Describing gender as a “social construct” doesn’t make gender any less real.

I believe that in the sense feminists use the term “social construct,” their claim is that gender is not real. Isn’t that what TERFs are about? You can disagree with them about that, but your argument is semantic, adopting a definition of “real” that is different from theirs. Slavery is real, but one does not “know” one is a slave in the way trans people know they are trans.

The feminist view seems to be that gender is either natural or it is just something foisted on people, like caste, and that the latter is the case. I agree about the choice they posit, but not with the choice they make. You appear not to agree that the choice must be made.

You also appear to be at pains not to apply Occam’s razor to the question. In 1994, Sarah Bird wrote an article called “The Q Gene” for the NY Times Magazine. In it, she speculated about the tendency of boys to pick up any object, point it, and shout “Kew, kew, kew” as if it were a gun. Boys do that, and girls don’t. I have no idea what kind of incoming Ms. Bird took for that article, but what I take away from it now is the idea that people act their gender because gender is not a social construct, not because traffic lights are social constructs.

How does anyone know their gender?

I don’t know my gender. I only know my biology and my sexuality. I know that I have biologically male anatomy and I am way more attracted to Charlize Theron than Brad Pitt. I notice that, from these observable facts, I am called “cis male” ex post. I don’t consciously feel “maleness” per se, perhaps because it is far more important to discover that one is swimming against the current than that one is swimming with it. If I were attracted to men, I could be cis gay, or I could be trans straight. I have asked how I would know which of these I am, and you have attacked the question as trivial.

I infer from my behavior that I have the Q gene. Do some trans women have it? Are there trans tomboys with male anatomy, female gender, and whatever makes a tomboy a tomboy? Do effeminate gay men have the Q gene. That’s the distinction I am trying to explore, but instead I get “orthagonal” intersections. (And puh-pleeze don’t lecture me about how there is no literal Q gene. It’s a metaphor for essentialism. I get it.)

On a similar basis you could, but wouldn’t, say: “If money is a social construct, isn’t it fair to ask whether feeling poverty is a perceptual dysfunction?”

If it’s on a similar basis, why wouldn’t I say it? The fact that I wouldn’t say it proves to my satisfaction that there is no “similar basis.” The syntax is the same, but that’s hardly what determines the usefulness of a question. Of course, money is not a social construct. Money is a real tool. It does not map to gender in any useful way. Evasion has taken you out of your lane.

Trans people benefit from transition: that is the key thing. Arguing about whether they are “correct” in how they feel is irrelevant.

In my comment, I allowed as how transition may benefit trans people. But that does not make the question I asked irrelevant. Antibiotics can make otherwise necessary amputations unnecessary. The amputations were clearly beneficial, but asking if there is another way to treat the condition, or even whether the condition is a condition, is never irrelevant. Except to those with political agendas to defend.