All the Feels: Against "Gender Identity"

All sorts of gendered subjectivity are often lumped together under the name "gender identity". We argue that the concept of "gender identity" is an unhelpful oversimplification, review some of its harmful effects, and propose a more multifaceted replacement in terms of what we call "gender feels". Also, we introduce vocabulary for some of the outward phenomena that go by the name of "gender": gender categories like woman, man, and nonbinary, sexed biology, and gendered behaviors. Gender feels are a certain kind of subjective attitudes about one's relationship with these outward phenomena and can be classified in terms of them. This chapter argues that the concept of "gender identity" is dangerously overburdened. It is expected to fill a variety of roles: justifying medical transition, explaining why people are drawn toward particular gendered behaviors as forms of self-expression, explaining why people like to be categorized as men or women or both or neither, and undergirding legitimacy of trans people's inner lives. There is a wealth of philosophical language for naming these types of social and systemic problems. In the jargon of social epistemologists like Fricker and Medina, it enacts a hermeneutical injustice: that is, it gives us inadequate resources for understanding the experiences of an oppressed group because our resources developed under unjust conditions. Historically, doctors have regulated trans people's access to medical treatment based on our ability to conform to gender stereotypes, withholding access to hormones and surgery unless their patients could demonstrate what they considered an acceptable level of femininity or masculinity.