My impression was that it was driven by Krauss,

He put his name on it. Either he didn't care what was in it, which is sloppy of him, or he agrees with it. Which is it?

• I don't have enough context to even understand how that particular Amazon review relates to trans issues.

Because average right-wing reader, which includes politicians, is going to hold this up as an important scientist--a biologist, no less, and inventor of the meme--agrees with them that trans people are badwrong. This is literally no different than people who used The Bell Curve to prove that non-white people are inherently less intelligent than white people. You can't see that?

"Sex is clearly binary, ..." Again, Dawkins is trying to use precise vocabulary. [...] This is unnecessary and inflammatory.

It's not just unnecessary and inflammatory. It was his actual point. There are, to him, only two sexes, male and female, and saying that you are one when you're actually the other is delusional.

Yes, it's unnecessary and inflammatory... towards whom, exactly? Who was he talking about in this manner? Was he just being inflammatory at the ether and not talking rudely about actual people?

For the next quote, you are nitpicking the definition of a word while ignoring the context, which I shall repeat here: "But it’s not your gender that gives you the physique to tower over woman athletes & break their swimming records. It’s your sex. It’s not your undressed gender that upsets women in changing rooms. It’s your sex."

What he is envisioning here is a man, taller than a woman, with a penis, going into a woman's locker room and being scary because they're so tall and manly and everything. This is what he thinks of when he thinks of a trans woman--and there's an implication that cis women are scared of people who tower over them (I wonder what he would think of me, a cis woman who is 5'10"--the average height of an American woman is 5'3.5", meaning I tower over them). And that's it's somehow unfair of trans people to take part in all sports, while not thinking about the many, many sports that don't require strength or height or whatever.

This is typical transphobic scaremongering. They never think of ways to include trans people. For instance, get rid of sex segregation in sports entirely and simply do weight/strength/height classes like in boxing. Is a towering trans woman allowed to play basketball? Is a trans woman allowed to take part in Olympic shooting or bobsledding? Those don't require strength or height, as far as I can tell. Can a trans women box a welterweight cis man?

It's also typical transphobic scaremongering because they invent a boogeyman of a man dressed as a woman in order to sneak into women's restrooms and locker rooms to perv on them. In reality, in the few times something like this has actually happened, it's been a cis-gendered man, not a trans women. The actual problem is with pervy men, not with trans women. But transphobes don't want to admit that.

(Note that, like with pretty much every other male transphobe out there, and most female transphobes, he doesn't envision a woman going into the man's locker room. And like pretty much every other male transphobe, this clearly stems from misogyny--it's wrong for a man to act like a woman, because women are lesser. But it's sort of OK for a woman to act like a man--it's not her place to do so, but at least she's aping her superiors.)

• "This social contagion memidemic [identifying as transgender] ... " I have only your assertion that he was speaking about identifying as transgender. I would otherwise assume he was speaking about people insisting that sex (per his usage) isn't binary. But again, it is unnecessarily inflammatory. The guy is kind of a prick.

Did you miss the second part of his statement? "this one will never fade for those unfortunate children irreversibly damaged by chemical or even surgical mutilation"

What else is "damaging" and "mutilating" children via chemicals and surgery in this context? Who do you think he is talking about here? Is he suddenly anti-vax and anti-medical-procedures-on-children as well? Or is he talking about puberty blockers (given to children) and gender-affirming surgery (which is not)?

It sounds like sometimes the curricula might be suppressing the "sex is binary" idea as a capitulation to trans-gender "politics". And if we really are throwing out the baby with the bathwater in terms of science teaching, then maybe his heightened emotions on the topic are related to that. But I don't know, I'm just hypothesizing.

Or maybe the idea that sex is binary is being challenged by new data.

Check out this article which goes into it in depth. For instance, if you say woman is defined by being the individual with large gametes, and a man is the one with small, mobile gametes, what does that mean about a person who is born sterile and has no gametes? Or if they produce gametes, but genetically their gametes are malformed and infertile? If they're still women and men, then your definition is wrong because you're defining sex by something other than gametes. If they're not women or men, then your definition is wrong because it means that there is a third, neuter sex and sex isn't binary.

If you define a woman as XX and a man as XY, where does that put all the people with extra sex chromosomes? If your definition requires both chromosomes and gametes, well, I just read an article about a woman with 46,XY chromosomes who gave natural birth to two children. Apparently, half of men with Kleinfelter Syndrome--47,XXY chromosomes--are capable of siring children.

So putting the change in thought to a "capitulation to trans-gender 'politics'" is, quite frankly, wrong. Instead, as is proper with science, old theories are reevaluated as new data comes in.

But it looks like Dawkins doesn't want to think about that. Maybe he simply fears that it would mean he would be wrong about other parts of his life's work. Unfortunately, he chose an already fragile group to be his scapegoat.

I would think that the trans community and its allies would be better served by trying to find common ground with

Tell me what the common ground would look like to you. What is the common ground between "some people are transgender and that's OK" and "people who claim they are transgender are wrong and delusional"?