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There are no insights to be drawn from the comparison, because you never stop to define what a "mom" is. If "mom" is defined as "the person from whose womb a child sprung," then step-moms are not moms, and nor are women who use surrogate mothers. If it means, as you hint is can, "the person who nutured you in the manner that our society associates with motherhood," then a step-mother can be a mother. As can arguably a man. And different definitions can be used in different contexts; for the purpose of determining who has the right to due process before being deprived of parental rights, a stepmother who has not adopted her stepchild might not be deemed to be the child's mother. But for purposes of determining who gets to go to mother-daughter day at the ballpark, she probably is.
Similarly, whether a transwoman is a "real woman" depends entirely on the definition one uses. And, that, of course, is the root of the dispute. People on the right think that self-identification is completely meaningless, while those on the left think that it is the whole thing, at least for the issues that they care about. And, of course, self-identification is often all that defines group membership in many contexts. But obviously not all.
Two problems with that:
If man/woman is defined through self-identification, then the definition becomes recursive, and therefore useless. I have no idea whether or not I am a woman, because I don't know whether I identify as one, because I don't know what a woman is.
The left does not think it is the whole thing. Relatively recently there was a shooting, where the shooter identified as non-binary. No one on the left believed him.
Individual people on the left believe that it is the whole thing when it suits them. Or at the very least, they believe that it is the whole thing often enough that making self-ID the legal standard is defensible.
Which shooting?
Believing something when it suits you is another way of saying you don't believe it, as far as I'm concerned. "Often enough" might be more defensible, if there are some criteria provided for when the definition applies, and when not. Provided the criteria don't boil down to "when it suits me".
Colorado Springs from November last year.
That's the problem with self-ID. Leftists may tacitly acknowledge that Karen White isn't really trans, but the framework of self-ID admits no such distinction - declaring it makes it so. As far as I can see the whole thing boils down to a no true Scotsman argument - if they're a good guy then they're really trans, if they're a bad guy then they're a faker. It's the exact same kind of sophistry as "that guy who murdered two people wasn't a true Christian (despite going to church every day and being able to recite the Bible from memory), because as soon as he murdered two people he was no longer following the teachings of Christ - therefore, the set of 'true Christians' logically can only include good guys."
'"The best course of action is to take the suspect’s assertion “in stride” and use they/them pronouns for Aldrich, while at the same time keeping in mind the suspect’s alleged crimes, past and the impact that this kind of troll could have on the LGBTQ community, according to Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.'
So at least one person on the left (cautiously) believes him enough to honour his request to be addressed by the relevant pronouns.
I don't think you can conclude that they believe he is sincere. It seems more likely that they are willing to humor an obvious troll to cement the rule that everyone's preferred pronouns must be respected. If they make an exception in his case, it becomes clear that the rule is not absolute, which raises the question: who gets to decide who is truly trans and therefore deserving of their personal pronouns? It's better for them to insist that the rule is set in stone and accept the occasional troll as the cost of doing business.
It also reminds me of how Black Lives Matters supported Jussie Smollett even after all the evidence came out that proved his story was a hoax: “In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom.”
Does the black professor writing this actually believe Smollet is the more credible party here? I doubt it. But throwing their support behind an obvious liar just because he's black reinforces their rule that all black people must be believed over the police all the time.
I don't care what either of these people "really believe". I care about the policies they are endorsing. "I believe the Colorado Springs shooter is actually non-binary" and "I don't believe the Colorado Springs shooter is actually non-binary, but I'm pretending to because I support an ironclad inflexible social prohibition on expressing even the mildest scepticism about anyone's claimed gender identity, no matter how obvious a bad actor they are" amount to the same thing at the end of the day.
I'm not here to tell you what to care about, but you were arguing with @arjin_ferman, who made a claim about what leftists actually believe; you cannot refute that by talking about their stated beliefs. That way you're just talking past each other.
Apart from that, I would still recommend that you try to distinguish between expressed beliefs and true beliefs. It's quite common for these to differ, and the difference is important. What's the point of quibbling about the letter of the law, when the judgment is not based on the letter of the law?
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