1. If true, yes maybe not as bad as it seems at first, but...
2. Some of those terms are not equivalent at all, like the first. The last two are very different, and don't necessarily have anything to do with trans anything in the way this administration is concerned about.
3. This could have all been approached differently and more efficiently.
On 2: For you. Not for me. I'm not gender-coded, i don't have the masculinity/femininity thing in my head. Gender is personality for me, comparable to favorite color or music preference. Its like an fictional boundary in the space of what a human can do.
A boundary that is not fictional is whether i can bear offspring or not. I can't. And this is, in my eyes, one of the few remaining places where the "male"/"female" label is useful. Because aside from bearing offspring (and breastfeeding and urinating in certain positions), anyone can do anything.
On 3: Yes, it could. But i see the fault in the societal climate that made people like me suppress saying what they think.
Unfortunately, these are overloaded terms, and we need to dereference them. Otherwise we end up with weird expectations that contradict your egalitarianism. See: "Feminine Mystique," "Second Sex", and "Revolution at Point Zero".
Re: "sex", even this is not easy. Genetics aren't a binary, they are a complex multidimensional field. Sure, there are attractors in this field, but more than two.
These are the problem, not the labels. People having preconceptions on how a man/woman should behave and be like.
If you free yourself from these preconceptions, you don't need the mental gymnastics around "but biological sex is non-binary" anymore because regardless of your physical condition, you don't owe anyone conformity to their preconceptions.
I have, but patriarchal societies have a tendency to accommodate--even encourage--violence against those who don't exhibit "conformity to their preconceptions". It is those categories subject to violence from which we exclude ourselves when we abandon gender labels. We are not "men" and "women" just as we are not "n***," or "k*."
It has absolutely nothing to do with biological fact, which we fully support. True, we "don't owe anyone conformity," but this is a practical matter of evading violence, and words are cheaper than bodies*. So we abandon words to preserve our bodies.
Bro, I have sat in a room in the wealthiest city in the US and interviewed dozens of men who repeatedly violate their partners—verbally, physically, emotionally, and sexually—and justify it all in terms of what men deserve, and what women deserve.
And I see too much of them in every man I've met crossing this country back and forth over the years. Oh sure, it's bad in Dar Al-Islam, but I have standards that aren't met in the States.
I'm sure you'd agree if you had the data I've collected. Men violate women in the US.
Being an asshat is not gender-specific. I disowned my mom for the same things. And the horrible mental gymnastics to justify her behavior are part of the abuse.
Also, as she was my mom and raised me, i subconsciously interpolated from her onto society and ended up thinking there are general issues with society. And i recognize that aspect of myself in your writing.
I'm not talking about "asshats," I am talking about violent abusers—95% of whom are men! It's nowhere near close!
I'm sorry about your Adverse Childhood Experience, but you're way out of touch with the statistical reality here: the "Western world" is overwhelmingly patriarchal.
WTF is "trans-identifying"? They are not literally identifying as "trans". They are identifying as men/women (although the opposite of their biology), not as "trans". "Trans" is a description for people who identify as other than their biological sex; it is not an identity, per se.
You can doubt whether a trans woman is "really" a woman. But you cannot doubt that a trans woman is "really" trans. Trying to be the opposite of your biological sex is what "trans" literally means.
It makes as much sense as replacing "tall people" with "tall-identifying people".
> Trying to be the opposite of your biological sex is what "trans"
They are not trying to be of another biological sex. "opposite" is a rather bad term here. They are living out their idea of what a person from the other sex would do. "their idea" emphasized.
> It makes as much sense as replacing "tall people" with "tall-identifying people".
"tall" is an measurable thing. Distance is a metric unit, even.
> But you cannot doubt that a trans woman is "really" trans. Trying to be the opposite of your biological sex is what "trans" literally means.
Breaking it down, trans has two parts to it. The smaller part is simply describing those who are going through transition. There's no identity requirement here, though most people would consider themselves trans if they're going through transition.
But on the other hand, you can also be trans if you...simply identify as such, even if you make no effort to socially or medically transition, with or without a formal diagnosis.
The flip side is, you also can suffer from dysphoria and wish you were born as the opposite sex and still be cisgender, as long as you don't actively want to identify as transgender for whatever reason.
So I'd say a large part of it is identity based. If (say in a survey) we let people classify themselves into short/medium/tall and it was self-reported like gender was, we'd probably use "survey respondents who identify as being tall" or "tall-identifying people" too.
