/lit/ - Literature

The ontological basis for transgenderism is the concept of gender, which must be distinguished from sex if one wishes to understand it correctly. Whereas sex is purely a scientific concept -- the biological line dividing males from females -- gender is a social construct based on the behaviours associated with each sex. "Woman" and "man" are social constructs describing the behavioural patterns of human females and males respectively.
For example, a female person in society will usually wear women's clothing, be fond of the colour pink, play with dolls when they are young, and act in a "womanly" manner. This has nothing to do with this female person's innate biological structure, but with their "womanliness", their adherence to the gender of "woman".
This "woman" gender is therefore a category that can be abstracted from the concept of sex. A person can act in a "womanly way", dress womanly, present as womanly, and think of themselves inwardly as a woman, without being biologically female. Such a person is called a transwoman.