@erinaceus
I see.
The big that always gets me is … but chromosomes?
I always think that, that even if you had top surgery and bottom surgery, would you not feel wrong because every single cell in your body contains chromosomes that match the sex you were born as. Do trans people not feel a sort of cellular level dysphoria? (I have not asked a trans person this.) (I studied biochemistry…I don’t think cells are unconsciously biased, nor do I think that classification based on chromosomes is some kind of manifestation of bigotry.)
There's a few things to unpack there.
Firstly - Do trans people not feel a sort of cellular level dysphoria?
If you mean Do trans people (or at least the small minority who have reassignment surgery), knowing that their body is just a cosmetic facsimile of the sex they want to be, continue to feel gender dysphoria? - I don't know. There are trans women on MN so it's possible someone will answer from their own experience. My guess is that even for those whom transitioning has "worked" there will be some residual dysphoria but it is lessened.
If you mean The body knows what sex it is meant to be so trans women will continually feel their cells telling them they are male? I don't think so, because (a) I don't believe the body does that, and (b) as far as the body knows it is and always has been male even after surgery. Surgery, hormones, none of it makes a male-pattern body into a female-pattern body. They just become a medically messed around with male-pattern body. So even if gender identity truly exists as an innate mental characteristic, the whole idea of trying to address an issue in gender identity by cosmetically changing the sex of the body seems more an exercise in sympathetic magic than any form of science or medicine.
Secondly - I don’t think cells are unconsciously biased, nor do I think that classification based on chromosomes is some kind of manifestation of bigotry.
I think the belief is that the sex of the body should be no more significant than the colour of the hair, but our culture has erroneously attached gender identity which (according to the ideology) is very real and important onto body sex and made it significant when it isn't. So the unconscious bias isn't the fact that chromosomes exist or that some people have penises and some have vaginas, it's that these aspects of people are especially significant. They believe the weight society has placed on sex is wrong, and actually sex should be ignored and gender respected.
Note I personally do not share any of these beliefs, I'm just explaining how they fit (or not) with the medical facts of sex.
But honestly, don't try to make sense of it in the assumption it all hangs together somehow. There are huge contradictions and unsupported assertions running right through it, starting from the very basic question that if gender is relevant and sex is not, how come magically all the things we originally split by sex, for example, sports, need to stay just how they are except split by gender instead?