Vinny wrote:
They are inherently unequal. Womens sports have less funding, less viewership, and are held in lower regard in the public eye. Women athletes aren't paid anywhere near as much as men.
You have this idea in you're head that people just decide one day that they're trans or gay or bisexual etc.
They don't decide it just like straight people don't decide they are straight. It just is how it is. There are studies that have shown the brain of a trans woman is more alike to a cis woman a cis man.
Vinny,
You're washing over a lot of contradictions and disagreements in the scientific literature about trans identity:
1. Trans activism simultaneouly argues that transness is a fixed trait and that all gender identities are socially constructed. These are incompatible stances. If gender identity is socially constructed, it can be changed. Conversely, if it is fixed, it's not socially constructed.
2. The social construction argument is a political argument. That means that some of the people who are currently identifying as trans are doing it for political reasons--to disrupt normativity and the gender binary--not because they have an fixed gender identity that is incompatible with their birth sex. This is why we see a proiferation of new genders.
3. The very concept of gender identity is subjective and mystical. Nobody but the person claiming such an identity can verify or refute the existence of the stated gender identity. This sort of idea, when accompanied by the right social incentives, is like Disneyland for people with unstable identities--people with narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and yes, psychopaths. These people absolutely do adopt trans identities to exorcise their demons and/or to exploit others.
4. There are a very small number of people whose behavior is more like the other sex than their birth sex, and this phenomenon seems to exist across different cultures, but gender nonconformity does not alter one's biological sex. We don't argue that lesbians are men because their sexual desires are more like those of men than of women (though the social constructionsist trans ideas make exactly this mistake).
5. It doesn't matter if the brains of trans-identifying males are more like women (though I've read that this finding might actually be related to sexual orientation and not gender identity since many trans women are attracted to males and similar findings have been identified in the brains of gay men). They aren't women. They're male with lots of female-typical behaviors and interests.
5. Some scientists argue that gender nonconforming people would be less likely to seek medical transition if society were more accommodating for feminine men and masculine women. If true, an accommodating social environment would cause people who are currently trans to understand themselves in a different way
6. Trans is a culturally-specific way of understanding sex-atypical behavior. It is not a fact of personhood that exists outside of culture. We would not be speaking of trans people if a small group of doctors had never decided to offer males surgery and hormones. I'm not saying that surgery and hormones aren't the best solution for some people (I don't know), but I am saying that without them, we would not be talking about the possibility of transition at all.
FINALLY: To those asking why women don't speak up? A few things are happening. Many people have been confused by the mythology of gender identity fronting as science, so they actually do belive that some boys are really girls. They also belive that sex differences are caused entirely by society and not different developmental trajectories for males and females. Finally, sex differences actually do exist, and one of these differences is that women are on average more compassionate than men. They hear claims of victimhood and want to help--so much so that they're willing to sacrifice their own best interest to make others' lives better.