Gender is a social construct - unless you're trans?

The term 'gender' is itself a social construct, an absolutely meaningless one. You're either male or female and various deviations from the stereotypical 'male' or 'female' character do not mean that your gender is different -- just that you, as any other person, aren't a carbon copy of a stereotypical man or woman. It seems to me the word 'personality' can readily be substituted for 'gender'.

If you're trans then clearly there are structural changes at play in your brain and you're feeling dissonance because your brain is expecting a different body than the one you're in. Nothing to do with 'gender'.

The term 'gender' is itself a social construct, an absolutely meaningless one. You're either male or female and various deviations from the stereotypical 'male' or 'female' character do not mean that your gender is different -- just that you, as any other person, aren't a carbon copy of a stereotypical man or woman. It seems to me the word 'personality' can readily be substituted for 'gender'.

If you're trans then clearly there are structural changes at play in your brain and you're feeling dissonance because your brain is expecting a different body than the one you're in. Nothing to do with 'gender'.

I know what you're thinking. None of this makes much sense. Many things espoused by the LGBTQA+ community rarely do.

We have a set of male/female principles that are inherently biological/physical (genitals, sexual dimorphism, childbirth) and we have a set of male/female principles that are not biological (clothing, hairstyles, manner of speech, pronouns, even colours). In most circumstances, set B is more prominent in our lives than set A.

Set B is just as biological as set A.

Are you trying to be funny? How the hell is the colour pink "just as biological" as a person's bone structure?

Hairstyles are certainly not down to societal influence, the reason women with long hair look much more attractive than short-haired women to men is because long, healthy hair signals that the woman is healthy herself. Sure, anyone can have healthy hair nowadays but this was much harder to achieve throughout most of humanity's existence due to poor availability of nutrients and therefore only the fittest, most suitable for procreation women had such hair. The brain still finds such things attractive because it has not caught up with the pace of industrial and societal progress and essentially still believes we're living in a desert.

It should be quite evident that it's nearly impossible to change what people find attractive -- despite years of constant criticism, men still aren't attracted to fat women and no amount of 'fat is beautiful' rhetoric is ever going to change that.

Same thing goes for manner of speech, women find deep, confident and commanding male voices attractive as this signals high testosterone because androgens elongate the vocal cords and deepen the voice as the boy undergoes puberty. A man who speaks with a high-pitched, timid voice is not attractive to women as this signals low testosterone, which is not exactly a desirable trait for procreation.

Clothing is nothing more than a way for women and men to emphasise their particular physical traits that make them attractive to the opposite sex -- breasts, thighs and ass for women and broad shoulders, chest, tapered waist for men.

There is very little societal influence in most things because biology dictates culture, not the other way around.

Colour was not the only thing you mentioned in that list.

Hairstyles are certainly not down to societal influence, the reason women with long hair look much more attractive than short-haired women to men is because long, healthy hair signals that the woman is healthy herself. Sure, anyone can have healthy hair nowadays but this was much harder to achieve throughout most of humanity's existence due to poor availability of nutrients and therefore only the fittest, most suitable for procreation women had such hair. The brain still finds such things attractive because it has not caught up with the pace of industrial and societal progress and essentially still believes we're living in a desert. It should be quite evident that it's nearly impossible to change what people find attractive -- despite years of constant criticism, men still aren't attracted to fat women and no amount of 'fat is beautiful' rhetoric is ever going to change that.

Same thing goes for manner of speech, women find deep, confident and commanding male voices attractive as this signals high testosterone because androgens elongate the vocal cords and deepen the voice as the boy undergoes puberty. A man who speaks with a high-pitched, timid voice is not attractive to women as this signals low testosterone, which is not exactly a desirable trait for procreation.

Clothing is nothing more than a way for women and men to emphasise their particular physical traits that make them attractive to the opposite sex -- breasts, thighs and ass for women and broad shoulders, chest, tapered waist for men.

There is very little societal influence in most things because biology dictates culture, not the other way around.

...There is very little societal influence in most things because biology dictates culture, not the other way around.

It makes plenty of sense if you're willing to educate yourself on some basic psychology and sociology. It's really not rocket science.

We have a set of male/female principles that are inherently biological/physical (genitals, sexual dimorphism, childbirth) and we have a set of male/female principles that are not biological (clothing, hairstyles, manner of speech, pronouns, even colours). In most circumstances, set B is more prominent in our lives than set A.

Transgender and transsexual are not the same thing. They are linked, and many people experience both at the same time. But there is no law saying that someone has to be both or neither. Just as there is no law saying girls must wear skirts (in most countries anyway).

Being trans is complex. There's an awful lot we don't really know much about how the mind works, and the research being done into transgenderism/trassexualism certainly has a long way to go. What is obvious is that, as with most pyschological conditions, not everyone experiences the same thing. Some people know from a very young age that they're "born into the wrong body", others may simply feel more uncomfortable in society as they grow and learn about it. It's not an easy thing to work out but we've made a lot of progress, and there are many avenues available to people experiencing gender dysphoria that have never existed before. We're improving as we go.

Hopefully that clarifies some things. Feel free to ask questions.

You haven't clarified a thing.

Please explain how gender is both a social construct and something people innately identify with. Because those two ideas are in conflict with one another.

Meh, why should we be upset because a person - who we probably don't know anyway - feels more like a man than a woman (or vice versa) and it happens to be at odds with the kind of tackle they have? What happened to live and let live?