PhilosophyMemes

(disclaimer: not OP, but I'm a trans woman with an opinion) Thanks for being inquisitive. It's really hard to speak for all trans people, as even trans people will have different personal takes (some can even be based on internalized transphobia - e.g., transmedicalism - the idea that one is only genuinely transgender if they change their physicality completely)

I think your reading of Butler's quote (through the OP's explanation) is correct. (Also feel that this is true for science in general. Bruno Latour writes about the social construction of objectivity in scientific discourse.) I very much ideologically agree with Butler, with their idea the sex binary is an extension of the gender binary. On a social level, I wish we didn't police these binaries on people.

But I feel conflicted because it's different when it comes to how I feel about my own gender. I feel like I'm on the right hormones when I'm on HRT, and I can't see how that's just social conditioning. Same with dysphoria. I can see that some ways in which I feel dysphoric is socially driven, but it also feels like my brain literally has a map for "female" genitalia (acknowledging that plenty of trans women also don't have bottom dysphoria, and that's fine). There should be a way to reconcile this difference, and maybe they are compatible (that the sex binary is made up and built on top of the gender binary AND that gender affirmation can be biochemically contingent as much as socially). But I don't have the language to make sense of it yet.

Anyway, at the end of the day, what matters most is not that you understand us, because even we don't understand ourselves but we have chosen to love ourselves. I believe that the rest of the world can do the same too! Happy new year, stranger!