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I think the issue is just what you've said: this isn't actually how TRAs, or almost any transgender people actually view the situation, and anti-trans positions certainly don't like it. So what you've crafted is a steelman that means little, because no one's going to accept it. I agree it makes a sort of logical sense, in that you're not advocating for empirical facts of the world. But you are advocating for avoiding discussion of empirical categories that do exist, which in truth-seeking is simply a lie by omission: "Sex is real, but it just shouldn't talked about for moral reasons."
Actually, that part of your steelman is significantly more radical than at least some of the actual transgender people I've met! A lot of the less activist-minded trans people are often entirely comfortable with the reality of their sex, and agree that it's relevant for medical and documentary purposes. What they often want is simply people to use their pronouns out of politeness and treat them with general respect. They're often quite honest about the limitations of their transition and self-effacing, even. The fact that you're describing common self-identifications like MtF and FtM as "egregious" isn't a weakness in the trans movement -- it's a weakness in your steelman of it.
Frankly, I think the "use pronouns out of politeness, sex remains necessary for medical purposes" is where the moderate left position is going and has been for a while. That seems to be a much better bridge to the right, and therefore a useful steelman, than what you're outlining. Your logician's take on the phenomenon is logically consistent, but cold, stripping out any source of moral urgency from the gender self-id case and therefore losing out to more impassioned versions (on both sides) of the trans phenomenon. "There's no objectively correct answer, it may make a small portion of the population less sad, and some people like it because it's aesthetic," is not a good argument for a political position!
Where I think the trans movement went wrong is when gender dysphoria (as an experience, not a diagnosis) was stripped out of the essential core of interpreting gender transition. Gender dysphoria is a serious form of suffering. I've known people who dealt with it. I've heard some stories. And the idea that someone might have such a tremendous mental incongruity with their sex that they can't recognize themselves in the mirror and feel about their genitals the way people who get limbs blown off sometimes feel about their missing limbs -- that's horrifying. And it activates a lot of compassion, especially in people who aren't primed by activists to find the overall concept disturbing. It's the sort of thing where knowing a transgender person is much more real and compelling than any amount of activism, or any logical argument.
The strongest, by far of the arguments that trans activists marshal for their view is that the only known way to treat this experience of suffering is gender transition. I'm not 100% convinced this is true, or that there are no other options available, but it's at least a plausible claim -- and an empirical one. I have no problem with the option being offered to adults, maybe even teenagers with parental consent -- go on, give it a shot, I don't support that we build a huge legal regime to stop you. But that view has some caveats. At the very least, I think therapy to help gender dysphoriacs be more comfortable with their sex must be legally available. I also know people who struggled with gender dysphoria, and general gender identity crises, but overcame them with social support. If the goal is to actually make people "less sad," as you put it, then we have to ask the empirical question: What will do that?
That also prompts the question of what the second-order effects are of the absolute self-id gender identity theory framing are, including on people who experience struggles with their gender identity: if we make this a prominent part of our culture or offer people the option loudly, do we actually generate more gender confusion and dysphoria among the vulnerable than might actually exist in a vacuum?
In the real world, I see conservatives grappling with that question far more than trans activists, who admit no downsides to gender transition (though there are many), and don't even admit the existence of a tradeoff between making peace with your sex or transitioning. That's another one of the big areas where both your theory and the activists' framing is wildly off-base from the on-the-ground experience of transgender people, who from personal experience I know grapple with and make judgments on that tradeoff all the time. I remember one of our posters here talked about struggling with gender identity, and feeling like people they interacted with online were, to paraphrase from memory, "part of a cult that just wanted to increase the number of trans people at all costs." I also know we have transgender posters here who take a more generally transmedicalist viewpoint; I've found them pleasant and easy to relate to, despite the disagreements we might have.
So I guess what I'm saying is this: you're bringing a QED to a knife fight. There's blood involved. Surgeries. Severe mental distress. Suicide. You can craft the most logical argument for whatever steelman you want, but it's not going to build a bridge here -- certainly not by telling people they can't acknowledge a fact of the world, even philosophically, for moral reasons. The only thing that builds a bridge is raw and real human experience. Or in other words, empirical things.
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