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Categories are imperfect, sure. But what’s being defended by most people against the “trans agenda” is the idea that physical intersexual bodies are a statistical anomaly so small as to be bordering on anecdotal, and that gender dysphoria is a rare mental disorder resulting in a delusion, not an oppressed minority identity deserving of protection.
It follows from that perspective that altering gendered language in laws, issuing puberty blockers and sterilizing children, teaching children about gender identity in socially contagious ways, and issuing punishments for calling a male body in a dress “him” are absurd, cruel, malicious, and tyrannical, and evidence of a malign undercurrent trying to force those with eyes to deny what they can clearly see.
For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that it became politically relevant that of all the decimal numbers starting with 2, only 2.0 + 2.0 exactly add up to 4.0. Academics start discussing how the vast percentage of numbers which are approximately 2 do not precisely add up to 4. News shows start discussing the “2.3 paradox” nightly, and calling people who focus on 2.25 and below “anti-mathematical”. “Even 2.2 added to 2.45 makes 4.65 which anyone can clearly see is 2/3 of the way to 5,” says one top pundit, carefully reading from a TelePrompTer to avoid misspeaking. New math books are issued to younger school grades to ensure that five-year-old children never again blithely and ignorantly claim that 2+2=4. Pretty soon it’s accepted fact among news-watchers that only the small minority of numbers starting with 2 add up to 4 at all, and anyone who says “2+2=4 is common sense math, obviously true” is to be shunned and possibly fired.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. [Winston’s] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended.” - Orwell, 1984
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