Can you elucidate?
I know there are some crazy ideas around, but on the face of it that definition seems to suggest that if humanity went into a collective coma, or blew itself up, there would be no world, nothing. I'm sure that can't be right, so what do they mean by "reality"? Material reality? Surely not
Crash course - ontology is the study of knowledge. There are different philosophical stances regarding what knowledge actually is. Few question that the material world exists independently of human thought. For example, a tree. Trees exist whether or not they are known to us (say for example they were is an uninhabited part of the world, their existance isn't dependent on humans knowing of their existence), This ontological position is called realism. Epistemology is the study of methods that enable knowledge to be gained. When adopting a relativist stance, scientific methods (such as experimental designs and controlling variable) are deemed the most effective methods. This epistemological stance is called positivism.
When it comes to the social world, fierce debates arise over whether phenomenon exist independently of human thought or not. If you take dyslexia as an example. Some people will argue that it's an objective phenomenon and would exist whether or not it had been discovered. People would be dyslexic, just no one would know. Others argue that dyslexia only exists because we value and need literacy skills in todays world. They say that if literacy was an optional past time, like gardening, dyslexia literally wouldn't exist. Nobody would care about struggles with word level reading, no one would assume to be able to develop competence, and so deficits wouldn't exist. They suggest that if catching a ball was imperative to functioning on a day to day basis, we would 'discover' a condition/ phenomenon based on ball catching deficits. This is a relativist position that argues knowledge is socially constructed and reality changes over time and contexts,
Identity is clearly a subjective phenomenon and so lends itself to a relativist ontological stance. Typically, constructionist epistemologies go hand in hand with a relativist ontological stance, whereby methods to generate understanding (new knowledge) focus on illuminating the realities individuals and groups construct, trying to understand the phenomenon as they see or experience things. It is argued that the scientific method (such as CASS is calling for) is irrelevant. This is called a constructivist epistemological stance.
What is interesting about criticisms floating around today is the insistences that gender identity is an objective phenomenon and it existed long before humans 'discovered' it (realist ontology) but they are disparaging the methods that are typically used to learn about objective phenomenon (scientific method/ positivism). Instead, they are calling for a constructionist epistemological stance, whereby the truth can only be found through the perspectives of trans people.
Well done to anyone still with me in this. It's a bit of a nerdy area - but you did ask me to elucidate!