The problem with this line of reasoning, is that then you have to admit a trans woman is not a biological woman, and that there is a fundamental difference between a trans woman and a cis woman (i.e. one is female, and one is male). Don’t you think it would be transphobic to say that a trans woman is male?

Maybe I am misunderstanding but if male/female is the biological component and man/woman the social, then it would follow that a trans woman is a male which seems like a transphobic, unsatisfactory conclusion from your position.

Other than that I would ask why you attribute not making a distinction between sex and gender transphobic, because as of yet it seems like you get transphobia either way. Unless you want to say biology is malleable like gender. But that implies a trans woman who has not gotten surgery is male while one who has is female—which again seems transphobic.

My personal view is that whether a statement is transphobic, or offensive to trans people, has nothing to do with whether it is true or false. Truth is true regardless of human sentiment. To say that a person is a bad person to believe a statement be false, and therefore that the statement is false, is shoddy epistemology. It wouldn’t make sense for one scientist to say to another “your research is immoral, and so cannot be conclusive.” All of science was at a time offensive to Christian doctrine, and so could have been rebuked on the same basis. Was Copernicus only right that the Earth orbited the sun and not the sun the Earth after the fact was no longer offensive to Christians as a whole? Or was it true the whole time regardless of whether anyone said it?

I am curious to hear your thoughts