This is a particularly interesting point to me. Again, I don't identify with my assigned gender. But I am my assigned sex. I don't consider myself to have been “assigned” a gender, as nothing was imposed on me by the doctor who delivered me. Gender is a set of behaviours and societal expectations that I am able to conform to or not.

So when you say it takes trans people "enormous amounts of energy to pretend to identify with their assigned gender," how is this different from saying that it takes enormous energy to conform to the stereotypes expected of them (or not expected of them)?

For example, women are expected to wear make up and be feminine and wear flowery dresses. At least by some people. But many women choose not to do any of these things. I'm sure this requires energy sometimes. Society undoubtedly puts pressure on them to conform. But they're not trans. They're women. Just women who say, "I will do what I want, thank you."

This just seems so much more feasible and healthy than constructing an identity that requires the whole of society to change the way they perceive males and females. And, as we discussed, many people simply won't be able to perceive you in the way you want them to.

Because, no, I meant evolution, not societal structures. A baby can tell the difference between a male and a female after a few months. This is very useful information evolutionarily speaking. Both from the point of view of threat assessment (males are more dangerous than females), as well as which people are potentially able to feed you (mothers are a baby's primary food source after all). It's why concepts like "passing" exist. We can do amazing things with plastic surgery. But I've heard even extraordinarily feminine looking trans women say that when they look in the mirror, all they see is a man. Without the makeup and hormones, it's extremely hard to fool people about what your sex is.

I also want to be careful about differentiating non-binary people and trans people. Non binary people are gender nonconforming, but that's quite different from people who have gender dysphoria. For example, you talk bout a man wearing a dress being different from a transgender woman. This is true. But it's only true because a transgender woman has gender dysphoria. Otherwise the two are absolutely identical. There's an awful lot of "concept creep" when we discuss trans issues which only make these converstaions harder and more imprecise. Nonbinary people might be under the trans umbrella. Who can say. But they're not transgender people.

As for stereotypes being reclaimed vs transcended, this might be a semantic problem. What do you mean by reclaimed? And reclaimed by whom? What does this reclamation look like in practice?