Presumably, the author has some kind of scientific studies or evidence to back up his position though (as his claims rely on that)? In which case, he would be using his "social capital" to try and have the debate be more focused on science and research, and less about belief.

Both sides argue that based on interpretations of the scientific studies they have selected, carrying out the others' suggestions with regard to treating gender dysphoria or even saying the wrong things about gender in a manner which might form impressions upon young people is tantamount to child abuse. The author didn't write his original article arguing that medical professionals shouldn't affirm gender in order to encourage them to test their hypotheses.

And needless to say there are many others who take things further than the author.

You don't need scientific studies to prove that male and female are different, and the world isn't full of people of ambiguous gender. As the article states, that understanding is common sense to anyone who isn't an activist or professional academic.

> You don't need scientific studies to prove that male and female are different

You do if you're a scientist and you're appealing to scientific authority.

You'd need to address why there have been cultures across time and geography that don't have these binary norms, and you'd need to take into account British colonialism that stamped out anything that didn't fit their binary norms.

> the world isn't full of people of ambiguous gender

There are about as many people with intersex conditions as there are transpeople. The world is weirder than you think. https://repeatingislands.com/2015/09/19/the-astonishing-vill...

This is one of the most serious problems with the gender critical crowd: They assume that the truth is so obvious all they need to do is to state it and then insult anyone who disagrees with them. Their arguments collapse as soon as you look at the real world.

Male and female being a binary difference is an artifact of British colonialism?

Is that what critical theorists really think? That's as mad as a box of frogs. The world is full of languages that actually label every single noun as either male or female. They date back far further than the British empire. You have gods that are clearly male or female dating from thousands of years ago in any ancient culture. The concept of male and female being clearly distinct and without a third category has nothing to do with colonialism.

I mean, I get that my "crowd", such that it is, may seem offensive when confronted with these beliefs. And yeah, sure, not ideal. But this stuff sounds like what flat earthers believe. They have all kinds of weird arguments about why the world isn't really spherical that can sort of pass muster if you don't think about it much and ignore all the evidence to the contrary, but most people just say, eh, that's really mad and ignore it. I mean what you're arguing here contradicts a lifetime of 'lived experience', to use their terms.

The article you're pointing to - and let's generously assume the story is 100% factually accurate - says pretty specifically that this is a very, very rare medical disorder. It's not some sort of thing that needs to be taken into account in daily life.

But the notion of binary gender being the default state is supported by vast amounts of other evidence, so much that people don't even see the need to spell it out because that's kind of like how you end up trying to prove that NASA images of the Earth from space aren't Photoshops.