Blah blah blah yes yes I know what the GC positions are. The fact remains that being treated as the gender I want to be treated as and updating my hormone profile and getting surgery to align with that has taken away all of my social anxiety and body image issues, and that this is a widely reported phenomenon that has been well-studied over decades. Now whether as a matter of public policy you think we should have cruelty inflicted upon us or not is a separate question, but if you want to be cruel at least be honest about it.
> There is no gender
This is just plainly false. Gender is the social projection of sex, just like a shadow is a projection of an object onto a plane. When you are making claims like "[e]ach of us is born to a sex that is immutable", you are defining and setting up a system of gender.
There is no escape from gender because we live in a society. You don't get to say "there is no shadow". You cannot simply define it away like that.
> But they should not falsely claim the category of a biological sex that is not theirs
There is no falsehood going on, just a different way to set boundaries. One that is better because it leads to greater justice.
> Each of us is born to a sex that is immutable.
This depends entirely on your definition of sex. You have chosen to define sex to mean gametes. I have a different, more expansive definition that also includes sex characteristics. My definition is better than yours because it leads to greater justice in the world.
> The belief that gender exists, or that we have a gender identity that somehow infused the wrong body, is a profoundly religious idea. And by the same token, ungrounded in fact.
It's not so much about what the individual chooses to do, but how what they do affects others.
Particularly when you consider long-standing social norms and policies involving single-sex provisions. Many women are not at all pleased about a subset of men, i.e. those men who say they have the gender identity of a woman, violating the boundaries of their female-only spaces. Do you not see the problem here, in this wilful disregard of consent?
> Gender is a social fabrication that is at best derivative of sex
Yes, gender is derivative of psychological sex (or what is often called gender identity, though that is a confusing label because it's not quite like other kinds of identity).
It is certainly not a social fabrication though. People actually, physically, feel cool while under the shadow of a tree.
> and at worst an unmoored fantasy.
This statement is beyond the pale. You should probably retract it.
> Pronouns refer to sex.
This statement is pure, unadulterated gender ideology.
> Stop coercing my language and do what you want with your body.
Some amount of coercion is required to exist in a society—believing otherwise is right-libertarian nonsense. For example, in any reasonable workplace or school setting you are required to not harass, discriminate or retaliate against people. That is a kind of coercion. Part of that coercion is to use trans people's chosen names and pronouns. This is just. In a sane jurisdiction like California it is the law.
Outside of work or school you can do whatever you like.
> Yes, gender is derivative of psychological sex (or what is often called gender identity, though that is a confusing label because it's not quite like other kinds of identity).
No, gender is a product of society, it is a socially ascribed trait, within a socially constructed system.
Gender identity is a product of internal biological (including
paychological, which is an epiphenomenon of biology) reality interacting with social context including social gender constructs. Calling it psychological sex is odd but saying that gender is a derivative of it is wrong (its true that there is an emerging belief that gender should be ascribed on the basis of it, but that's different.)
> It is certainly not a social fabrication though.
Gender, including the somewhat popular binary construction of it, is very much a social construct. “Fabrication” is not inaccurate, either.
This conversation would be mildly more interesting if you could get beyond name-calling. I see no response to the substance. This mirrors the quality of argument I've seen supporting gender ideology. Insults and claims of harm.
I don't acknowledge gender as a category. I am gender critical. Gender ideology is the cult that believes gender matters, that people can self-ID, that biological males should compete with women in sports, and that children should receive hormones and surgery to get them out of the "wrong body". That's the ideology. Normies disagree with all of it, and I am one of them.
