Polemical Counterstrike: A Reply to "Why Do Transwomen Deny Reality?"

Preface: The Original Post

The Facebook Man speaks: "So why do transwomen (men) constantly deny reality by saying they are female. Truthfully they should only be saying 'I am a man, I like to dress how I think women should dress. I like to act how I perceive women to act.' Why do they claim to be lesbians? Why do they admonish others who don't want to have a relationship with them? Why aren't they honest? Do they hate reality and so refuse to accept others have rights that don't apply to them?"

The Fundamental Category Error

The entire argument rests on a single, foundational mistake: the conflation of biological sex with gender identity. This is not a minor slip. It is the entire architecture of the objection, and it collapses as soon as the distinction is properly understood.

Sex and gender are not the same thing. This is not an opinion. It is the settled position of every major medical and psychological body in the English-speaking world. The World Health Organization states clearly:

"Gender is used to refer to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men — such as norms, roles, and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed." (WHO, 2022)

The American Psychiatric Association, the British Psychological Society, the Endocrine Society, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists all maintain the same distinction. The 2011 Institute of Medicine report — The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People — reviewed decades of evidence and concluded that gender identity is a complex phenomenon distinct from chromosomal, gonadal, and anatomical sex (IOM, 2011). To insist that trans women are "really men" because of their chromosomes is to insist that a dictionary definition trumps the accumulated evidence of the biological and social sciences. It does not.

The person writing the post above is not citing biology. They are citing a particular interpretation of biology, one that happens to be the simplest and most comfortable — and that comfort is not evidence.

"They Should Only Be Saying..."

The second paragraph is the giveaway. The writer is not making an argument; they are issuing a decree about what trans people are permitted to say. "Truthfully they should only be saying..." is not an observation about language. It is an injunction about identity. It says: your self-description is not your own. You do not get to define what you are. We define it for you, and you must confine yourself to the vocabulary we allow.

This is not science. This is authoritarianism dressed in the language of common sense.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (probably the greatest philosopher of the modern period and whose name is occasionally invoked by those who have not read him) observed that the meaning of a word is its use in a language game, and that language games change as understanding deepens (Wittgenstein, 1953). The language game around gender has evolved. It has evolved because people — including scientists, clinicians, and trans people themselves — have developed a more precise and more humane vocabulary for describing human experience. That evolution is not a denial of reality. It is reality coming into sharper focus.

The Neurobiology They Pretend Doesn't Exist

The post's author clearly believes that gender identity has no biological substrate. That it is pure performance, costume, and self-delusion. The word "perceive" does a lot of heavy lifting here: trans women, we are told, merely perceive women, rather than being women. But the neuroscience does not support this dismissal.

Research using MRI has identified differences in brain structure associated with gender identity. A 2018 review in Endocrine Reviews noted that functional MRI studies show that trans people display brain activation patterns consistent with their experienced gender, not their assigned sex at birth (T'Sjoen et al., 2018). The anterior cingulate cortex, the insula, and regions involved in body perception have all shown differences in trans people that align with gender identity rather than natal sex (Smith et al., 2015). A 2022 meta-analysis in Scientific Reports found "robust evidence" for sex-atypical brain structures in transgender individuals (Frigerio et al., 2022).

But this is not the whole story. Gender identity is complex, multi-factorial, and not reducible to any single brain scan. Yet it is sufficient to establish that the dismissive assumption that gender identity is mere costume has no basis in neuroscience. The claim that trans people are simply "men who perceive themselves as women" is not supported by the evidence. It is contradicted by it.

Why Can Trans Women Be Lesbians?

This question is asked with the tone of someone who has caught a contradiction. They have not.

A trans woman is a person whose gender identity is female. A lesbian is a woman who is romantically and sexually attracted to women. If a trans woman is a woman (which is what trans women themselves, their clinicians, and the relevant medical bodies consistently state) then a trans woman who is attracted to women is, definitionally, a lesbian. There is no contradiction. The contradiction exists only if you have already decided that trans women are not women, in which case the question is begged and the answer pre-determined.

The writer asks: "Why do they claim to be lesbians?" The honest answer is: because they are. The writer asks: "Why aren't they honest?" The honest answer is: they are. The writer does not believe this because they have assumed the conclusion and constructed questions designed to reach it. That is not logic. That is advocacy.

"Why Do They Admonish Others Who Don't Want a Relationship With Them?"

This is a remarkable sentence. It implies that trans people routinely attack or harass people who decline to date them. It is used to suggest that trans people are somehow coercive or entitled in matters of romantic and sexual access.

No evidence is offered. Because there is no evidence that this is a systemic problem rather than an individual, anecdotal occurrence reported as though it represented a pattern.

More importantly: the premise deserves scrutiny. Is it admonishment to say that a preference which categorically excludes an entire group of people (based on a characteristic they did not choose and cannot change) might be worth examining? Or is that simply discourse? People examine and question preferences all the time: preferences rooted in racism, in homophobia, in prejudice. Not all such examinations are coercive. Some of it is simply honest conversation.

The idea that trans people are uniquely aggressive in defending their rights — in contrast to every other advocacy group in history — is a trope without data. The evidence on violence and aggression points consistently in the other direction: trans people are far more likely to experience violence and harassment than to perpetrate it (HMPPS, 2025; ONS, 2025).

"Why Aren't They Honest?"

This is the most revealing sentence in the entire post. It tells us that the writer has already decided that trans people are lying. Not mistaken, not ill-informed, but lying. That their self-identification is a falsehood deliberately maintained.

This is not a scientific or philosophical position. It is a negation. It denies the possibility that the most fundamental thing a person can tell you about themselves — who they are — might actually be true.

The evidence for the genuineness of trans identity is extensive. The DSM-5 (APA, 2013) diagnostic criteria for Gender Dysphoria require persistent, consistent gender incongruence. Not a preference, not a costume, but a deep and enduring misalignment between embodied self and experienced identity. Long-term follow-up studies — including the Dhejne study, often weaponised by those who have not read it carefully — confirm that gender identity, once established, tends to be stable (Dhejne et al., 2011). The WPATH Standards of Care (2022) (the international clinical guidelines) reflect decades of accumulated evidence that acceptance, recognition, and transition-related care produce better outcomes than denial and suppression.

Trans people are not lying about their experience. They are reporting it as honestly as any human being can report the most intimate facts of their existence. To call that honesty "dishonesty" because you disagree with its implications is not critique. It is erasure.

The Final Question: Rights

"Do they hate reality and so refuse to accept others have rights that don't apply to them?"

This sentence is confused in its own terms. Which "rights that don't apply to them" are trans people supposedly denying to others? The right to be free from association with trans people? The right to define another person's gender? The right to exclude an entire group from spaces, services, and legal recognition?

These are not established rights. They are preferences elevated to the status of rights — and the elevation is done precisely by those who already hold social power. Mill's Harm Principle is useful here again: liberty may be restricted only to prevent harm to others. The existence of a trans woman in a women's toilet does not constitute demonstrated harm. The legal recognition of her gender does not diminish anyone else's rights. The marriage of two women, one of whom is trans, does not threaten the marriages of those who are not trans.

Trans people are not claiming rights that "don't apply" to others. They are claiming the same rights (to dignity, to safety, to legal recognition, to self-determination) that everyone else already has. The accusation that they are stealing rights from others is the oldest rhetorical trick in majority-minority relations: make the minority's gains look like everyone else's losses, and the majority will do the rest.

Conclusion and Negation

The post above is not a scientific inquiry. It is a moral declaration, dressed in the language of biological essentialism, that trans people do not have the right to define themselves.

Every question it asks has a straightforward answer. Every answer it rejects is supported by the evidence. Every accusation of dishonesty it levels is more accurately directed at the assumptions the author brings to the inquiry — assumptions that were settled against their position long before the debate began, by the people who have actually studied this most carefully.

The trans woman who tells you she is a woman is not denying reality. She is describing it, as she lives it, from the inside. The person who insists she cannot be a woman because of her chromosomes is not describing reality. They are describing a theory of reality. One that is increasingly at odds with the evidence and increasingly at odds with the lived experience of millions of people.

Kant's categorical imperative demands that we treat persons as ends, never merely as means. The post above treats trans people as objects of suspicion, not as subjects with their own first-person account of their existence. That is not philosophy. That is the abandonment of it.

Bibliography

American Psychiatric Association (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th edn). Arlington, VA: APA.

Dhejne, C., Lichtenstein, P., Boman, M., Johansson, A.L.V., Långström, N. and Landén, M. (2011) 'Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden', PLoS ONE, 6(2), p.e16885.

Frigerio, A., Basteris, L. and Gliga, T. (2022) 'Sex-Atypical Brain Structures in Transgender People: A Meta-Analysis of Structural Neuroimaging Studies', Scientific Reports, 12, 4324.

HMPPS (2025) HMPPS Offender Equalities Annual Report 2024/25. London: Ministry of Justice.

Institute of Medicine (2011) The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Mill, J.S. (1859/1972) On Liberty. London: J.M. Dent.

ONS (2025) Sexual Offences Victim Characteristics, England and Wales: Year Ending March 2025. Newport: Office for National Statistics.

Smith, E.S., Junger, J., Derntl, B. and Habel, U. (2015) 'The Transsexual Brain: A Review of Findings on the Neural Basis of Transsexualism', Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 59, pp.251–266.

T'Sjoen, G., Wiepjes, C. and Gooren, L.J. (2018) 'Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden', Endocrine Reviews, 39(5), pp.675–694.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

World Health Organization (2022) Gender and Health. Geneva: WHO. Available at: https://www.who.int (accessed 18 July 2026).

World Professional Association for Transgender Health (2022) Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People (8th edn). WPATH.