Why the label given at birth can simply be wrong
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
Gender identity is something that can be changed, chosen, or influenced over time. If someone identifies differently from the label they were given at birth, they must have been confused, persuaded, or got it wrong somewhere along the way.
What I was trying to say there is that gender identity is not changeable: it is fixed, and it belongs to the person. What can be wrong is the label. We look at a newborn, we see a penis, and we write "boy" on the form. That is a guess, made in a moment, about something we cannot actually know yet. For most people the guess turns out to be right. For some people it turns out to be wrong, and when they grow up enough to tell us, they do. That is not confusion. That is not change. That is the person correcting a mistake that was made before they had any say in it.
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