People can have feelings about the shape of their bodiesindependent of social factors, and vice versa. — Pfhorrest

Not unless you are under, like, three years old. And still then, it isn't really that no social/environmental factors are contributing but instead you just don't remember much of shit. Socialization begins at birth, sometimes before that at the sound of the parents voice.

Your post is just mumbo-jumbo.

At this point I'm pretty sure you're just willfully misinterpreting everything so that you can continue being a bigoted asshat.

I didn't say that there was no nurture aspect to the causal origin of the having of the feelings about one's body. I said that one can have feelings about one thing, without necessarily having any particular feelings about the other thing. One does not have to want to wear dresses and stay at home doing housework to want to have breasts and a vag and little body hair, or vice versa.

Yes, because the concept of "gender" is used both to refer to the social stuff and to the feelings about your physical sex, and I want to disambiguate that, so that we can talk about one without having to talk about the other. — Pfhorrest

No matter what your feelings, how could you be born a biological male and not feel like a biological male? Any way you feel is a way that a biological male can feel, as a biological male.

That is true, but entirely besides the point, and it feels like deliberately missing the point. You understand that I'm not talking about "feeling like I am an [x]", but feeling (dis)comfort with specific bodily features generally correlated with males and females, right? Feeling (dis)comfort about having a penis/vag, breasts, body hair, etc? This is not about "identification as a" whatever, internal or external. It's about feelings about external sex features. I don't know how many time I need to repeat that.

I understand everything you're saying. It's you who is lost in the sauce. My post isn't talking about that. You keep focusing on trivialities for some reason. No one is talking about the lazy traditional "stereotypes" ... the type of stereotype, is irrelevant.

— Pfhorrest

I didn't say that there was no nurture aspect to the causal origin of the having of the feelings about one's body. I said that one can have feelings about one thing, without necessarily having any particular feelings about the other thing.

You are just trying to reduce semantic confusion, not disambiguate the concepts, to which I don't understand your purpose for doing so. The facts remain. This is just hot words scrambled on a sidewalk.

Disambiguation is inherently about reducing semantic confusion. What do you think "disambiguate" means? It means there's a word that has an imprecise, ambiguous meaning, and we're trying to rectify that situation. Some people talk about "gender" and do mean those stereotypes; that's the main complaint TERFs have about transwomen, that they "reinforce sexist stereotypes". Trans people on the other hand talk about "gender" and often mean "I hate the way my body is shaped, I wish it was shaped like that instead". You can see why it would be useful to be able to talk about one of these things without being confused for talking about the other, right?

But you don't want anybody talking about either of them so you'll just keep disrupting any attempt to think about it by spewing more bigotry and insults. You're worse than a TERF, you apparently like the old fashioned gender dichotomy; TERFs at least think they're fighting sexism. I don't see how you can possibly think of yourself as left-wing with such conservative social attitudes.

but feeling (dis)comfort with specific bodily features generally correlated with males and females, right? Feeling (dis)comfort about having a penis/vag, breasts, body hair, etc? This is not about "identification as a" whatever, internal or external. It's about feelings about external sex features. — Pfhorrest

That's exactly what I'm talking about. You apparently aren't understanding my comments.

I wrote above "being a female or male biologically would have ZERO connotations about . . . what you want to look like, what you want your body to be like . . . If you're a biological male, then any conceivable way your body is shaped, or any possible way that you shape it via modifications, is a way that biological males can be." Modifications can involve adding larger breasts, removing one's penis, etc. --again, anything conceivable.

As the originator of the idea (of bearing): no, not really. It's meant to be about "sensations or senses of accord with one's body as it regards" sex, the physical stuff, not gender the social stuff. If you're stranded alone on a deserted island with no clothes and no other people and no job but to eat from the plentiful tropical fruits as desired, how do you feel when you look down your body and see your chest and crotch and so on? Nothing in particular because it's fine and normal? Revulsion and discomfort because it's wrong wrong wrong? "Okay I guess" but you'd rather some things be different? That's the thing I'm calling "bearing", and it is definitionally independent of social factors. (But, as elaborated before, social factors may be partially dependent on it). — Pfhorrest

Thank you for the clarification. I'm imagining it like:



A body has a relationship with their own body (B), that's the red arrow.
A body has a relationship with its social context, (B<->S).
A body has a relationship with its sociological gender (B<->G)
Sociological gender has a relationship with social context (S<->G).

Bearing is part of the relationship of a body with itself. It's on the same level as sensations, it's a felt disaccord with the body's sex. This sound about right?

I think the confusions and doubt come from questions like:

Is it possible to have any type of disaccord with one's body's sex without that disaccord being mediated through relationships of that body to social context and gender? In terms of the diagram, does 'a feeling of disaccord with one's body's sex' consist in travelling from B->B, or must it consist in some path like B->G->B or B->S->G->B. The intermediary steps are the origin of such mediation. An instance of B->G->B would look something like 'the pitch of my voice generates feelings of disaccord with my body because it impinges upon the expectations I have for it'. If this characterisation seems right to you, I'd like to call the immediate connection (the red loop) 'Bearing1', which I think is your conception of bearing, and the mediated connection 'Bearing2'.

In terms of denying such a thing exists, I can perhaps see why this is such a strong intuition, and something that was part of my misunderstanding. You touched on this here:

People can have feelings about the shape of their bodies independent of social factors, and vice versa. I have first and third hand experience of this (recall the "transwomen tomboys" I mentioned earlier), and it such an obvious thing I cannot believe it generates any controversy. All I'm proposing is that we use different words for the different things so that we can talk about that without confusion. — Pfhorrest

I think people who do not feel such disaccord are likely to doubt it exists except in the mediated form. Because we've not felt it, we will interpret instances of Bearing1 as instances of Bearing2 because Bearing2 is more consistent with our phenomenological intuitions about our self relationship with our bodies. Incorporating the possibility of Bearing1 for us is like trying to see the missing shade of blue. It's not a part of our sensations and thus will not be incorporated into our phenomenological understanding of our bodies except conceptually. We who do not feel disaccord will probably only grasp such a thing through analogy.

A difficulty here is describing what Bearing1 feels like in a manner which does not also suggest Bearing2. It seems to me you have acknowledged the reciprocity of the relationship between sensations (one mode of self relationship to one's body) and social context. I believe @StreetlightX highlighted this in their response:

For it makes it seem like as though bearing - feeling - arises ex nihilo, in a vacuum, or at least in the mode of a kind of natural spontaneity uninfluenced or uninflected by environment. But to want to feel like a woman (say), is at least in part to want to be treated like a woman, or aspire to ‘womanly’ things (dress, affection, sensibility), to be able partake in the gendering process which exists only at the level of the social and not at all wholly at the level of the psychological. — StreetlightX

The task of articulating Bearing1, giving us folks who do not feel such a disaccord an opportunity to conceptualise it without having to feel it, in a way that does not also implicate Bearing2, seems extremely difficult. Especially when we have already granted the influence of social constructions upon our sensations. It's a very tightly wound knot to cleave apart.

Though perhaps you imagine Bearing1 generating feelings of disaccord with the performative aspect of sociological gender and disaccord with social norms, so there's never any mediation of our sensations through the social contexts learned in the experiential history of our bodies. Or rather, such mediation comes later, and is dependent upon the presence of Bearing1.

Especially when such a feeling is so basic for you:

People can have feelings about the shape of their bodies independent of social factors, and vice versa. I have first and second hand experience of this (recall the transwomen tomboys I mentioned earlier), and it such an obvious thing I cannot believe it generates any controversy

As a side note, even stipulating Robinson Crusoe scenarios removes the social mediating factors, so it is not a particularly good contrast case for Bearing 1 and Bearing 2, it is unlikely to provide people who do not have Bearing1 sensations already with an intuition they could not reduce to Bearing2.

Something I was thinking about on the way home was if we imagine a scenario of a baby growing up in a cell with no human contact, it's fed by an automatic feeding tube. Trying to convey to the adult produced by this what affection felt like would probably require describing it in terms of the feeding tube and hunger; and to those of us who have felt affection, we know this could never suffice.

I don't know how many time I need to repeat that. — Pfhorrest

Oh, it's a great many more times. Many many. Nowhere near halfway yet.

You understand that I'm not talking about "feeling like I am an [x]", but feeling (dis)comfort with specific bodily features generally correlated with males and females, right? — Pfhorrest

How about making a "distinction" between the two: I'm going to assume by 'feeling' you mean desire and lack of,

Early you said it was a matter of preference - which is not independent of desire (feeling).

particularly strong feelings about that thing, [...] would probably not like the idea of being made male, I would guess? You may not normally think at all about preferring to remain female, [....] — Pfhorrest

You then go on to say, "disambiguation" is purely about semantics in this context, and say the title is strictly about gender, but then go on to say:

I didn't say that there was no nurture aspect causal role [...]

Then again say:
— Pfhorrest

People can have feelings about the shape of their bodies independent of social factors, and vice versa. — Pfhorrest

Viewing 'sex' and 'gender' separately in some form of "bearing" thing without referencing either 'socio/psych', while they all simultaneously overlap by default of the concepts to which you claimed.

You can see why it would be useful to be able to talk about one of these things without being confused for talking about the other, right? — Pfhorrest

Honestly I don't even think normal people don't understand what trans people are talking about. It is just the refusal to address what other people are countering with in response, which is essentially your posts.

No idea what the "bigot" stuff is about. It is not bigotry or insulting to smooth out incoherence. No one is talking about 50's housewives, feminists or politics. You are miss the big picture; then blocking it out based on feelings of non-existent persecution.

Though perhaps you imagine Bearing1 generating feelings of disaccord with the performative aspect of sociological gender and disaccord with social norms, so there's never any mediation of our sensations through the social contexts learned in the experiential history of our bodies. — fdrake

Yes, that's more or less what I'm thinking. I don't see there being any such thing as Bearing2; I see that as just ordinary gender identity in its strict sense, that I'm trying to disambiguate bearing from. Though I'm not necessarily denying that social factors can have a causative influence on bearing. I'm not postulating anything about the origins of the feelings one has about one's body shape, just terminology to talk about those feelings independently from talking about feelings about social factors.

Something I was thinking about on the way home was if we imagine a scenario of a baby growing up in a cell with no human contact, it's fed by an automatic feeding tube. Trying to convey to the adult produced by this what affection felt like would probably require describing it in terms of the feeding tube and hunger; and to those of us who have felt affection, we know this could never suffice. — fdrake

The difference with bearing, I think, is that it should be easy for a cis person to imagine how they would feel if they had bodily features of the opposite sex, and so get a comparable mental picture of how someone who feels discomfort with their body feels. (If said person does not find themselves imagining discomfort at that scenario, then I would say by definition that makes them not cis. Maybe not trans either, but some kind of nonbinary.)

The difference with bearing, I think, is that it should be easy for a cis person to imagine how they would feel if they had bodily features of the opposite sex, and so get a comparable mental picture of how someone who feels discomfort with their body feels. (If said person does not find themselves imagining discomfort at that scenario, then I would say by definition that makes them not cis. Maybe not trans either, but some kind of nonbinary.) — Pfhorrest

I don't think this is right. I'm cis, I can quite happily imagine body-swapping with a woman friend, and would rather enjoy what it felt like to have a body with tits, but the matter is mostly indifferent to me. Give it or take it, it's not a need I have based on internal conflict. I really don't think it's easy to imagine what it is like to inhabit a trans person's body for a cis person.

I really don't think it's easy to imagine what it is like to inhabit a trans person's body for a cis person. — fdrake

If it was, I'd guess there'd be no need for a philosophical account of 'bearing', no? It'd be pretty easy for cis people to grok the disaccord.

I don't want to tell someone that they're "identifying wrongly" or anything, but your description of your feelings sound like textbook "agender". I think a lot of people think of themselves as "cis" just because they're not "trans", but there's a whole spectrum in between.

Consider it by analogy with orientation. "Straight" doesn't just mean "not gay", it means "only attracted to the opposite sex; not interested in sex with the same sex". If you're indifferent about who you have sex with, that's not straight. It's also not gay. It's bisexual, or pansexual, or maybe asexual if you just don't care at all about whether or not you have sex with anyone.

Likewise with "gender" in the sense that I'm calling "bearing"; I'll use both the usual "-gender" terms and my proposed "-phoric" alternatives for clarity. "Cisgender"/"cisphoric" doesn't just mean "not transgender/transphoric", it means "only comfortable as one's birth sex; not interested at all in being (like) the opposite sex". If you're indifferent about what sex you are (like), that's not cisgender/cisphoric. It's also not transgender/transphoric. It's bigender/biphoric, pangender/panphoric, or maybe agender/aphoric if you just don't care at all about what sex you are (like).


And Swan, you're the one being incoherent. A mod said as much last night. This entire thread is about trying to clear up the incoherence already present in the existing discourse, and you're the one objecting to the very having of that conversation. I'm not going to dignify your nonsense with a more detailed response.

I don't think this is right. I'm cis, I can quite happily imagine body-swapping with a woman friend, and would rather enjoy what it felt like to have a body with tits, but the matter is mostly indifferent to me. Give it or take it, it's not a need I have based on internal conflict. I really don't think it's easy to imagine what it is like to inhabit a trans person's body for a cis person.

This is essentially what I pointed out 4 pages back without it even having to get this far.

That is because he is talking about dysphoria; and viewing everything through a dsyphoric lens, and seeing what is in this lens to be consistent among vast amounts of people (we are 'dysphoric' or 'mistyped'), and this is the case. It is not the case. And it is nonsense. Empty tags with no shag.

This was before the other chick started saying transgenders could be 56 other genders and still be transgender, (and this is a justification they make for morphing and augmenting biological phenotypic sex-attributes to be the opposite sex) while simultaneously saying "transgenderism" is unrelated to sex, but is simply a matter of gender.

Not one thing has added up here.

↪fdrake I don't want to tell someone that they're "identifying wrongly" or anything, but your description of your feelings sound like textbook "agender". I think a lot of people think of themselves as "cis" just because they're not "trans", but there's a whole spectrum in between. — Pfhorrest

Errr... I do feel some amount of revulsion in thinking that I'd be agender? I mean... Yeah. I'm pretty happy as a bloke, I'm not indifferent to having my bits in the configuration that they're in, it's just not something I think about. I don't have sensations of disaccord or accord with my own sex! They're just bits! But they're my bits. In my book this is completely consistent with being cis, though you can absolutely call me agender if this is accurate.

I think my imagination of what it's like to be in a woman's body remains an intellectual exercise, I don't think of it as something I want or need, I don't feel like 'in an ideal world I'd have tits', my... orientation... is squarely towards my own sex. So's my bearing, there's no desire there except for curiosity, no conflict.

I think this is a case of a one sided distinction, it only feels like a distinction from one side. Like native Gallic speakers and the rest of the Scots.

A little bit of history of my views of this, for illustration: when I was a teenager, and first talking to someone else about imagining what it would be like to have a more female body, that one other guy I talked to agreed with me, so I spent quite a long while after that thinking that of course every guy would enjoy being able to body-swap with a woman like fdrake describes. Then years later I met guys who were absolutely repulsed by the idea and said they would be freaked the fuck out and sickened if they found themselves in a woman's body.

So I understand that people who feel no particular discomfort with the bodies they were born with -- and to clarify, I am okay with the body I was born with, and wouldn't call myself dysphoric, which is why I don't call myself trans -- who wouldn't mind if their bodies were different might think, like I did for a while, that everybody who isn't trans is like that. But there are other people who are much more strongly "un-trans" than that, and I'm pretty sure that those people are supposed to be the referents of "cis", with people in between being something in between. And, just like the Kinsey scale results show that a lot more people are more bisexual/pansexual/etc than we think, I suspect that a lot more people are somewhere more toward the middle of the spectrum than strictly cis, even if they still lean toward the cis side of things.

So I understand that people who feel no particular discomfort with the bodies they were born with -- and to clarify, I am okay with the body I was born with, and wouldn't call myself dysphoric, which is why I don't call myself trans -- who wouldn't mind if their bodies were different might think, like I did for a while, that everybody who isn't trans is like that. But there are other people who are much more strongly "un-trans" than that, and I'm pretty sure that those people are supposed to be the referents of "cis", with people in between being something in between. And, just like the Kinsey scale results show that a lot more people are more bisexual/pansexual/etc than we think, I suspect that a lot more people are somewhere more toward the middle of the spectrum than strictly cis, even if they still lean toward the cis side of things. — Pfhorrest

What seems intuitive to me is that cisgender people are so identified (enfleshed?) with their sex that it becomes transparent to them, there are no distinctions and sites of tension that would furnish any Bearing1 sensations. I do sometimes have critical thoughts about gendered social styles, but that's not coupled with my body at all in my intuitions.

Maybe if I actually was transported to a woman's body I'd feel revulsed, I dunno. I'm sure that some cis people do feel revulsed or yucked out by body-switching thoughts. But it's not a necessity.

I'm also sure that people have different intensities of attachment to the sex of their body, but it'd be extremely difficult to pin down the aetiology of the intensity differences through observational studies or anecdotes (see the stuff on Bearing 1 vs Bearing 2).

That is because he is talking about dysphoria; and viewing everything through a dsyphoric lens, and seeing what is in this lens to be consistent among vast amounts of people (we are 'dysphoric' or 'mistyped'), and this is the case. It is not the case. And it is nonsense. Empty tags with no shag. — Swan

There isn't necessarily a medical dimension to the OP's ideas. Regardless, if what you're saying is true, your needlessly aggressive style in the thread has wasted your time; it's frustrated the progress of your discussion with the OP.

What seems intuitive to me is that cisgender people are so identified (enfleshed?) with their sex that it becomes transparent to them, there are no distinctions and sites of tension that would furnish any Bearing1 sensations — fdrake

I've never disagreed with this. Comfort is transparent; if everything feels fine, it doesn't feel like much at all. I made the analogy earlier to race: white people don't have to think about their race because it's the invisible default and nobody makes a big deal out of it, but that doesn't mean there is no such race as white. Also similar is the concept of "privilege" in general: privilege is equivalent to the absence of problems other people have, so people who have it don't notice it, you only notice the lack of it (that is, the lack of the absence of your problems, which is just to say, you notice your problems).

I can't make any sense of Swan's nonsense, but it sounds like he thinks I'm saying that everybody has dysphoria? If so, that's absolutely not the case. I'm saying that dysphoria/euphoria about your physical sex is a separate thing from anything to do with social identification, presentation, role, etc; that you can have or lack those -phoric feelings either way regardless of any of the other social stuff.

Things are starting to make more sense to me now.

So what I find interesting about putting 'sensations of dis/accord with your body's sexual characteristics' = bearing right now is that you can discuss it in terms of intensity of accord/disaccord. You can leverage self reports and phenomenology to set up a scale. Perhaps you have people like me who feel very little about it clustered near the centre of the scale. Clustered on high disaccord you have people with severe dysphoria and mutilators, clustered on high accord you have your 'phorics'; people who feel in accord with their bodies.

I've been proposing for a while now that that last property should get a new name different from "gender", and I propose "bearing". Part of that is because gender dysphoria and euphoria are all about this property, the psychological feeling of (dis)comfort in a particular kind of body, and the root "-phor" means "to bear". (And similarly, rather than "transgender", "cisgender", etc, as values for this property, we could use "transphoric", "cisphoric", etc: "bearing across", "bearing to the same side", etc.) Also because "bearing" makes a nice navigational metaphor with "orientation": if you imagine an abstract space of sex characteristics, and a person moving about in that space, their orientation is where in that space they're facing (the type of sex they're looking at), while their bearing is where in that space they're heading (the type of sex they're aiming to be). But also, perhaps as a transitional compromise, we could just disambiguate the word "gender" between all three of these things with qualifiers: "psychological gender" for bearing, "sociological gender" for the original sense of the word, and if we really have to, "physical gender" for sex. The important part, though, is just that we keep these three different things separate: enough people already are getting out the message that the physical and sociological are separate, but I think it would do a lot of good for everyone is we could also keep the sociological and psychological separate. — Pfhorrest

You bracket the aetiology of the felt intensity, it's completely ephemeral to the idea, then you can start talking about trajectories in this abstract space. Most people rarely move about at all, there's no need to transition and no conflict, we remain unperturbed from a point of no felt disaccord with our sex or mild positive accord with our sex. This is suggestive.

(1) If someone feels no disaccord, they seem likely not to change.
(2) If someone feels disaccord, they seem more likely to change.

(1) seems pretty easy to verify by looking at frequency/intensity of gender non-conforming behaviour of kids in suitable longitudinal case studies (after some operationalisation of gender non-conforming frequency/intensity, sure this has been done, at least case reports).

(2) is where it gets really interesting, if you coupled it with an account of gendered socialisation, would the changes in felt disaccord intensity track awareness of gender norms? Another way of putting it, does Bearing 1 become a proxy variable for Bearing 2? It seems likely to me that feeling large disaccord when very young would lead to feeling larger disaccord later, differences in felt disaccord intensity are amplified through gender normativity over time.

As for the phorics, I have no idea how you'd study that.

I'm having a little trouble understanding you, but it sounds to me like you're thinking of psychological bearing as being a feeling about sociological gender, when I explicitly mean it not to be; that's what "gender identity" already accurately describes. — Pfhorrest

Yeah, my apologies. That was a late-night too-many-beers post. I hastily read through the OP and, as you say, made 'bearing' out to be a sort of inclination toward representations of 'sociological gender.' & Even if I had been right in my understanding, my post would've still been a mess.

That all sounds good to me, although the way you use the term "phorics" seems a little odd to me. Etymologically, someone who is "dysphoric" isn't the opposite of someone who is "phoric": "-phor" means "to bear" (hence "bearing"), and "dysphoria" thus means "bearing poorly". "Euphoria" is the usual antonym, meaning "bearing well". The new terms I propose are "transphoric" for those who are "bearing across" that abstract space of sexual characteristics (who is thus dysphoric about the side they're coming from and/or euphoric about the side they're headed toward), and "cisphoric" for those who are "bearing to the same side" of it that they're already on (and, thus, not moving; but also, resistant to being moved from there); plus also "aphoric" for those just "drifting" nowhere in particular, "biphoric" for those who cross back and forth, "panphoric" for those who sail any which way they please, etc.

This makes sense. I think if you're comfortable bracketing the aetiology of accord/disaccord sensations, it makes the presentation a lot easier initially. If you're going to start talking about bodily sensations which lots of cis people won't have, you'll probably get mired in the bog like you did with me. A discussion of the aetiology of felt disaccord with one's body's sex characteristics is something you can present independently of the intensity of felt disaccord. Or in the terms I used earlier, you can save the distinction between Bearing1 and Bearing2 (immediate vs mediate feelings of disaccord with one's sexual characteristics) until after you've established the relevant vocabulary to describe positions in the abstract space.

But I guess maybe you want to emphasise the 'purely bodily' or 'purely mental' nature of the felt disaccord with bearing (which deals with its aetiology) rather than the raw intensity?

Regardless, they look to require different accounts to me. One looks at the intensity independent of the aetiology, one looks at the aetiology, as usual you can use the dependent variable (intensity) to study how it varies with the independent variable (aetiology).

I've never tried to be saying anything at all about aetiology, or particularly about intensity.

How would you go about establishing that there are non-(socially mediated) self relationships of disaccord with one's sexual characteristics, then?

By listening to people talk about it? I'm still not clear if by "socially mediated" you're talking about causation of bearing, or semantic complication of bearing with gender identity. All I'm saying is that you can have feelings about the sex of your body, and at the same time, not necessarily have any particular feeling or another about social stuff; that those two things can in concept vary independently, and saying something about one doesn't have to say something about the other. I'm saying nothing at all about what does or does not cause the feelings about the sex of your body.

Again, it's like orientation. Saying that someone is straight or gay isn't saying anything at all about why they feel attracted to the sex they do, just that they feel that way. Likewise, bearing is nothing at all to do with why someone feels some way, just that they feel some way. How can we establish that someone is gay or straight or bi? By asking them who they find attractive. Likewise, you establish someone's bearing by asking how they feel about the prospect of having this or that body.

And just like being gay doesn't necessarily imply anything about wearing dresses or anything social like that, neither does being (as I'd term it) transphoric. The meaning of a bearing label is meant to impart no information about any social gender stuff at all. There might be a causal relationship between social gender things, bearing, orientation, sex, and so on, but we can't even talk about what those relationships might be without terminology to identify each of the different things.

All I am proposing is a term term to talk about one of those things without having to say anything about another of them at the same time. With such terminology established, you could do whatever kind of science you want to to investigate why people feel this way or that. My proposal is not taking any stance at all on the conclusions of those investigations.

You're so close.

All you have to do is fully remove the idea of the body determining identity. The trans women is not a women because she senses female biology (the biological entity of a human, whatever parts it has, is male, female, etc., on its identity), but rather because she is a woman and so whatever her biology, she is a woman with the biology of a woman.

By listening to people talk about it? — Pfhorrest

So, I hope you believe that I understand what you mean by bearing. I am trying to.

I'm perfectly able to imagine that being trans or gender non-conforming can result from feelings of disaccord with one's sexual characteristics, but it isn't obvious to me at all that being trans/gender non-conforming isn't a less intense expression of accord with the opposite M/F sociological gender identity. Or more precisely, whether any articulation of why someone is in that group was generated by a feeling of inner conflict with their sexual characteristics or not. I care about the aetiology here because expressly, you don't want to bracket it and render the thing merely phenomenological. So when you say:

All I'm saying is that you can have feelings about the sex of your body, and at the same time, not necessarily have any particular feeling or another about social stuff; that those two things can in concept vary independently, and saying something about one doesn't have to say something about the other. I'm saying nothing at all about what does or does not cause the feelings about the sex of your body.

For some background on mediation click here.

The relevant distinction to me seems to be:
(1) You can have feelings of disaccord about your body's sexual characteristics that do not concern sociological aspects of gender identity associated with the body.
(2) You can have feelings of disaccord about your body's sexual characteristics that were at some point causally independent of the sociological aspects of gender identity associated with the body.

(1) is bearing as I understand it. I believe you also have something like (2) in mind when you consider (1). (1) is phenomenological and can bracket the aetiology of the feeling, (2) cannot bracket aetiology as it depends on the causal isolation of feelings of disaccord from social constructions. If there was a Robinson Crusoe kid, they might feel some inner ache about their body being wrong, and that's a case of (1) and (2), but out in the wild, we can't readily distinguish (1) and (2).

So say someone is trans. This is influenced by biological characteristics. They're a girl in terms of sex, some body features (hormonal environment of the foetus, say) influence their later gender non-conformity and the presence of Bearing1 sensations. How can I tell if this influence is not socially mediated? I can't just read off an aetiology from their self reports, attributions of causal structure are always interpretations. So:

Let's say I'm designing a study about trans people and feelings of inner conflict about their biological sex. I'll take a big cohort of people from various backgrounds, and I'll filter for ones whose sociological gender non-conformity persists through adolescence, and include them in the group. These are people I want to assess to see if there are felt mismatches between their biological/natal sex and their body which are not mediated by social factors. So I have to construct exclusion/inclusion criteria for the group. What indicators can I possibly use to form these inclusion/exclusion criteria? They're all behavioural. Like here, about an Andrew in an APA study about treatment and developmental support strategies for gender non-conforming people, and diagnostic approaches for resultant medical issues like gender dysphoria (and how that's even a thing):

Mom reports from his earliest years Andrew preferred dresses, playing with make-up and dolls – At 3yo Andrew asked his parents to buy him feminine clothing, a wig – On a number of occasions, he tells his parents “I’m a girl” – At 4yo he tells his mother “I can’t wait to get to heaven to be a girl” – – Visited their pediatrician – “it’s just a phase” – A year ago, parents allow him to wear dresses/skirts inside the home (they note that he’s so much happier during these times) – Mom, tearfully explains “He’s so insistent - it’s beginning to feel oppressive - not allowing him to be who he is” – Notice he’s becoming more withdrawn, starting to avoid school

What I can tell from this is that 'from an extremely early age, Andrew's (sociological) gender expression is non-conforming', but that's unfortunate for trying to establish the presence of (2) in Andrew using this data, because we already have a case of sociological gender non-conformity perhaps in addition to feelings of disaccord with Andrew's body's sexual characteristics which were not influenced by any social dynamics.

The study also notes:

Without pressure to conform, children may not be dysphoric

So if we take someone with extreme dysphoria as a young kid, a good candidate for having feelings of disaccord with their body's sexual characteristics which are causally isolated from their sociological gender identity, these high intensity states of disaccord with their sexual characteristics may also derive from high pressure to conform to sociological gender roles! So instead of it being a case of (2), it'd be a case of (1).

Edit: If the diagrams helped you, I'm thinking of this like:

(A) Chains like Body->Body->Gender->Social Context->Body are candidates for felt disaccord with one's sex which are not preceded by or mediated through the other stuff.
(B) Chains like Body->Gender->Social Context->Body->Body are not, there's a Body->Body path there, but it was preceded by a path from Body to Gender to Social Context to Body, thinking of this as an internalisation of social norms mediating one's self interpretations and sensations of disaccord.

I take it on trust that someone can have feelings of discomfort with their body's sexual characteristics which do not concern their sociological gender identity, but I can't take it on trust that these feelings would occur without exposure to any social mediators. In terms of my diagram, that feelings of disaccord with one's sexual characteristics occur in the path B->B without having some path which did not contain something other than B at a previous point in time. Or more prosaically, "I feel discomfort with the sexual characteristics of my body and did so without any social influence" vs "I feel discomfort with the sexual characteristics of my body and did so with some social influence". The distinction's important, as it's very similar to "Immediately after I lost my job, I had states of sadness which did not concern my job, life sucks" and being sad in general "Immediately after I lost my job, I had low mood which was not influenced by losing my job". I mean... someone's just lost their job and they're fucking sad, they tell you that this has nothing to do with their job, but all that says is that their states of sadness do not concern their job, not that their states of sadness were causally isolated from losing their job.

The problem is "blue bin" and "green bin" both have the same necessary attributes to be the "same bins, in different clothing". — Swan

Alas you are quite wrong. A blue bin lacks entirely the necessary attribute of greenness. Greenness is declared necessary, and declared to be a matter of substance that underlies clothing. If the substance of the bin is blue, it remains blue no matter that you clothe it or paint it or label it in green. You are guilty here of the very thing you complain of in others WRT sex.