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Like, gender clearly and obviously exists. Why do women wear make up and skirts, while men typically dont? Is there a biological need to do those things? Is that universal across all cultures?
Of course we have social norms for men and women. That set of norms is what gender is. Denying the idea that society expects different behaviors from men and women is frankly a pretty absurd take.
The origin of this use of "gender" itself is due to the prudishness of English upper classes in pronouncing the word "sex", so they repurposed "gender" which is just the French word "genre" meaning "kind" or "category". Much more acceptable in polite company than something that can allude to a sexual act, fornication.
There's no biological foundation for wearing a sari, hijab, miniskirt, etc. Those are social expectations for women, or part of the role women fill in society.
It's a wholly different concept than biological sex. My penis does not make it impossible to wear eyeliner. But society has a social expectation that I do not. It's not a sex characteristic, it's a gender characteristic.
You might believe gender is immutable. I'm not going to argue that with you. But denying the idea that humans have both characteristics derived from biology (sex) and from societal expectations (gender) is simply objectively incorrect.
They're one and the same.
> But denying the idea that humans have both characteristics derived from biology (sex) and from societal expectations (gender) is simply objectively incorrect.
I don't deny the existence of social expectations (you severely misread what I wrote), but those expectations were deriving from the recognition of the objective truth of one's sex. They were never a matter of one's "internal feelings", they were an extension of one's sex.
Gender having been derived from real sex historically and even predominantly today does not stop some people from redefining it otherwise.
People can try to redefine whatever they please as long as the rest of society can point out the silliness of it.
A dress or lipstick might mean there is also a vagina to one person, but not another person.
This is a testable prediction. One where the correct answer depends on what people are actually doing.
If you think a dress means vaginas and people stop doing that, you simply become wrong.
We didn't just make it all up as a society?
Cause I'm pretty sure it's a social construct.
If it is a social construct, then people can elect not to accept that construct....
The trans-ness some people experience is extremely general and durable, far more consistent with the explanation that they innately are their gender somehow[^1], than with choice or psychosis. Some people feel pressured by this to, despite all the societal dis-incentives, medically transition. They then are not only their gender in behavior and reported experience, but also physically (with the exception of some hard-to-change stuff such as fertility).
We usually handle such general, durable "personal delusions" by accepting them. If I studied some math for years, can do said math and am employed at my local university doing mathematics, I am a mathematician. I do not have delusions of being a mathematician. If I move to, say Germany, and after years speak the language, have children there, participate in the local culture, and have a citicenship I am now German. Only the most backward people would say I have delusions of being German. Although, this cultural rigidity of course exists, I do not see it as desirable. An advanced society should accept and accomodate its outliers instead of steamrolling over them and making them suffer.
[^1]: Afaik currently a neuroscientific explanation is not forthcoming