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First thing. I'm not arguing against the fact that you should be polite and kind with trans people. If someone wants to be treated as a woman, I would use "her" and "she" if this is this person's preference. At least when the person is there (but it's exactly the same thing as being polite with someone by calling him Caius Julius, because he thinks he is Caesar). The problem with the transgender activism is that it requires a lot more than that. It requires that I never say what I think to be the truth, even on the internet, and as a general comment (not to offend anyone, but just to state that I don't believe transwomen to be actual women if it's relevant to the conversation). It seems to me that if you transpose your sentence "in my mind I certainly perceive that family as not a real family." to trans people, you would get in trouble in some places (e g reddit). And that is what I call enforcing a lie, and that is what I think is an important issue. Would you comply with your own requirement that "it would be forbidden for anyone to mention the way in which you differ from a native or a biological parent", your entire post could not exist. You need to be able to mention the fact that both differ to build your argument.
By the way, I don't think nationality is a "social version" of ethnicity. It's not in the US, it's not in France, and it's not in most countries. Sure, some countries might decide that their nationality is about ethnicity, just like they can make it about religion. Would you say that someone is or is not "ethnically vaticanese"? Both parenthood and nationality are about law more than about identity. Your nationality gives you some rights, being recognized as a parent gives you some rights. From the political viewpoint, "nationality" and "parenthood" is just those set of rights (anyone who has them is a citizen or a parent). Being a woman gives you no special rights. The only special rights of women are actually rights of females, related to biology, like being accepted in a maternity hospital or competing with people with less testosterone in sports (female sports has never been about gender, but only about biological sex). All the rights that could relate to your gender (like the right to vote) have been extended to women, at least in the West, so being a "legal woman" is not a thing, because a "legal woman" is exactly the same thing as a legal man, as men and women have the same rights.
To be clear, I agree with you that transgender activism enforces a society-wide lie, so I agree that I would get in trouble.
My point is that you would also get in some trouble for saying that an adoptive family isn't a real family (But, thinking about this again, I must concede that you would get into significantly less trouble for it than for saying trans women aren't women)
This feels like a straw man. Throughout the conversation we have implicitly been referring to saying these ideas in general society (in person, reddit, etc).
I can also say that trans women are not women here without facing any repercussions (as can you)
But in the advent of transgenderism, many of these "female rights" have now become "women's rights", in the modern conception of the word (a trans woman can compete with a cis woman in many competitive sports, use the women's restroom, go to an otherwise female school/university, etc
This is in direct analogue to how now someone of a non-native race can be a citizen of their new country, and enjoy all the same rights and privileges of any other citizen.
I think the only reason that these feel different to us is because the fact that a nation does not have to be racially homogenous is now well-established, and opposition to that idea is outside of the Overton window.
I believe that in less than 10 years time (if that sounds fast, remember that gay marriage was only legalised in the west about 10 years ago, and nowadays it would be considered unacceptable to even debate the issue) the same thing will happen to transgenderism.
The issue is that you are advocating for some rule, such that enforcing the rule would weaken (or void) the case for the rule. And it wouldn't weaken it because it makes it less necessary, but because it forbids some arguments about it. It seems to me it is weird.
What I am trying to say, is that while there is a need for nationality even without ethnicity (even in a world where everyone has exactly the same DNA, there would still be different nations due to cultural and geographical differences), and there is a need for parenthood in a sexless world (assume children are fabricated, they still need people taking care of them), there is no need for genders in a world without biological sex. Genders are all about sex, and that is why transgenderism is a lie. You might say, look, genders are unrelated to sex, they have started to invent other genders than men and women (e.g. non-binary). You are right, but then this path leads absolutely nowhere, excepted in a place where everyone has his own gender because everyone has his own identity. And it is so because gender, outside of biological sex, is absolutely nothing.
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