Trans people don't have a false perception of reality. Trans people with penises still acknowledge they have penises, still expect that a medical examination of their chromosomes will reveal XY chromosomes. The reality they perceive is still the factual reality. (Much more so than religious people btw)
Their disagreement with you is about how society should treat the categories man and woman in regards to their person, and whether they should be allowed to join a different category than what society assigned to them at birth.
They feel themselves to be something other than they are. The man who feels strongly enough that he is a woman that he has his penis removed is suffering from a false perception. They "are" a man, but they think they are a woman. This is diagnosable. The same way dimensia and host of other psychological impairments.
Their disagreement with you is about how society should treat the categories man and woman in regards to their person
Well no, it goes far, far beyond that. We've created new genders to accommodate these people (instead of helping them), and are now, in this very thread, discussing the idea of pumping children full of chemicals.
and whether they should be allowed to join a different category than what society assigned to them at birth.
And here's, to me, the crux of the problem. Society doesn't "assign" genders. Your body assigns it, we observe and then label it. That's a huge difference than what the transgender movement is saying, which seems to see it in reverse: that assigning the term creates the gender. "Male" and "female" are terms we use to identify the differences in the two genders, it's a scientific, identifying thing and a language thing, not a social thing.
Male and female aren't social constructs. Society doesn't make them what they are, nature does. Society can and does construct other things as either female or male, and that can be problematic in some cases (and good in others.)
Obvious examples of social constructs:
- The color pink is feminine.
- unicorns and rainbows are feminine
- trucks are for boys
- dresses and long hair are for girls
- pants and shaved heads are for boys
These things are made up by us for whatever reason, good or bad, and each person can decide for themselves if they agree with it or not. But its not objective and there is nothing scientific about it other than statements like "girls tend to like pink and boys tend to like trucks". A boy with a pink shirt isn't transformed into a girl and a girl with a shaved head driving a truck isn't transformed into a boy.
Another good example of a social construct would be the idea that a person can think or feel what gender they are. It's subjective, it's made up and isn't scientific.
Examples of things that are NOT social constructs:
- Boys, in general, are taller and stronger than women
- The bone density of African Americans is higher than in other races
- Bone density in men is (generally) higher than women.
And another one, the important one for this thread, is that gender is decided by your body and nature and nothing else. It's observable and demonstrable. A child is born and any one observing can point and say "boy" or "girl".
Categories can be useful, or harmful. They can promote understanding to hinder it. But they aren't real in a fundamental level
Once again you are looking at it backwards. Being in the category doesn't make the thing, the thing being what it is puts it into a category. Categories *are" real, once again scientific and observable. You and I can look a fish and say "that isn't a plant, put it in the 'animal' category" and we can do the same thing with male and females.
That we've tried everything up to and including torture to make trans people think that they're delusional or sick and they just need to "make peace with the nature of their bodies." The result is dead children. Until you recognize that and allow experience to change your reason, you're on team dead children just like the abortionists.
Oh stop it. We may not have the technology here and today to cure gender dysphoria, but that doesn't make it less of a diagnoseable psychological problem. We can't just say "well, we tried and it's not working yet, so go ahead and be whatever gender/race/age/species you want, the rest of society will just have to deal with it."
What a horrible way to think.