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That’s my understanding as well. Maybe @MartianNight and @hydroacetylene don’t believe in the gender/sex distinction but it’s central to the mainstream trans viewpoint and it’s either a straw man or a misinterpretation to interpret “x was always a man” as “x is and always was biologically male”.
Progressives will be very sensitive about language and avoid explicitly calling a trans man a biological female, but they aren’t (completely) denying reality, they’ll just use euphemisms and softer language (like AFAB/AMAB, “presenting as female at the time”). If you don’t have hold the sex/gender distinction it’s easy to think it’s complete nonsensical absurdity and that they’re saying a man can will himself into having a uterus, as opposed to having this nebulously defined conception of the inner self as a woman.
There is no gender/sex distinction. Famously, Matt Walsh asked “what is a woman?”. Self ID doesn’t get you there because unless you have a platonic form there is no way one can in fact identify as a woman (what is someone identifying with if there is no form). So the only possible coherence is to look at the platonic form of a female and see if women maps onto it.
But then trans folks are basically claiming that doing certain activities are the defining form of being a woman (again if there is any coherence to trans ideology — one could say there are many ways to be a woman but trans people need there to be a platonic form). And by doing so, by saying “women are X, Y, and Z” trans folks are basically telling a bunch of females that they actually aren’t a woman (unlike the trans “woman” who is male). That is patently ridiculous. No, the woman who was born with women’s characteristics shouldn’t be told she isnt a woman by a confused man. Being a woman (based on sex) is easily defined and generally has worked for society for ages; yes there are extreme edge cases but far fewer than if the trans incoherence was adopted.
So even if you take the weak form of trans claims, they still fall apart into incoherent delusions since the only way to make any sense of gender is by tying it in to sex and therefore breaking the alleged binary.
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No it's not, and I've already pointed you to enough examples that I now believe you are being completely disingenuous the way all gender ideologues are always completely disingenuous.
If gender ideologues embraced the sex/gender distinction, Wikipedia's Elliot Page article would start with: "Elliot Page is a female actor who identifies as a man"
And Wikipedia's Imane Khelif article would start with "Imane Khelif is an intersex male suffering from 5AR2D who identifies as a woman..."
The Khelif article literally contains the false claim that "Khelif was born female" and for months contained the completely unsubstantiated sentence "false claims that she was a male circulated online": while these claims did circulate online, they were factually true, and this is still not acknowledged, though the sentence has been modified by replacing "male" with "man" which is still a lie since Khelif is a man in the trivial meaning of the word.
There is no "sensitivity" or "soft language" here. There is just a complete denial of objective reality. And it's not an oversight: this was one of the most-viewed articles of 2025. Many people tried to correct the "born female" and "false claims" phrasing; these people were all overruled by the gender activists that watch these articles like hawks and police the language carefully with the intent to maximally deceive the public.
If you disagree and you think the statement "Khelif was born female" was not meant to deceive the reader into thinking Khelif was born female (when in fact Khelif was born male) I would love to read your argument to that effect. But stop your bullshit about me not “believing” in a gender/sex distinction that obviously real world gender ideologues don't believe in either, considering that they're always intentionally conflating gender with sex, and never plainly state the sex of transgender/intersex people.
Intersex is a whole other kettle of fish, and I have sympathy there. But it's been hijacked as the "hit me now with the child in my arms" by the trans activists in order to go "well ackshully chromosomes aren't enough or assignment at birth isn't enough because what about this case and this case and this case of intersex people? checkmate, bigot!"
Someone with Klinefelter Syndrome is not the same as someone with functional sexual characteristics and two X chromosomes now declaring that they are the same as XY male for all intents and purposes. So what if I'm getting pregnant, I am the father of this child not the mother!
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