First, I admit I haven't watched the video you linked. I do want to engage with you in good faith, but videos are generally just too much of a time sink for me - especially when it's from an organization I don't particularly care about on a political hot potato of a topic that the whole world seems to be losing its mind over. All I was responding to in my previous comment was her tweets plus the textual synopsis of the event on the page containing the video that you linked. You say:

> pseudoscientific posturing or transphobic rhetoric

if you could respond with explicit examples, ie reasonably specific instances of viewpoints you think fit this label, I would be interested to see them. I agree that the Heritage Foundation as a whole seems to have expressed some views that don't appear to reflect the scientific consensus regarding climate change. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if there were other, similar lapses of rigor in their rhetoric on other topics, however I haven't examined their publications and postings in any detail.

Let's address the elephant in the room. You stated that I was "insinuating" that "the relationship between gender and gender identity [is] subjective" in some way. To me, this reads as you rejecting the notion that there could be any reasonable disagreement over how those two things are defined and relate to one another.

You go on to openly admit that you assume from the start folks that disagree with you don't have an "educated, good faith difference of opinion on their meaning". That's hardly what I would describe as an open or positive attitude towards discussion of a topic. You even refer to such definitions as "trans-exclusionary". To be blunt, my impression is that you have already made up your mind and don't appear to be concerned with understanding on a fundamental level why others think what they do. I apologize if this is not the case, but it is certainly the impression I get from your wording.

As for the terms in question, it truly doesn't seem to me that society has an acceptable working definition for either of them at this point, let alone a shared understanding of how those two hypothetical definitions relate to each other.

Historically, the term "gender" was used in the way many people currently use the term "sex". So is "gender" equivalent to "sex", ie biological and binary for all practical purposes? Or is "gender" now something else entirely? I've encountered people who viewed "gender" as equivalent to "gender identity". I've also seen views expressed that they are three different things entirely.

If you happen to be of the view that the current definition of "gender" is non-binary and is therefore not the same as "biological sex", then the next question is: what are the acceptable values? Is it an ordinal data type, or a string? If you feel it's an ordinal, then who gets to pick the acceptable values? Do these things need to be codified into law?

Then there's the issue of defining "gender identity". Is it simply "the gender you identify as", or does it include elements of your sexuality? What about elements of your social role?

The trouble seems to be that historically you were biologically one of two things, were stuck that way, and there was only a single "acceptable" sexual orientation with related social role to go along with it. Many of our laws, customs, and language still reflect this history; the necessary refactoring appears nontrivial to say the least. Worse, the users are the dev team, the dev team has no idea what the f--- it's doing, there's no road map or even cohesive goals, and to top it all off they've split into multiple polarized factions that are refusing to communicate. But I'm sure we'll still manage to release in a timely manner.

Finally, do note that the above doesn't even begin to address questions such as how to legally handle someone of one biology identifying as another. For better or worse, our law currently segregates biological males and females - bathrooms, sports, etc. These segregations have legal force, meaning a judge has to be able to make a determination, meaning there needs to be some explicit criteria. Historically, that was simple. Now, that criteria has to be modified to account for how and when changes can legally occur. It should not surprise you that there is social friction associated with such modifications to how things are done. Be understanding of this and engage with others without portraying them as monsters - doing otherwise won't improve anything, and is in fact likely to make things substantially worse.

Of course I personally think the answer is simple. Get rid of the segregation entirely. Why do we need separate bathrooms again? Stop worrying about all of it. Leave people to get whatever medical procedures they want done, it's no one else's business anyway. Pass a law that prohibits discrimination based on any trait not directly physically relevant to the issue at hand. One and done. You'll still have to clean up photo IDs and all of the social baggage, but at least you'll have a functional systematization (ie none, just "human") and thus a clear end goal. Of course if we ever achieve AGI there will be a whole slew of new problems to contend with (what is "human", anyway?) but hey, let's just punt on that for now.

Or I suppose we could all keep flinging shit at each other via social media, painting entire groups in broad brush strokes based on 140 (or now a whole 280!) character opinions and talking points, trying to get those we don't agree with removed from things. Yeah, was I thinking? That will obviously fix things.