I think it's still a bit of a reach from the 2 + 2 = 5 example truthfully, but I see your point. Could you articulate why telling a trans person they're not trans is different from telling a gay person they're not gay? They're both internal experiences of life that I think a person would need to experience for themselves to truly understand.

So are we in agreement that peoples' experience of sexual attraction and gender exist on a spectrum? Because if we do, it doesn't feel like such a stretch to acknowledge how someone feels is real.

If someone's gone through their whole life in a female's body and have always known deep down they were a male, who is anyone else to say that their experience of life isn't real? In the vast spectrum of human divergence, aren't there far less likely ways to be different? For example, I've always thought it was strange that people don't deny that people suffer from total oddities like elephantiasi, but deny that the trans struggle is real. I'm glad you don't feel that strongly. But I think the idea that calling a trans person their preferred identity is such a distortion of reality is still somewhere short of Orwellian. It isn't a totally unscientific idea in the way that 2 + 2 = 5 is unmathematical. But I don't think it's a simple (or binary) subject to address either.

Thanks for the reply!