Understanding transgenderism.

[The Grand Nudger]

Gender exists as an interaction between mind and body.  The interaction between mind and body is ill-defined, so the definition of gender is ill-defined.  We might want to suggest as Nudger does that it's all "data" that is acquired independent of the biological facts.  But this would be going too far.  We know that the brains of people with gender dysphoria differ from those of cis-gendered individuals in ways that strongly suggest a biological basis.  And at bottom, the brain is biological, so the distinction itself is a construct.  If there weren't biological sexes, there would be no gender.  So gender is rooted in biology, even if its expression is moderated by mind and culture.

Gender isn't rooted in biology.  A person with peen can apprehend themselves as either a boy or a girl - and even that apprehension will be based on different things in different times and places.  We make biological assertions about gender as a society, and those assertions are as disparate from each other as they are from reality - that's the root.

My disagreements with you comes from this treatment of culture as an arbitrary ether that exists independently of us. From which we only consume and are affected by. To the contrary, we contribute to culture as much as we consume it. And our contributions to culture come from our psychological traits and tendencies which are often heritable. In other words, I am somebody else's culture.

We form societies because we are biologically social animals. In other words, culture is biological. It is part of our extended phenotype, grounded directly or indirectly on our particular genetic infrastructure. In the absence of our particular genome, culture as we know it, and even society as a whole, ceases to exist. As exemplified by animals that lack culture, or disorders such as autism that affect sociability.

Gender roles emerge in society because gender is something we are hardwired to detect, form, and express. Children look for it; they imitate it. Culture is inseparable from biology.

Then allow, for a moment, that we do not disagree at all.  I don't think that culture is arbitrary or that culture exists independently of us.  Our contributions to culture arise from a great many things, I think you might appreciate more than most how at least some of them aren't biological in any meaningful sense.

We can, ofc, say "it's all biology" as a deepity.  Neither you nor I would do so, I presume. We are not born with a gender, any specific gender proclivity, or even an understanding what gender is, even if we're born knowing that we possess peen. We can know this, for sure, on account of how being a manly man has literally nothing to do with having a dick. How being a girly man has literally nothing to do with not having a dick. How being girly girl has nothing to do with a vagina, and boyish girl nothing to do with lacking one. Everly girly man and manly girl, ever, had the requisite sex organs...and yet. We can know this, for sure, because the list of gender contents is in conflict from culture to culture, and in internal conflict both in the present and over time. Because we can know what we are, biologically, and still understand how we fail or succeed with respect to gender.

Said it before, I'll say it again. There is absolutely no doubt that gender is a manufactured construct which references a specific culture in a specific time at a specific place. In a machine analogy, it really is just a user profile. A monumentally consequential one, sure, but nevertheless.