This is such an important question to discuss. And there is a huge issue here that a lot of people who are naïve to this politics think that trans people want to be labelled as trans (only). That this doesn’t affect other self-described attributes.
Often they think that others being trans has primarily something to do with sexual orientation and assume trans people are always same-sex attracted, but I won’t get into that here. (I think maybe they have in mind old stereotypes of hyper-feminine gay men, for example)
Anyway: If they haven’t really understood things yet, such naïve people think that ‘being a trans identifying person’ means that effectively that if asked on a form, you would tick either: some kind of a separate box third option alternative to male or female if provided, or if given only an M/F box that you would tick your biological sex at birth.
Such naïve people do NOT in any way understand or want to believe that a big part of the genderist politics is that if you identify yourself as trans, then that means you consider yourself to BE of the opposite sex. Just exactly as much as someone who is born into that sex. Not ‘dressed as’, ‘prefers to imagine yourself as’ or ‘wants to be considered by other people as’ that sex. These naïve people are shocked to understand that the belief means a person ‘actually IS’ [of the opposite sex]
So when being walked through the genderist politics they are shocked that someone born a man, would never tick ‘yes’ to a box that asked if they were a man. They struggle to grasp that anyone would tick ‘yes’ to ‘woman’ solely because they identify as a woman and that’s all the validation needed: you identify yourself as a woman and so you ARE a woman for all purposes.
(Note: this politics obviously excludes transsexual males- like Miranda Yardley who would describe themselves as man. Worth a read: medium.com/@mirandayardley)
I’ve spoken to quite a few naïve and well meaning people who care about accurate record-keeping and they are very concerned that a trans-identifying person would not tick the box of their biological sex. Genuinely they haven’t realised that the politics of genderism holds that self identification both trumps and replaces biological sex for self-description purposes.
They are very shocked that there may not be a reliable way within this idealogy to ask people to record their self-reported sex data biologically accurately. They hadnt grasped that a transgender identity isn’t considered something you take on in life, according to the dogma, (because it’s about coming to a realisation of who you have always been. Hence the narrative of babies apparently arbitrarily ‘assigned at birth’ instead of babies being observed to be either female or male.
These naïve people want to ask all people how they identify (an important question) but naïvely they just don’t expect that ‘how you identify’ would ALSO influence anyone’s answer to the ‘what sex are you: F/M/prefer not to say?’ question.
Obviously everyone has always been free to put whatever they want on a self completed form but I was a bit shocked to see the levels of assumptions and ignorance among people who are all very keen to be nice and inclusive but who are also concerned (rightly) to be able to get accurate data on biological sex, since poor data collection affects everyone.
It doesn’t take long before they start wondering how this will affect the conclusions we can draw about trans people if they aren’t truly visible in the statistics and also about what we can assume about male and female people if these groups are self identified out of and into just based on feelings- which can obviously change and change again over time.