Doesn't this argument work about as well to deny the validity of most psychological conditions? Some have a physical basis, but a lot are entirely rooted in internal experience.
I’m not saying that psychological conditions are not real, but I don‘t know what you mean by “valid”. They’re all rooted in internal experience, and, unless you believe in a supernatural soul, all have a physical basis of some kind.
But that doesn’t mean that the language that the patient attaches to the condition needs to be taken literally, or even that it has any meaning at all. A clinician treating an emaciated anorexic patient who insists that she is overweight (a real, well-known condition) may, as part of the treatment, interact with the patient avoiding, temporarily, contradicting the accuracy of the patient’s self-description. Her condition is real and “valid”; her self-description is just another symptom.
I am using the word "valid" about how you're using "real", I suppose.
This is probably a dead end of an argument. I think you're making a value judgement about what could be possible -- you're entering the question accepting as an axiom "sex and gender are the same thing and cannot differ", and so naturally the person's reported experience must be incorrect. If you instead think "sex and gender are different things", you'd reach a different conclusion.
I’m not accepting that as an axiom. I’m asking you (and others) to explain what gender is, in this context, non-circularly. So far, I haven’t gotten a definition.
Basically, it's a set of socially prescribed behaviours and expectations based on sex. Men wear trousers and are strong, women wear dresses and are graceful. That sort of thing. There's a few different concepts mixed up in the idea of gender, but it's effectively the social aspects associated with sex.
No that defines gender role. That’s clear. That is not the gender-as-inherent-property that make it possible to say that one is born in the wrong body.
Actually, question to reevaluate: from that answer you’re okay with the existence of gender roles as distinct things from physical sex, right? Do you have any opposition to someone presenting as a gender role that doesn’t align with their physical characteristics? To altering their physical characteristics in ways they want to pursue?
If so, is your original “(1)” point entirely objecting to people saying “I feel I was born in the wrong body”? I, and I think others, were certainly reading it as “trans people aren’t a real thing”, with the implied policy implications that carries with it…
No, I said “gender role” in quotes for a reason — to group it together as a concept. If you want I can rephrase it to “societal role historically associated with a particular set of physical traits”, but I thought that was apparent.
The argument isn’t that sex and gender are entirely unrelated concepts. Just that they’re not inherently equivalent.
You still haven’t said what gender is, in the sense of an inherent, permanent property that allows one to coherently say “I was born in the wrong body.” We all know what gender roles are.
My understanding, and I’m not a professional here, is that child development studies indicate that children develop a sense of gender identity by about age three. There’s a lot of debate about how this gets determined — whether it’s biological or cultural or both. This is, as you might imagine, very difficult to ethically experiment with. After this age it’s then also very difficult to change that gender identity, such that it’s legitimately easier to treat a sex/gender mixup by helping the person involved adjust their gender presentation to match their internal sense of their gender.
You’d be free to argue that this isn’t an inherent property, I suppose, given initial probable-fluidity. But since it seems to settle into being a largely fixed part of your psyche before the point you’re likely to have permanent memories, I’m inclined to view that as a meaningless difference.
It’s at about the same level as arguing whether sexuality is an inherent property, I think? It’s another of those “it might be hardcoded or it might be early-development cultural, but it’s basically impossible to change it so…” things.
As I said before, "born in the wrong body" is actually not quite accurate, but it's used to approximate an explanation for people who aren't familiar with ideas like gender roles. Gender isn't a biological concept, it's a sociological one. Gender identity is whether you identify with the gender roles of male, or female, or neither. I didn't mean to imply that it being an "internal property" meant it was biological, as I've been trying to explain - it's psychosocial.
Edit: I think fundamentally, if you don't object to treating trans people decently like using their preferred pronouns and name, or getting surgery, I don't think it matters too much. I'm not an expert on the definitions by any means, my primary concern is opposing justifications to mistreat trans people, so if it's just a matter of terminology I guess my only suggestion is to read into what the relevant fields of study have to say if it's something you want clarity on.
