If I may interject, I have my own opinions about transsexualism and gender, and they are thus; gender is a function of biology, its purpose is to provide a system by which offspring can be produced, as well as raised and protected. Unfortunately, like with any system, there are bound to be errors. The soul however, has no influence on any of this; as I believe that it, if it exists, starts out as a blank slate. As time goes on, it will be shaped by your experiences; which themselves are influenced by biology.
Well, that is an interesting philosophy, but it isn't congruent with eastern Dharmic teaching, of course, where transsexuality reflects an accrued failing of dharma on the part of the soul, so we merely disagree on that point, on a grounds that it isn't productive to debate.
As for the biological matter, consider that we have
demonstrated fertile XY females who give birth to presumptively fertile XY females. Therefore, we can state that while XY karyotyping may be presumptively male, it is not
axiomatically male (it does not demonstrate maleness only by itself). Because human features are statistically mediated and men and women will share overlap in almost all traits, what's left at that point? Sexual organs.
So if those are removed, as they are in someone who is completely castrated or in a male-to-female transsexual, then such a person is objectively biologically neutral. They are
not male, and
not female. Now, in our society we expect people to be either male or female, and how do we actually code people into those categories on a day to day basis? Based on appearance, mannerism, voice, etc. All of these can be mastered by a sincere transsexual woman who puts serious effort into it. So the biologically neutral person, who spiritually identifies as female (but this is unprovable in the physical world, I grant), behaves like a woman, speaks like one, acts like one, and based on appearance looks like one. In that case you have spiritually someone who asserts they are female, socially someone who behaves as females do, someone who possesses the secondary sexual characteristics (appearance, to be simple) of a female, and someone who is biologically neutral, lacking any features which may be axiomatically assigned to one sex or the other.
In that case, it is
much more socially disruptive, as well as ethically cruel, to attempt to rely on non-axiomatic features which trend toward maleness, or past history, to code someone against the Nature of the majority of their defined traits.
Now, of course, this renders bankrupt the entire ideology of transgenderists. We can actually see from this exercise that transgenderists, by saying that surgery is unnecessary for one's identity to be valid and that people do not need to put serious effort into passing, that gender itself is a mere category which can be violated at will, are objectively wrong. Because those are
exactly the only ways that a transsexual can be a woman! Transgenderists literally argue against the only way that a transsexual woman may be called a woman! This is why there is a fundamental tension between primary transsexuals and the autogynephilia/"secondary transsexual" led "transgender rights" movement. The former is a fundamentally conservative act which upholds social norms; the later is self-defeating.
