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Notes -
(1) Yes.
(2) Yes.
(3) Yes, with the caveat:
This works similarly to anti-discrimination law. You're allowed to refuse to date any individual, but you aren't allowed to refuse to date people because they're transgender (or, more broadly, because you do not accept their gender identity). You can express preferences based on gender identity, and you can sometimes get away with expressing preferences based on physical traits, but you can't express preferences based on transgender status or things that obviously correlate with it (like "gender assigned at birth").
(You can't even express preferences in favor of them, that's called being a "chaser".)
Ok, thanks for responding again.
My next question is this:
What's the evidence that "gender" exists in the way you have defined it? Is there any evidence other than self-reporting?
There have been relatively low-quality MRI studies that attempt to draw physical evidence of the concept of gender identity, but mostly it is by definition a self-reported trait, so the fact that people are self-reporting it is the evidence.
A common argument is to ask the person you're arguing with, "If you woke up this morning and found you had been transformed into a stereotypical example of the opposite gender, how would you feel about that?"
If you would prefer that to your current body, this means that you are transgender.
If you would feel negatively about this change, this demonstrates that you have an innate gender identity, and it's at least possible to imagine your body not being aligned with that identity. It just so happens that your body happens to be aligned with your gender identity. Lucky you!
If you would genuinely feel ambivalent (are you sure you're not repressing anything?), then... okay, that probably exists and is a valid category of gender identity. But lots of other people do have strong feelings about that, and gender ideology is the most inclusive way to support those people.
Ok, thank you. So it seems there is nothing to distinguish trans people from those who self-report as being Jesus; or who self-report as having been abducted by aliens; or who self-report as having been spoken to directly by some deity; etc. Agreed?
I think this argument proves too much. If I woke up tomorrow morning and found that I had been transformed into a man who looked pretty much like Henry Cavil and was 25 years old, I would be pretty happy about the change. That doesn't say anything about my innate identity as a short mediocre-looking man in his 50s with graying hair, though.
These other claims all, to varying degrees, depend on external facts to be true. For example by asserting you've been abducted by aliens, you're asserting that aliens exist.
Gender ideology views gender claims as being more similar to someone saying "I had a dream about aliens last night." If you're talking to some weirdo who's never had a dream before, you may need to convince them that it's possible, but to most people it's obvious that the claim is both plausible and not really possible to disprove.
What external facts need to be true in order for a person to be Jesus?
What external facts need to be true in order for a person to be black?
What external facts need to be true in order for a person to be a cat?
To be Jesus: Jesus needs to actually be the religious figure he is depicted as in the Bible. (Or, I guess it's possible that Jesus was just an ordinary guy, but reincarnation is possible more generally.)
To be Black: The definition is usually something like "My ancestors were born in Africa [during some specific time period]", but it is more difficult to nail down, and different people often mean slightly different things.
To be a cat: Some people do accept that you can be a cat in the same purely-internal-identity way that you can be a woman. Other people would draw a line based on genetics or physiology in a way that's acceptable to do for species but not gender.
Who gets to decide what the "usual" definition is of such a category? And would you agree that a big societal change in the definition requires a compelling reason?
I'm asking about the mainstream progressive view. If there is no such view, I am asking about your views.
Who gets to decide what's "acceptable"?
Gender ideology holds that these definitions, and the boundaries of what's acceptable, are obvious and self-evident. They're just what Good People believe, and if you don't believe them you're a Bad Person.
In practice this means that they're set by the people who have enough persuasiveness/social power/etc to successfully ostracize the people who don't believe in them. To the extent that gender ideology internally acknowledges these people at all, it mostly credits them in the same way you'd credit a mathematician with "discovering" or "communicating" some inherent property of numbers that was true even before the mathematician published the proof.
I think that both "you can identify as a cat" and "you can't identify as a cat" are within gender ideology's Overton window at the moment. I lean "can't" at the moment, but it's better to avoid committing to that in case new obviously self-evident truths get discovered in the future.
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