Your comment inspired me to seek out some research on the topic of transgender identity and brain structure. Pretty fascinating stuff, but hard for a layman like me to absorb.

Seems to be quite a lot of studies finding notable differences in brain “readings” (for want of a better word, sorry not a scientist) between transgender people and others sharing their biological sex.

The first study I read highlights the findings of many studies that the insula of transgender individuals is very different to cisgender individuals, with the insula being “associated with body and self-perception.” [0]

Gosh our brains are truly something else and are not so easily categorised! Now if only I could find a way to learn all this stuff a little bit faster…

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-0666-3

A collection of many other studies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruenc...

Well, you proved his point soundly. Imagine the downvotes he’d get on Reddit from people of opinions like your own.

Really? It’s scientifically unsound? Come on now.

That particular debate is often a semantics debate, so it isn't in the domain of science at all.

The main way I can think of off-hand to try and make it scientific is to ask about correlational clusters. And then you get way more than two genders, but you definitely get some clusters that contain both transwomen and men (e.g. if I hear a video game speed runner or open source software passion projecf maker using she/her pronouns they're trans more often than not).

I have noticed certain groups where trans people are relatively over represented and group involvement more correlated with biological gender, but that’s not actually that interesting or meaningful in reality. Trans women having similar interests to men doesn’t make them men any more than me owning a gun makes me a Republican.

It would by a "correlational clusters" gender definition put some transwomen in a mostly male gender (though, again, you'd have a lot more than two genders with with that definition).

And correlational clusters is one of the few ways it's not just semantics.

You’re very confident in your opinions.

It’s not immoral to recognize that you and your family and most of the people you know are split between penis and vagina.

It is immoral to police thoughts you disagree with. Believing race exists leads to dehumanization and hate. Maybe skin color doesn’t exist next? It’s just a representation with utility of similar feature/genetic groups that happened to evolve under similar environmental conditions. Is this scientifically unsound also?

Not everyone has either or, some even have both

> dehumanization and hate

Whereas dehumanization and hate mean everything that makes people uncomfortable