Valid point in this context. I'm not sure if Julian was claiming to present things that are known to be false, although the wording of the comment certainly could be interpreted that way.

Wasn't he basically just saying that these kinds of statements radically lower his epistemic confidence in empirical claims the movement makes which are politically convenient?

Well, there's the connotative issue involved. But my point is that he seems to be making a strange adjustment here: Making a radical adjustment to one group when it should apply to all political groups. Moreover, the comment struck me (and it is possible that I've misinterpreted it here) as essentially dismissing any claims made rather than doing what one should actually do in such contexts- carefully examine the claims, and look for omitted evidence.

Yeah, if I'm talking to someone from who I can assume rationality, I'll say all that (and that the sexist gender beliefs and patriarchal power structures that prevent trans people just flipping across in high school like it was a mere incidental fact, like hair colour, should be destroyed anyway for over-determined reasons). But I have no intention to give truth to enemies. Enemy is defined as: a person whose unshakeable beliefs harm the people I care about. If a lie makes them back off, lying is good.

I think the former paragraphs here presume that politics is the domain of deluded do-gooders, rather than people (including those at the bottom of the heap) fighting self-consciously for their interests (or the interests of a broader alliance, TDT and all that.) It doesn't strike me as hypocrisy to throw one's enemies into the gulag, or to decieve them in warfare, even as you attempt to avoid the gulag and see through deceptions yourself.

... because you don't, as a rule, choose your own neurophysiology.

Become a taxi driver and grow your hippocampus. The boundary between what you can change and what you can't is not as clear as you seem to think.

Certain structures in transsexuals' brains are closer to the form they take in cisgendered members of the sex they identify with than the sex they appear to be.

Do we know what these structures do?

... because you don't, as a rule, choose your own neurophysiology.

You have some control over it. Everything you do and every thought you have affects your neurophysiology. How much control you have over it is an interesting question, which can't be answered simply by pointing to differences on brain scans.

I am saying that a trans person can only be diagnosed by saying "I experience myself as [fill in the blank]" because that unspoken, personal experience is what trans is. Not the brain stuff. That may be what trans is caused by. It's like having a sore toe, that can be caused by a dropped hammer or kicking the door, but the essence of sore toeness can't be determined by testing for hammers and a negative test for a dropped hammer would not disprove it, the essence of sore toeness is the ouch.