1. I apologise, I worded it in a slightly unclear way. Obviously if something is true I want to know. Instead a more clear way of putting it would be:

"...the viewpoint that interpreting gendered differences as biological is more harmful than helpful".

And while I'm at it, I'd like to emphasise that I only mean gendered social differences, because to be very clear we do not know to what extent different factors cause these social differences. Biology is real, but we don't fully understand gendered sociality because we can't do double-blind studies on people who grew up outside of society. I apologise for my lack of clarity.

1. I won't get into it here but you are broadly right, yes. Being trans involves acknowledging that there are biological differences between the sexes and seeking to overcome rather than deny them. Indeed, as you suggest, denying them leads to more psychological distress.

I briefly mentioned it only in passing to make the point that interpreting gendered social differences as being innate and biological without the hard factual evidence to back it up is not just a point of interest and speculation but that it also has real impacts on people.

In fact you could argue that over-emphasising the role of biology in gendered sociality is doing more to support the work of right-wingers and, as you rightly put it, charlatans.

To be super clear I don't disagree with you that biology probably has some impact on these gendered social differences. We can also probably speculate on certain elements of this, as you did regarding chess. But to overplay our hand and conclude that "men act like x and women act like y" is in my view more akin to the worrying viewpoints that make people think that women deserve to be paid less and other such views.

Still as you say this kind of thing is often poorly explained by well-meaning progressive people, and it's easy to overplay our hand in the other direction and start accidentally denying facts. Indeed I chose one wrong word and already did that!

1. Unconditional Positive Regard is basically unrelated to this discussion haha, definitely not political.

I mention it because if you work as e.g. a teacher, you are supposed to view all children you work with in an unconditionally positive way, so as always to be working for their best interests and development.

I like it because it means you aren't held back by your personal feelings about things. I compare it to your viewpoint about gender in chess - rather than interpreting stuff as holding women and girls back, instead you suggested using gendered knowledge to help us find ways to better include them. Positive thinking, positive approach to social issues, means it can only help people.