system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The concept of gender is irrelevant.

I'll start by laying out my thoughts and please correct me anywhere I am wrong. I know I have a lot to learn about this topic and I would really appreciate if someone could show me why and where my thinking is wrong if it is.

From what I understand: gender and sex are different. Sex is grouped into male, female, and sometimes intersex, and is determined entirely by biology. Chromosomes, genitalia, hormones, and the like. Gender on the other hand, exists on a spectrum and is determined by a person's internal relationship to their sex and the degree to which they conform to cultural stereotypes and expectations for their sex. 

I understand that gender dysphoria is a real thing and that it must suck to feel completely alienated from your body and society's expectations of how you should act because of your sex. I also am hugely in favor in transgender rights and I would never want to take away basic human dignity and liberty from anyone. That being said, it is not physically possible to change sexes. A woman has a uterus. A male has a Y chromosome. It is just not possible to physically change your sex. If that gets me downvotes or is a point of contention in any way, seriously people have lost their minds. That should not be controversial. This is not hate speech and I am tired of being labeled as a bigot for saying that. That is part of the reason I made this post. I really am trying to understand the other side but there are just some things I can't get down with like the outright denial of biological fact followed by accusations of bigotry. 

If you still reading, thank you, but the difficult part is not over yet. It's about to get worse. I know how terrible this may sound to people and I really want my mind changed so I can understand this topic, but as it is now I have just learned to shut my mouth when this comes up. 

Here it is: I believe that transgenderism is a delusional state of mind and it makes no sense whatsoever to me the degree to which it is accepted, respected, and encouraged. No matter how much a person who is a biological male wants to believe he is a female, he is not. No matter what modifications he makes to his body, he is not a female. I will call him/her their preferred pronoun, I will respect him/her, because that is the polite and kind thing to do. I will not judge him or her based off of this. But really I cannot understand how things got to this point where we openly accept and encourage a literal delusion. To me it is identical to a white person believing they are black and then trying to act like a black person and color their skin. That is horrifically unacceptable but somehow gender transformations have become mainstream. I would really appreciate an explanation of how transgenderism is OK but transracialism isn't. I fully accept transgender people and their rights. If that is what they have to do to be happy, I am all for it. I love them and respect them the same as I would anyone else. But really I just do not get it.

Here's another thing I don't get which ties into the title of this post. Gender is a cultural construct, it exists on a spectrum, therefore there are a myriad of gender identities on this spectrum one can have. But you know what else is a cultural construct? Nearly everything humans do. I do not understand the hyperfocus that has been applied to this one aspect of human relations in our culture. Let's take an example. In some cultures, eating meat is forbidden. In others, it is a staple of the diet. You could now say that eating or not eating meat exists on a socially constructed spectrum. Another example: some societies encourage alcohol, music, and dancing, and others forbid these activities. If I enjoy these activities more or less than the cultural mainstream, am I now given an identity on a spectrum? Some cultures have tight familial connections and some do not, do these traits exist on a spectrum that is worth discussing the same way we discuss gender identity and the gender spectrum? 

In every culture there will be a mainstream expectation of behavior for a group of people and there will be people who conform to that expectation and people who do not. This is a huge concept and is not confined just to gender. That's not to say that the concept of gender isn't worth talking about, it definitely is, but I feel like when we do that we often are prone to forgetting that social constructs stretch way beyond gender. Gender expectations change across time in the very same cultures. I do not understand why gender has become such a paramount topic of conversation today. 

Thank you if you read this all the way through. I would appreciate any and all feedback someone can give me. I do not want to be interpreted as a bigot. If I am unconsciously a bigot, I would like to know about it. And I'll reiterate: someone please explain how transgenderism is different from transracialism. If I can get that then I can at least do away with the most offensive of my beliefs. Thank you.
gpt
Just like doctors assign your sex depending on your genitals at birth, so too do you get assigned a gender and socialized as such at birth. Gender dysphoria comes from a misalignment with the *gender* assignment, not the sex assignment. No one is trying to change their sex, a trans man will continue to have the chromosomes of a biological women. What they are trying to change is their gender.

Yes, gender is a meaningless construct like race, but also like race, it determines a great deal about how people treat you and how you're expected to interact with others. It gets hyper-focus because it determines so much about your social interactions that you're probably blind to if you haven't experienced gender dysphoria. So by changing their physical appearance and taking hormones, they're going from one gender to another. Gender reassignment surgery (changing your genitals) is just another way that trans people can better fit the gender the feel more comfortable. 

You're conflating sex with gender.