I apologize if any of this is redundant.

I answer MW's infamous interrogatory with his own answer and yours; but I ask a follow-up question: "What does it mean to be female?"

If he answers by effectively saying the terms are interchangeable, then you can throw his own question back at him: "Do you know what a circular definition is?"

There are two routes you can take to answer this question: the materialist and the non-materialist.

Strangely, religious people seem to cling to the materialist view, that being female is purely a matter of biology. So, you ask them: "How do you know that the etiology of gender divergence isn't at least partly biological?" Mention genetics, the pre-natal environment, pharmaceuticals and pollution as possible contributors. The honest answer is that they don't know, and take as their default position that conventional conceptualizations of femaleness control. This is essentially an expression of true conservatism: don't change established forms unless and until such change seems justified; and, as a general principle, it's not a bad idea. But it doesn't always work well at the squishy areas of real life; and forcing others to live by the rules you make for yourself is definitely not a conservative value.

There is a caveat here: If we seek to apply this standard to them, we must be willing to live it ourselves. Just as they cannot prove that gender divergence is unreal, we cannot prove that it is real. Gender divergence can, at this juncture, only be validated subjectively; believing oneself to be transgender is just that: a belief. And we would be as wrong to try to compel others to live according to our belief and they would be to try to compel us to live according to theirs.

And this means no pronoun laws, no bathroom laws, no forced admission to "woman spaces" and no basis for civil rights legislation -- not until we can achieve a broad public consensus for them; and that's where our efforts should be concentrated: not in the courts, or even in the legislature, but in the public mind. Winning their hearts and minds should be our strategy. It's slow, but it's the permanent solution.

The non-materialist view is that the essence of femaleness is at least partially intangible. This kind of thing can be found in the Hindu notion of male and female being cosmic realities, or in the view of some orthodox Jews that the a female soul can inhabit a male body. The non-materialist view is, by its nature, unamenable to proof; and, I think, its principal value when talking to our adversaries is to toss it out and ask them why they are taking the materialist view.

This area of conflict, however, is fading; transgender medicine for minors is, I think, the area where the social conservatives can break our backs. I think we need to approach this subject dispassionately, and realize that there are medical professionals out there who are behaving irresponsibly when it comes to minors. And we must stop expecting those with public platforms to do their own homework; we must do it for them -- not because it isn't their responsibility, but because, in the end, whose responsibility it is doesn't matter. The point is not to be completely run over, and if things don't change I'm afraid that they are headed that way.