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Notes -
Both of them could be said to be lies.
If you have an essentialist definition of woman (something based on, for example, gamete size or the sort of body geared towards producing large gametes if it was healthy) it is not a lie to treat someone passing as a woman if you don't know they aren't. Once you do know, it would be a lie (just as it would be a lie to treat a black-passing Indian as a black American).
The difference is that, in the second case of the non-passing trans person, there is no chance of even an honest mistake. It must all be lies.
I suppose the difference is that I don't see the "standard" definition as pointless in the same way I see the gender philosophy definition as pointless (i.e. incoherent, leading to harmful real world outcomes with limited gain while ousting a simple and useful system).
I deliberately wrote it out in that stilted way to avoid standard gender ideologist criticisms ("well, what if she's infertile??"). A habit forged in the culture war.
Most people who do have an essentialist mentality wouldn't be as circumspect (they would likely default to "a certain body" or, if raised in a more scientific society, "estrogen" or "adult human female") which is why a lot of the tactics of trans activists work on them (e.g. just trying to force a random layman to draw the exact line where someone stops being a male, pointing out intersex counter-examples) in a form of philosophical shock-and-awe. I don't think it actually makes that much of a difference tbh but it can stump a person in the moment.
Hence I avoid it.
But I don't think it changes my belief in an essentialist definition or that I think most people have essentialist instincts and naive beliefs.
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