I have mixed feelings about making this comment -- as I do almost any comment these days that varies from what is approved or what the writer has written. Dialogue is virtually non-existent today. Words and ideas are viewed as weapons in the quest for power without regard for truth.

Nonetheless, because my interest is in truth and not power, I am compelled to write, whatever the consequences. My points are few.

The subject-object dichotomy is most efficiently addressed in its own terms. There is an infinitely broad, non-traversable divide between reality, which is objective, and rational perception, which is not. All rational perceptions of reality are constructs, while reality itself is not. Whenever we discuss something, anything, in our world, we are using constructs; so, it is redundant and pointless to call a thought or idea a "construct" -- unless your point is that the thing discussed is not objectively real. This is doubly true when we use the term "social construct," which means, "This thing is artificially created by society." If we want to talk about our ideas being tentative approximations of reality based on observation, let's talk about that; but the word "construct," as it is used especially in the transgender community is both an assault on reality and self-delegitimizing.

There must be an objective quality we are calling "gender" that exists on the male-female continuum and is potentially divergent from sex. If there is no such objective reality, then being transgender is not an objective reality. Our thoughts about it ("constructs") may be very rude and we may have many misconceptions about it, but that it is out there must be assumed, or else all of us are delusional. When gender is called a "social construct" in the trans community, the vector of that usage is that we may say anything we wish about gender and no one can contradict us -- which is both true and false; and the false aspect is insidious. It is true in the sense that thoughts about gender cannot be demonstrated to be true or false, because as yet we have no objective test for gender; but it is false in the sense that what we say about gender matters, because truth matters. We are often accused of being self-indulgent, self-absorbed hedonists for just this reason: that we are perceived to treat our own natures as unreal, without basis in objective reality. For most of us, I think this is a misconception; but when people go off the deep end, claiming to be "cat gender" or "lunar gender," and this is supported by our political spokespeople ... well, you can see why we have trouble convincing some of our antagonists that we're not insane.

My grasp of "essentialism" is taken from the term itself: that things have "essence," that they exist, and that anything that exists has a nature. Some aspects of that nature may be changeable, some not; but when we use the term "nature" in this context, we generally refer to those aspects that are characteristic of the thing described. Naturally, any open-minded person, aware that her views are constructs, is open to new information; we may not know what the immutable qualities of a thing are, but that they exist is unquestionable. A horse is not a cow; a chair is not a basketball; and a male is not a female.

I am a trans woman. My gender is not a choice and it is not a construct. It is objective and unchangeable; it has "essence." I may not be able to describe that essence well, and what I think about it may be rude; but that it exists there can be no doubt.

It is really not helpful to continue to talk about gender as a "construct." If we think that the traditional notions of gender and sex are inaccurate, let's talk about that. Let's refine our constructs of gender and sex, not call gender and sex themselves constructs. The latter is inherently misleading, and its vector is delegitimization and despair.