

If profiles have no 'genuine self', what is being profiled? And by extension, if the self is an illusion, what or who is being illuded?

I'd say validation for one's identity always comes, to some extent, from how others perceive us. No need to involve profilicity in this very basic feature of human behavior. However, the sense of identity was built on different bases in other time periods.

The moment one says that one is trapped in a body and would like to have the opposite gender, isn't automatically admittance of gender essentialism? When a man says he actually belongs to a female gender, doesn't it reinforce the gender binary? Therefore, it maybe right to say that there is no gender apriori however, it would be self contradictory when you use this premise to "become" the *opposite* gender.

My take on this is that I concede my gender to how someone else experiences me in how I show up in our relationship. If they see me as feminine, they are welcome to refer to me as she. If they see me as masculine, I'm happy to be a he. Biologically I am a male, but I now surrender personal control to my gender identity.

1.What makes you male/female is not your XY/XX but which gamete your body makes

I really like this. Opened my mind.

You took a sharp left turn in the last minute that warrants more discussion and support. What constitutes over-identifying with one's gender? What does it mean to be a gender fundamentalist? I agree that over-committing to gender congruity is a way to over-identify with one's gender. But you are unclear about whether to "submit one's body to invasive medical regimes to better fit a gender profile" constitutes overcommitting to gender congruity! Do any medical processes which increase gender congruence constitute as being a "gender fundamentalist" in your terms? I am a trans woman. I give myself an estrogen injection once a week - less invasive than taking a daily vitamin - which helps enormously in curating my gender profile and makes my life easier. There are physiological and psychological benefits that are obvious to me. Is this medical intervention over-committing to my gender or congruence? Is it psychologically dangerous despite its obvious subjective psychological benefits. It is a pharmacologically safe intervention. So what are you saying here? Being trans is fine as long as you don't alter your body? If this is not what you are saying, your viewers are going to misunderstand you as being (quite comprehensively) against any medical interventions for trans folks, and this is the absolute worst thing we need right now when governments are actively outlawing our access to vital medicine. Please clarify or reconsider your viewpoint.

I'm not sure if you touch on this later in the video, and I'm sure you didn't mean anything harmful by this, but I'll make my small pedantic correction anyway. What you say at 11:00 isn't entirely true for every individual. There are agender people who feel like they're entirely removed from the experience of gender. Although you could argue that that is just another way psychological and social gender manifests.

But I think just in the same way that gender can be said to never correctly match chromosomal sex so too could we say that no word ever matches the thing to which it refers. I'm not sure how this observation is remarkable as it pertains to the topic of gender, since all ideas and their words are approximations. The question to me is one of observable patterns, which tend to be a matter of generalities, rather than perfect exactitudes repeated over and over.

Great video, I hope Natalie finds it socially validating :) I wonder if you have any thoughts about non-binary identity? Contrapoints was "cancelled" on Twitter a few years ago when talking about an incongruity between trans- and non-binary gender identity. Her reasoning was that in everyday places, she would be called "miss" or "ma'am" without hesitation, but within leftist "safe spaces", she was required to confirm her gender identity and preferred pronouns (ostensibly to avoid assumptions and potentially misgendering people.) So basically, because they were rejecting the social signifiers in favour of an "authentic" self, she did not receive the social validation she needed to feel like she genuinely was a woman. Non-binary people seem to crave the same social validation (by using "they/them" pronouns), even though they reject the social perception of their identity.

I would define gender as follows: to be male or female is to labor according to a sexual division of labor in a given mode of production. The categories of gender-authenticity, gender-sincerity and gender-profilicity have to be located within economic modes of production. They can not be seen as free floating (ahistorical, idealist) categories. These categories answer to different forms of class power and to historically differing modes of production. For example, gender-sincerity makes most sense in a feudal/agricultural mode of production, gender-authenticity in a modern liberal industrialized capitalist society, and gender-profilicity in a post-industrial, globalized finance-capitalist mode of production. One could say, then, that gender indeed has an essentialist component and is not entirely malleable insofar as societies have a need to reproduce labor through gendered and sexual divisions of labor, whether one likes it or not- see the current fertility crisis as evidence of what happens when a post-industrial concept expands beyond its material base.

Gender has been a synonym for sex for a long time and repurposing it to mean "gender identity" is incredibly confusing. Especially since this gender identity uses the same two words that we use for sex? Why? That only creates confusion when I say "I'm a man", do I mean I have the sex of a man or that I "identify as a man"? Why not use the very functional terms of masculine and feminine? Because that's essentially what this new term means, you want to feel like, look like, act like what is typically considered feminine/masculine. Wanting to be treated in a specific way is just not something we get to decide as humans. I wish I was treated like a tall handsome man. Our pronouns are based on our sex not our gender, because our sex is a immutable part of ourselves and that matters, it's a constant throughout our lives. Your degree of femininity also matters, but it can change completely during your life, it's not unrelated to but not decided by your sex.

when is the gender profilicity book coming? looking forward to more discussion on this!!