Back to the topic and to Metaphor, the question I would ask you is:
what is it that would really be lost for you, even if it meant perhaps changing your mind, to accept that some small minority of people
a) feel an overwhelming urge to change (they might say, “correct,”) their sex
Note that the trans space is much bigger than people with gender dysphoria who wish to 'transition' to the opposite sex. Trans activists claim that gender dysphoria is not necessary to be trans, that there are an undefined but large number of genders, that no trans-identified person needs to make any physical or medical changes whatever, and that pronouns that are indistinguishable from parody must be accepted.
b) go to incredible (and expensive) lengths to become that other sex, and…
Mammals cannot change sex.
c) at the end of this process, they’ve successfully “become” that other sex, if not 100% biologically/genetically to your specifications, but to the point that withholding assent (that they’ve “changed sexes”) is no longer reasonable.
I have a feeling you’d happily grant me condition “A.” Yes, you’d say, clearly some people desperately want to be the sex they weren’t born into. You may even be aware that the term for this is gender dysphoria, which is the distress a person feels due to a mismatch between their gender identity and their biological sex as expressed at their birth. So far, so good.
I believe you’d happily grant me condition “B” as well. Yes, you’d agree, there are people who go to extreme lengths to change their bodies, both externally and internally, in the quest to become that other sex. We know this because there are multiple examples running around in plain sight, either as very visible celebrities or (more commonly) as people simply trying to fit in and be comfortable in their new body. Still so far, so good.
Getting to stage “C”, as you’ve made unmistakably clear, is your sticking point—you’ve adamantly labelled it an impossibility—and you do it with a fervor that, I’m sorry, DOES closely resemble the closedmindedness of Young Earth Creationists.
You are poisoning the well, again. If you merely wanted to highlight that my belief is solid, you could say 'you believe that with the same conviction you believe that Canberra is the capital of Australia." It behooves me to correct anybody who insists that no, Sydney is the capital of Australia. It doesn't make my belief that Canberra is the capital 'fervent' or 'closeminded'.
That isn’t poisoning the well, that’s pointing out the similarity of steadfastly clinging to a belief you don’t HAVE to cling to,
Of course I have to believe it. I cannot jettison beliefs I know to be true and replace them with ideas I know to be false. That's not how brains work.
which is contradicted by evidence,
No mammal has ever changed sex. What evidence do you have that a mammal has or could? What biologists have you been talking to that told you "mammals can change sex"? What text book told you mammals can change sex?
which is increasingly outdated and obsolete,
and which, to put it clumsily, “doesn’t hurt you, either way.”
I guess I’m asking, why do you care (and, please don’t tell me that you don’t) if Carl wants so bad to be Carla (because for his entire life he’s felt he’s a girl walking around in a boy’s body, and later a woman in a man’s body) that he spends many thousands of dollars and endures painful recoveries to do everything physically possible to transform his body into that of a woman, including breasts, a vagina, smooth legs?
What is so important to you (because something clearly is) about being able to scoff, “Nope. Still a man”?
Because being able to utter the truth is important to me. Being allowed to have the facts is important to me. A man does not become a woman by gaining additional breast tissue, inverting his testicles into a neovagina, and by shaving his legs. I cannot look at Laurel Hubbard and believe he is a woman because he is not a woman. I do not believe I should have to participate in the religion of trans identity. I should not have to invoke their chants and prayers ("trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary identities are valid"). I cannot give away any semblance of reason in my thoughts to believe that penis-in-vagina sex can be a lesbian act.
Further, at the end of this process, isn’t this hypothetical Carla “enough of a woman” to warrant being called a woman and being called Carla instead of Carl by her former friends,
Carla can never be "enough of a woman" to warrant being called a woman, because a woman is an adult human female, and Carla is not that.
Now, in most societies we generally do respect the name people give for themselves, so calling the person 'Carla' is not a problem.
and be seen by society as a woman, and use women’s restrooms, and join women’s clubs or groups, among other things?
If Carla were 'woman enough' to join those spaces, if society already saw him as 'woman enough', he'd be 'woman enough' to enter those spaces without a policy of any kind. A woman doesn't get nervous when another woman enters a public restroom, because they can see the person who entered is a woman.
Note that trans activists do not want any transwoman to have to go to the lengths you have described in order to be seen as 'enough of a woman'.
I hang quotes around “enough of a woman” to kind of give you your point (which is true) that at the biological level, “Carla” is not 100% female, even if she is socially, mentally, externally (by appearance, etc.)
I would think of this Carla as a woman, and call her one, if for no other reason than that’s what she wants, and that’s what she’s gone to great lengths to attain, and she finally feels “right” as that, and, not to put too fine a point on it, it’s no fucking skin off MY nose if she’s a woman now. And yes, I’d call her a woman even knowing that traces of her “maleness” still lurk in her body, and always have, and always will. But, and this is the point, for all intents and purposes, this person is now a woman. You can hang an asterisk on her, if you must (WAS BORN A MAN! WAS BORN A MAN!) but at the end of the day, withholding assent (that she has changed sexes) is no longer reasonable.
You can think of Carla as a woman if you like, and call her one. I'm not the boss of you. But it is certainly skin off my nose if you force ME to call her a woman, when that is not something I believe, not something I can believe, and not something it is reasonable for anybody to believe. I might engage in polite fictions about Carla but that is what they would be.
SOMETHING really sticks in your craw about trans people. I don’t know what it is and don’t care to speculate, but, as far as I can see, you’re irrationally concerned about something that doesn’t affect you, much if at all, and adamant to the point of stubbornness on the premise that people can’t [effectively] change sexes.
Something sticks in my craw about being forced to participate in make believe.
In Canada, an employee was awarded $30,000 because another employee used she/her pronouns for her, when she wanted they/them pronouns. In her testimony to the tribunal, she claims deep trauma from hearing she/her pronouns.
The owner of a private campground in Michigan, America wanted to make his grounds all male. This made a lot of people extremely angry, because trans activists cannot allow people to choose with whom they want to associate. They cannot abide the thought that some men just want to be around other men, and not women masquerading as men, and the thought is so triggering to them they will use every social and legal tool available to them to stop it.
In my younger days, I occasionally visited a gay sex-on-premises venue. Do you believe a transman is 'man enough' to be admitted? If the majority of members did not want transmen admitted, or if the owner didn't want it, shouldn't he have that right?
What would you be giving up to grant that, yes, in vanishingly small numbers and after a virtual battery of treatments, some people [effectively, if you must] ‘change sexes’?
Women would have their sporting achievements trampled upon, to appease the vanity of men who believe they have qualified as women.
Women's psychological comfort and physical security are compromised when they are forced to accept males into their spaces.
Freedom of speech, thought, and conscience are compromised by the legal erasure of a person's birth sex, the general proscription on 'deadnaming', the government enforcement of pronouns.
Do you know the people who are banned on Twitter? Donald Trump, and people who "misgender".
The trans-industrial complex absolutely dominates nearly all LGBT organisations and societies. Absolutely absurd ideas, like that gender is assigned at birth, or that homosexual men are attracted to the 'male gender' and not the male sex, are now uttered without any murmur of protest or pushback. Caitlyn Jenner's bio on Wikipedia, describing his athletic history, where he competed and won as a man, is un-fucking-readable because of the desperate need for the author to avoid any pronouns. The trans-industrial complex has been so successful, a man can expose his penis to young girls in a female-only spa, and the outcry is about the people who called him a man.
The trans-industrial complex has been so successful that it's as if they read Nineteen Eighty-Four as an instruction manual.