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Right, they pick different arguments in different contexts because their beliefs about what trans is (specifically referring to the All Trans People Are Valid ones) aren't particularly coherent and partially come from a desire to validate other 'trans people'. Trans brain mean trans is real (good), denying hormones on brain scan means an individual trans isn't real (bad). This isn't either materialism or dualism, it's an entirely different thing.
In much the same way that non-consequentialists sometimes reflexively fall back on consequentialist arguments when trying to persuade consequentialists, dualists sometimes resort to monist arguments when trying to persuade monists, even though they themselves are not monists. In the past, I've argued with Christians who've claimed that when you perform brain scans on people in states of religious ecstasy (speaking in tongues etc.), these brain scans look completely different to people having seizures or any other comparable neurological state. I have no idea whether this is true, and in fact whether or not it's true is beside the point: even if this finding was decisively invalidated, it wouldn't impact on these Christians' belief in an immaterial soul or an afterlife one iota. Likewise, trans activists argue that brain scans prove that there's an anatomical basis for gender dysphoria and hence transgenderism, but even if this claim was decisively proven false, that wouldn't actually result in any of the people making the argument to change their minds. In their view, "gender identity" is something fundamental to a person's essence, knowable only to oneself and hence impossible for an outside person to invalidate. This belief doesn't depend on factual evidence from MRI or CT scans; at best, those are just a helpful bonus to bolster a belief which is essentially unfalsifiable.
Their view is that if you say you're trans, you are trans, because denying that would be incredibly mean to a trans person and being trans is cute and valid. There aren't any essences involved. Like, what identity-essences does a genderfluid person have, or someone who wants to be a boy sometimes and a girl at other times? It's just 'you are trans if you say you are and you get to do whatever you feel like', which doesn't seem particularly dualist, just dumb.
I understand what you're saying, but I really don't think it's as simple as that. If it was just "mean" or rude to claim that a trans person isn't really trans, would we really see all this hysterical rending of hair about "denying our right to exist", "invalidating our identities" and "committing literal genocide"? I don't think this is just hyperbole for rhetorical effect: I think a lot of trans activists take this really seriously and think that their gender identity is something special and ineffable. I mean, the trope of a trans person's gender identity being validated by how they present as a ghost or in the afterlife is common enough that it has its own TV Tropes entry: we're not just pulling dualist interpretations of the worldview out of our ass here.
Their "essence" is that of a genderfluid person, whose gender identity fluctuates over time. It's tautological but self-consistent.
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