This thread has been an absolute mess, and intellectual arguments are being reduced to inane drivel, a lot of which is totally irrelevant.
The thing is, what is gender? If you can’t answer that question, then this debate becomes totally unintellectual in nature, and is more based in personal feelings. In the latter case, then the feelings of a trans person who calls themselves a gender different than there biological sex are no more important than the feelings of someone who thinks that “a man with a uterus” is an oxymoron. Simple as that. They can still respect one another, but you can’t force either one of them to respect the other persons view.
The difference is that for one person, this is just an opinion about a set of issues that barely affects their life in any way, while for the other (trans) person, the way society feels about this issue determines their ability to be safe and successful in every aspect of their lives.
Even if this does come down to a debate about feelings, why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings when it costs you nothing to just treat them the way they are asking to be treated?
Like I said, it’s not too much to expect them to respect one another (for example, use requested pronouns). But if the person says, “I still think you’re 100% a man” when the person claims to be a woman, you can’t get mad at them for stating that when you can’t prove them wrong.
What "proof" is needed beyond someone's stated gender identity? Anything else is exclusionary purity-test nonsense that absolutely goes against your principle of respecting other folk.
“I said so” isn’t proof for any claim.
That's literally how gender works.
According to you, sure. According to others (and Western society up until the last ~15 years) it’s dependent on your chromosomes.
Who’s to say whose right when gender has no real definition?
If it’s so nebulous, you should probably be deferring to other’s understandings of themselves as a default.
