Can you explain why gender identity does not exist? Don't cisgender people identify as/feel like they are the sex they were assigned at birth? Don't other animals identify as their sex assigned at birth due to lack of cognitive ability to identify as anything but their own sex?

MarkTwainiac · 2020-11-13T05:10:49+00:00

2) Why do you say sex is not assigned at birth? If sex is not assigned at birth then what is it?

Sex is determined at conception. The sex of human fetuses can be ascertained at 8/9 weeks in utero via the NIPT or CVS, and at circa 20 weeks by scans and or amniocentesis. Prenatal testing has been a thing for many, many decades.

Sex is observed and recorded at birth. Not assigned.

The people who make these claims always seem to be those who have never given birth, or been closely involved with a human pregnancy even as a witness. They seem utterly unfamiliar with the basics of human reproduction and fetal development.

3) Why do you say people can't be born in the wrong body?

Because we understand conception and fetal development, life and death. Women's uteri aren't filled with assembly lines of empty bodies or "meat sacks" waiting to be filled by or matched to a gendered brain. It's not like the Mattel factory where there's a lineup of a million Barbie bodies that are all the same, but some get a blonde head stuck on them and some get a brunette one.

Please look into how embryos come into being and grow. You'll quickly see this "wrong body" stuff is nonsense.

Human brains and psyches don't develop separately from our bodies; we are our bodies, and our brains are part of our bodies. Each one of us is and exists within our own body. Most people dislike parts or aspects of their bodies to one degree or another.

Disliking, loathing, hating and feeling extremely uncomfortable in one's body is a common experience for members of the female sex during and after puberty. Doesn't mean any of us were born in the wrong body, though.

People with a vast number of inherited and acquired medical conditions that are disabling and painful, as well as physical anomalies called "deformities," struggle with issues of body image and bodily acceptance, too. Doesn't mean any of us were born in the wrong body, though.

When our bodies can no longer perform vital functions such as breathing or pumping blood, we die. When we are facing death, moving our minds into another body/bodies isn't an option. This is the case whether we face death in utero, infancy, adulthood or old age.

4) Can you explain why gender identity does not exist? Don't cisgender people identify as/feel like they are the sex they were assigned at birth?

Gender identity exists for the people who believe in it and who think they have gender identities. People who believe in and have gender identities tend to be people who wish they were the opposite sex or to be of neither sex.

Most people do not have a gender identity. We are aware of our sex, but it is not the linchpin of our sense of self.

If you read the psychological literature on how humans form a sense of self, you'll see that there's no mention of "gender identity" until very recently. The entire concept is new, and entirely made-up; it's not innate or organic.

5) Is it okay to invalidate someone's gender identity? Wouldn't invalidating someone's gender identity be lgbtphobic? If no, can you explain why?

I do not believe in the religion my parents held dear, and which they indoctrinated me into. They never took my failure to embrace their beliefs as "invalidating" them or their identity. They were peeved I did not follow their faith, but they did not feel I was invalidating them or denying their existence and so on.

Don't other animals identify as their sex assigned at birth due to lack of cognitive ability to identify as anything but their own sex?

I learned that attributing human feelings/ideas/intentions/issues to animals was not cool back in the 1960s. How is it that anthropomorphism is now okay?

Smitt · 2020-11-13T03:17:12+00:00

Ok, I’ll have a go at this:

1 - I can’t answer this unless you explain what “identify as a man” means. I don’t believe in gender stereotypes, so to me “man” means “adult human male” and nothing more. It doesn’t mean a masculine person or a person who likes cars or any other “male” stereotype. Personally I don’t “identify as” anything. I am the sex I am, that’s just a fact that says nothing about my personality, likes/dislikes, or intellect.

2 - Sex is OBSERVED at birth. Excluding intersex people (a tiny tiny minority) biological sex is an objective, observable fact.

3 - What is the “wrong body”? Do you think that if a woman is masculine, she’s “in the wrong body”? I don’t - I think it’s completely fine to be a butch woman, or a feminine man. Butch women are not less female than any other woman. A feminine man is no less of a man than any other.

4 - I have yet to see a definition of “gender identity” that doesn’t boil down to gender stereotypes. And I don’t believe that gender stereotypes are a good thing, I think they should be rejected. I am a woman because that is the sex that I am, not because I conform to feminine stereotypes. If I started conforming to male stereotypes like wearing men’s clothes and, I don’t know, fixing car engines (?) that wouldn’t make me a man.

sisterinsomnia · 2020-11-13T04:23:04+00:00

5) Is it okay to invalidate someone's gender identity? Wouldn't invalidating someone's gender identity be lgbtphobic? If no, can you explain why?

Please answer a question for me: Why is it possible for others to invalidate a deeply held inner feeling of one's true gender? I have never been able to understand this and it feels like a contradiction, but perhaps there is something more to this than I am aware of.

If someone misgenders me it doesn't bother me at all, so I find it difficult to fully understand why validation is of such central focus as it seems to be.

Having said that, I would personally not invalidate anyone's conceptions of themselves unless it was necessary for their health and safety (such as in some medical contexts where biological sex matters greatly), and I believe that this is true for most people. People are not going to want to cause discomfort to others.

BiologyIsReal · 2020-11-13T03:46:26+00:00

There were some tweets from way before, someone saying 'other animals have no gender identity' so this trans right activist told her "other animals do have a gender identity, due to the lack of cognitive ability to identify as anything but their own sex, other animals can only identify as their own sex while humans can identify as something other than the sex assigned at birth"

Oh for goodness sake, how could they even prove that animals have a gender identity when you can't do it whit humans?

Sex is observed, not assigned, at birth. Nobody is born in the wrong body, you are your own body. If you want to say that is our brains what matter, well, your brain is still a part of your body and every cell of it is still either male or female. Sex is about reproduction. In anisogamic species like ours, individuals produce specialized cells with half the DNA (gametes) for reproduction purposes. Male individuals are the ones who produce small gametes (spermatozoon) and females are the ones who produce large gametes (ovum). Then, a spermatozoon and a ovum fuse to form the zygoto, restoring this way the normal amount of DNA. Some species are hermaphrodites, which means they can produce both male and female gametes. Humans are not hermaphrodites, though. There are several genes involved in sex determination in humans, but the golden star is the SRY gen. Basically, if this gen is present the embryo will develope as male, if not it will develop as female. As this gen is located in the Y chromosome, XX individuals are females and XY individuals are males. There are some people who have a disorder of sexual development (DSD), but they are rare and they are still either male or female, i.e. they don't produce a third type of gamete.

YoutiaoLover · 2020-11-13T08:12:00+00:00

1) Can GC explain what is wrong with what I said above? Can you break what I said down and tell me what's wrong with what I said above and why you disagree with it.

"Gender identity is a psychological thing." "They feel like a man and other they feel like a woman." "They feel they are in the wrong body." "[...]who identifies as a man. [...] who identifies as a woman."

Feelings, thoughts, belief and psychological experience are not reality. For example, schizophrenic people think that their hallucination is real, but, in fact, it's not real. You can believe that earth is flat, still doesn't change the fact that it isn't. Claustrophobic people experience intense fear when being in small spaces, doesn't mean small spaces dangerous. Senior citizens can feel young, doesn't change the fact that they're old. Teens feel like they know everything, doesn't mean they does. You can identify as a cat and speak in meows, still doesn't make you a cat.

You can feel and identify as whatever, but the reality won't change.

2) Why do you say sex is not assigned at birth? If sex is not assigned at birth then what is it?

As other commenters mentioned: sex is determined in conception, observed and recorded at birth. Human have only two sexes, just like other mammalians: it's either male or female. Intersex people--which can look androgynous, have vague looking genitals and/or have secondary sex traits from the other sex--are either male or female depending on factors such as SRY gene, whether they produce sperm or ova, etc.

3) Why do you say people can't be born in the wrong body?

Are short people who think being tall is nice born in the wrong body? Were men who hate their receding hairline born in the wrong body? Were people with brown hair who wishes to have jet black hair born in the wrong body? Were squinty eyed people who wishes to have big eyes born in the wrong body? Were people with egg allergy who wishes to be able to food that contains eggs born in the wrong body? Were people who have congenital disorders born in the wrong body?

To me, all the questions above has only one answer: no, they weren't not born in the wrong body. Our bodies might have traits or conditions we don't desire. To accept, cope and make the best of it is a part of life.

Also, didn't the fishes take back "born in the wrong body" slogan?

4) Can you explain why gender identity does not exist? Don't cisgender people identify as/feel like they are the sex they were assigned at birth? Don't other animals identify as their sex assigned at birth due to lack of cognitive ability to identify as anything but their own sex?

What does "gender identity" means? AFAIK it's hardboiled gender stereotypes. Trans ID-ed males "feel" like a woman because they like dresses, want boobs and loves make-up. Trans ID-ed females "feel" like a man because they love sports, hates their boobs and prefer to mow the lawn to cleaning the house. Again, feeling doesn't equal reality.

Men never experienced what it's like to be a woman in any point of their lives, women never experienced what it's like to be a man. How do you know what it feels like to be someone you don't?

For example, every single adult were a toddler at one point of life. People who remember their toddler-hood know what it feels like to be a toddler because they naturally have experienced it. And yet, no adult can ID as a toddler, tell everybody they're a toddler, go to kindergarten to study with toddlers or compete in toddler's drawing competitions without the whole world think they're perverts, crazy or mentally ill. How can self-ID-ing yourself based on "feeling like someone you have never been before" be more legit than ID-ing as a toddler?

They mean a dog or a fish also have a gender identity and they can only identify as their own sex unlike humans...

I'm an adult human female who watch boxing championships, hate dresses, wish I were an A-cup (if not downright flat), don't enjoy periods, play video games catered to males and I don't own cosmetics. I don't do things those who "feel like a woman" think women do and do things that they think women don't. I don't "feel" like a woman, I don't "believe" I'm a woman, I just am. Before you assume dogs and fish have gender identity, please analyze mine because I (and the majority of human population) seem to be a walking contradiction to gender identity theory.

5) I can't wrap my head around what trans people mean with "valid." Oxford dictionary said that valid means "(of an argument or point) having a sound basis in logic or fact; reasonable or cogent." From what I can gather, transgenderism is not logical, factual, reasonable or cogent.

What the heck with lgbtphobic lol. I don't go to church, doesn't mean I'm Christian-phobic; I don't fast during Ramadan, doesn't mean I'm Islamophobic; I don't like touching any kind of reptiles, doesn't mean I have herpetophobia; I don't sleep with lesbians, doesn't mean I hate lesbians. You're entitled to whatever you believe, you're allowed to do to yourself whatever you want to; just don't expect other people to accept your belief or think that what you do is normal. After all, other people are entitled to their own beliefs.

sisterinsomnia · 2020-11-13T04:01:54+00:00

1) Can GC explain what is wrong with what I said above? Can you break what I said down and tell me what's wrong with what I said above and why you disagree with it.

These come down to gender identity. A cisgender man is someone who identifies as a man and was assigned male at birth. A cisgender woman is someone who identifies as a woman and was assigned female at birth.

Cisgender people are people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth.

What if those who don't transition have no such abstract gender identity which just happens to match their biological sex? I am pretty sure that I do not, and my informal surveys suggest that many others don't, either.

I believe that for many people the way the feel about their gender is actually based on their biological sex. For instance, my gender is 'woman' because my body is female. There is a causal relationship which runs from the sex of my body to my gender. In a sense I believe that transgender people do not identify with their biological sex while what the gender identity school calls 'cisgender' people (it's not, really, the correct definition of what many feel) do identify with their biological sex. It affects our lives both directly and in how others relate to us. It is also the basis for sex-based discrimination, sexism, and so on.

In short, I think your definition is incorrect.

sisterinsomnia · 2020-11-13T04:12:07+00:00

3) Why do you say people can't be born in the wrong body?

I personally think that this question is one about linguistics, but I have noticed that Mermaids (a trans organisation in the UK) now says that nobody is born in the wrong body. One can clearly have intense discomfort with the body one has, of course, but why that is the case is something for medical research.

sisterinsomnia · 2020-11-13T04:05:50+00:00

2) Why do you say sex is not assigned at birth? If sex is not assigned at birth then what is it?

In the past biological sex was sometimes assigned by physicians when an infant's genitals could not be readily identified as either male or female. This was done very very rarely, and most infants were classified as either male or female on the basis of observing their genitals.

Now many expecting parents know before the birth the sex of the fetus. If sex is assigned by anything, then it would be the moment of conception.

Sex is defined in humans the same way it is defined in other animals. It is not a spectrum in humans, though secondary sexual characteristics can be. You are female if you belong to the sex which typically produces ova and you are male if you belong to the sex which typically produces sperm.

sisterinsomnia · 2020-11-13T04:18:37+00:00

4) Can you explain why gender identity does not exist? Don't cisgender people identify as/feel like they are the sex they were assigned at birth? Don't other animals identify as their sex assigned at birth due to lack of cognitive ability to identify as anything but their own sex?

I don't think anyone has done research on the existence vs. non-existence of gender identity. All I can say is that I don't have an abstract gender identity and when I read about its presumed universal existence I have no idea what it means and why others find it such an important concept. People have personalities, true, and those show some pattern of being distributed differently by sex, but most everybody really is non-binary in the sense that most people are not walking two-dimensional Barbie or GI Joe stereotypes. Stuff that I see as part of someone's personality is assigned to that person's gender now. This is bad for feminism as it makes the gender boxes more rigid.

Because I don't believe that most people possess an abstract gender identity, I am very reluctant to assume that if only animals were able to think on a higher level they, too, would somehow be found to have such an abstract identity. In any case, studying something like 'gender identity' is impossible, because it is supposed to be an internal feeling and others cannot validate it by measurements etc.

I believe that the concept makes sense for transgender people, however.

SweetBabyCheeses · 2020-11-13T09:08:16+00:00

4) Can you explain why gender identity does not exist? Don't cisgender people identify as/feel like they are the sex they were assigned at birth? Don't other animals identify as their sex assigned at birth due to lack of cognitive ability to identify as anything but their own sex?

I am offended by the term cisgender as it is comprised of two words - neither of which I identify with at all! I guess I’d compare not believing in gender identity in the same way that there’s lots of other belief systems that I don’t prescribe to, because I know that they’re not true - religion, Tooth Fairy, flat-earth, Santa Claus, curses, Loch Ness Monster, unicorns, Scientology, essential oils, the Law of Attraction. I could go on forever. But I am not defined by my non-belief in these systems. The except is perhaps religion, where I am forced into the label “atheist”. I also find it offensive to have to select this option of being defined “as not believing in a made up higher power.”

I don’t prescribe to many of the gender stereotypes - I rarely wear makeup or high heels, I hate shopping, I have lots of male friends, my hobbies are more often done by men. Yet it has never even occurred to me for a fleeting second that I might not be anything but a woman.

I’m glad that you bring up other species though because clearly other animals are not assigned anything at birth. I’ve watched a lot of David Attenborough documentaries and that has never been mentioned. I guess animals can instinctively tell which of them are which sex due to the fact that they usually look/smell a bit different. I guess the biological urge to successfully reproduce and pass on genes that fuels all life on this planet also sometimes means they behave differently. Anyway, my point is that we are also animals and we are no different! I could take a Lion, shave off his mane, castrate him, teach him how to hunt etc but something tells me that the rest of the pack are never going to be fooled. He’s not miraculously a lioness is he?

verypeaktrans · 2020-11-13T10:12:14+00:00

5) Is it okay to invalidate someone's gender identity? Wouldn't invalidating someone's gender identity be lgbtphobic? If no, can you explain why?

I think this sentence "Wouldn't invalidating someone's gender identity be lgbtphobic?" makes more sense as "wouldn't invalidating someone's gender identity make you a bad person?" That's all the word "phobic" seems to represent anymore. Similarly, "invalidating" has also lost it's meaning and I believe the most correct equivalent would be "making people feel bad".

If someone who is female, looks like a female, acts like a female, but doesn't feel like or "identify as" a female and wants they/them pronouns, nothing here says that they actually aren't female. If someone feels more like a man or woman day to day, they aren't actually more of a man or woman day to day.

So, the question appears as follows. Is it okay to make an LGBT feel bad? Are you a bad person for doing something (not using the pronouns of choice) that makes people feel bad?

No, because making somebody feel bad isn't the same as being hateful. If I said your cooking tastes bad and you felt bad about that, that doesn't make me a bad person. Doesn't even make me a rude person. If you prided yourself on being a great chef and I challenged your belief, that would probably be hurtful to your ego. But that statement hurting your ego does not mean you are actually a good cook.

Asking people to keep up with they/them pronouns or call a blatant male in both appearance and demeanor "she" is like saying this: "this person feels like they're a good cook. If you tell them they aren't a good cook, or you don't eat the food they make, or even if you say anything that isn't positive, you're a bad person. If you don't, you're either lacking basic respect, or you're responsible if they feel so bad they kill themselves."

Well, I can't do that. I don't respect people whose egos are so fragile that they can't handle basic facts. And I won't tolerate suicide baiting as a form of guilting me into doing something. If that makes me phobic, fine, but I think that's a really bad idea. Homosexuality is still illegal in 73 countries and if you want to disown everyone who thinks they/them is 'invalid', expect to make no progress on actually advancing gay rights where it matters the most.

https://www.newsweek.com/73-countries-where-its-illegal-be-gay-1385974

slytherinxx · 2020-11-14T13:36:58+00:00

5) Is it okay to invalidate someone's gender identity? Wouldn't invalidating someone's gender identity be lgbtphobic? If no, can you explain why?

I have nothing meaningful to add to what the wonderful people here have already said in response to this post (with a lot more patience than it perhaps deserves, because I find it hard to believe this post is in good faith when the sub rules clearly state that this is not a debate sub), but I would like to counter this question of yours with another question.

Why is it okay to invalidate women's lived experiences, our biological experiences? Historically women have been oppressed because of things like our periods and our ability to bear children, and we still are today. It had nothing to do with "identity" then and it has nothing to do with "identity" now. Women are a huge group with a vast array of personality differences, likes, dislikes, etc., and here you are shoehorning us into a "gender identity" riddled with stereotypes. What we have in common is our biology.

And before you come at me with "sex is on a spectrum, it's sCiEnCe," I want to give you a little lesson on the peer review process and scientific consensus. Opinion pieces in magazines are not peer reviewed. They may seem to be written based on current scientific findings, but the very fact that they are opinion means they have no basis in the scientific method. That being said, peer review is imperfect because it is done by humans, all of whom have biases and opinions. That's the reason the scientific community needs to come to a consensus on any given topic (which can only happen with extensive peer review of myriad studies, in order to remove the bias). Consensus indicates that most scientists who are subject-matter experts agree with a specific outcome/observation based on the science/research that has been conducted and presented. Take climate change: though there are a few (loud) dissenters, the scientific community has been at consensus (something like 97%, if memory serves) about anthropogenic climate change for years. By the way: the experience a scientist has with the subject is important in consensus. It doesn't matter much if a particle physicist disagrees with climate change. So it doesn't much matter if a psychologist disagrees with the concept of binary sex (because that psychologist was not trained in biology.)

Scientists are NOT at consensus with "sex is a spectrum." Plenty of scientists are trying to clarify this point of view and do not find that it has any scientific merit. While secondary sex characteristics are quite vast and varied, the human body is only capable of producing one of two gametes capable of creating a zygote. The presence of genetic disorders does not constitute a third sex, because these disorders do not produce a third gamete. The presence or absence of various secondary sex characteristics does not constitute a third sex because, again, these individuals do not produce a third gamete. The fact that some people are infertile again does not constitute a third sex, nor does it suddenly imply that they are "less of" a woman or a man. Their bodies are still blueprinted by genetics to produce one of two gametes, the fact that they cannot doesn't suddenly mean "sex is a spectrum," and I think it's cruel to insinuate that they aren't as "male" or as "female" as their fertile counterparts (i.e. that they fall somewhere on the middle of the spectrum) just because something went physiologically wonky with their reproduction.

Find me a peer reviewed paper (actually, I would like several, because sometimes duds make it past the peer review process and it's only when another group of scientists tries to replicate the results that people realize the first paper had no merit) showing evidence that there is a third HUMAN gamete capable of either being fertilized by sperm, or fertilizing an egg, and I will reconsider my position that sex is not a spectrum. (Some species actually do have more than two sexes. Look up slime molds.)

Finally, I want to state that I am not a biological essentialist. The human body is sexually dimorphic (male and female) but that does not mean that one sex is better than the other, or that either sex should behave in a certain way. Sex stereotypes (e.g. dresses are for women, men like cars, women are bad at math) have never made sense to me, because people are way more complicated than that. That being said, because women have faced oppression for so long, we deserve separate, safe spaces. Similarly, people with genetic disorders and fertility issues deserve our respect and have a right to privacy, I think it's time we stop dragging them into this debate as proof of false science, don't you?

DeepseaDemon · 2020-11-14T05:21:54+00:00

4) “Can you explain why gender identity doesn’t exist?”

I’ve never seen anyone explain gender identity in a way that wasn’t tactfully dancing around saying “sex stereotypes.”

But let’s pretend it does exist, that would make it a mental disorder (because feeling “wrong” in your body is obviously not the peak of mental health.) No other time do we entertain this. We don’t tell anorexics that yes they are fat and take them to get “self affirming” liposuction. We don’t tell people with multiple personality disorder that they actually have X number of people living in them. Any white person that “feels” black and expects to be centered by BLM is going to be severely disappointed. Why are women expected to entertain men in woman face and center them in feminism? (Side note: Minstrel shows and drag shows went hand in hand. Ask yourself, why is it still okay to be a caricature of a woman but not of a black person?)

Gender identity has no place near sexuality either, yet y’all keep trying to interweave them. Why is the way a man feels about his body supposed to make me override my sexual orientation to include him? Also, how DARE a heterosexual male consider himself a lesbian. Why does gender identity allow appropriation of minorities language? Two people with penises having sex is not lesbian sex. Any inclusion of real life penises will never be lesbian sex, regardless of how many bows and frills are included.

Gender identity for “non cis females” is then either recognizing they aren’t girly, hate being feminine, have internalized the patriarchy’s hate of femininity, are lesbians trying to feel normal, or women feeling wrong because of our oppression. When men treat women like a soulless fuck toy and y’all tell them they can be treated like a man (with respect), without intense therapy, that sounds damn appealing.

Gender identity for “non cis males” is either (once again) gays trying to live a “normal” het life, or they are here for the fetish aspect.

4) cont. “Don’t cisgender people feel like the gender they were assigned at birth?”

No. I’m a feminine lesbian who loves wearing dresses but I don’t “feel” like a woman. I feel like a human. I don’t wear dresses because I “identify as a woman,” I wear them because they are comfortable and make me look professional.

5) “Is it okay to invalidate someone’s gender identity? Wouldn’t invalidating someone’s gender identity be lgbtphobic?

Lol gender identity is innately lgbtphobic. As long as you let males call themselves lesbians and tell me that I’m a genital fetishist for being homosexual and not homogenderal, I don’t want to hear it. I’m not attracted to “femininity,” I’m attracted to females. Butch female women in fact. Does that make me heterogenderal because I’m attracted to their masculinity? See the circles we’re going in here?

Until you give the same respect you expect, I’m not doing any emotional labor I don’t need to do.

AwkwardlyCoherent · 2020-11-14T08:30:35+00:00

Sorry about formatting, I'm new here, if somebody can direct me to a tutorial on how to post so that the comment appears normally, I'd be very grateful...

1) It's not "wrong", it's an opinion, a way of looking at the world, and you're entitled to it. What you're not entitled to  is rewriting reality and erasing women on the basis of it, which is what's happening right now. You personally may not be responsible for it, of course, but gender identity ideology is what drives it. And what IS gender identity? "a psychological  thing" is not a definition! What does it mean to "feel" like a woman (or a man)? What does it mean to "identify as" a a woman (or a man)? So somebody is desperate to get the body of the opposite sex, you say… Sorry, sounds like a mental illness to me and a psychologist is probably the best person to help with that. I can accept that it sounds painful, and I can feel compassion towards somebody who feels that way, but just because somebody feels that way doesn't mean they get to enforce dehumanising language to talk about women, reducing women to a set of body parts and body functions: people with uteruses, people who menstruate, birthing parent, etc, etc. That is nauseating. There is already a perfectly good word for those people: women. Why is gender ideology so keen on redefining that word? 
2) Sex is NOT assigned at birth, sex is *recorded*. In 99.99% of cases, humans are born with one of 2 sets of sexual characteristics, one set we call "male", the other we call "female". They are unmistakeably different visually, and the difference is even there at the cell level, although of course at that level it's not visible. So that's what get put into an official record. 
Then because of sex, human beings more often than not are put onto one of two "boxes" on a societal level.
A human born with male external sex characteristics (i.e a boy) gets put in the box that says (non exhaustive list) "you must be though, not express your feelings; you are the superior being and the boss in charge of everything; your opinions are always considered valid; you dress a certain way; etc etc etc etc etc… Important to note that the content of these boxes varies through history and between societies to at least some extent - for example in the 18thC, men wore shoes  with high heels, for example). 
A human born with female external sex characteristics (i.e a girl) gets put in the box that says (also a non exhaustive list) "you are sweet and compliant; you must always put others above yourself; you are emotional and unreliable, and your life has less value; don't worry your pretty little head about things, you just be pretty; you have no value besides your ability to bear children; you dress a certain way that is very different from males; etc etc etc etc etc…) Some of us call these boxes "gender roles" or "gender stereotypes", and do not believe that they are inevitable. Still, "gender" comes closer to being assigned, in that "society" places different expectations and values on humans depending on what sex they are. …or, in other words, gender is a social construct. Which as an idea is pretty much feminism 101, as far as I'm concerned.
3) I believe that was a refutal of the argument put forward by companies like Mermaids, who see a boy who wants to wear a dress, or a girl who wants to play with trucks (for example - I want to keep things simple) as evidence that their body doesn't match the gender box they should - according to Mermaids - live in (boys shouldn't want to wear dresses, girls shouldn't want to play with trucks), and so they must be put on a path of medicalisation for the rest of their lives, because of course we simply cannot have boys wearing dresses or girl playing with trucks, I mean, the horror!!!!! Some of us think that Mermaids attitude is HUGELY regressive.
4) I'm sure it exists for people who believe in it. But not all of us do. In fact, I believe most people have no idea what a gender identity is, or care about one. I personally do not have a gender identity. I don't "identify as" the sex I am, my sex is just a reality (and it was not assigned at birth, it was recorded). It matters in some ways, for example around health issues, it doesn't matter in others (thanks in no small part to feminism, or so I believe). Also, my identity - my sense of self - is made up of many many many things, and I certainly don't define myself by my sex or my "gender". Also, yes, humans can "identify as" a gender that's different from their sex i.e. they can go and live for most (most - not all) intent and purposes in the "box" of the other sex (I'm assuming that's what it means? Correct me if I'm wrong.). They can do that *precisely* because gender is a social construct, by the way, and in several countries, we have encoded this in law, and individuals who do that are legally protected from discrimination, and that is proper and the way it should be. But no, they can't "identify as" a different sex. Sex is a material reality, whether you like it or not. And there are areas where sex matters, a lot - health and sport, for example (not to mention a feminist analysis of the power relationship between men and women). I have no idea what thought processes animals have, but wow… the projection! Anyway, I've yet to see a good definition of gender identity in humans (one that doesn't invoke stereotypes that hark back to a very 1950's vision of gender roles), so maybe start with that instead of involving animals?
5) What does it mean to invalidate someone's gender identity? Since gender identity is psychological and is about what somebody feels like, and - according to what you wrote above - can change on a daily basis?

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