Good idea; done!

in which case you would be begging the question.

No, I am explaining how the appearance of transgender people is consistent with the conservative view: they are simply confused. I am not assuming anything.

a counterexample to their existing model of the human condition

I'm not sure how this could be counted as a counterexample to anyone's model. Presumably most people would agree that there are people who are confused about their sexuality. It would only be a counterexample to that model if the student was correct, but whether or not the student is correct is precisely what we are discussing.

If James agreed with the student, this would not be a counterexample to his beliefs, and if he disagrees with the student, it he would not agree that they represented a counterexample to the model.

What does it mean to be female? It has to be something such that babies, animals and people in tribal cultures can be classified as female or not. Lets call this property, that baby girls, hens and women in hunter-gatherer tribes share, and baby boys etc. do not, property P. People who identify as female are presumably claiming they have property P, and presumably think this is a substantive claim.

Now, could P be something such that merely believing you had property P, made you have property P? Certainly there are some properties like this:

• X has P if and only if ( X has two x chromosomes OR X believes ( X has property P ) )

but I think this is clearly unsatisfactory. For example, it would mean that an ordinary young boy who, upon being taught about gender for the first time, was momentarily mistaken and thought he was female, would instantly become female. And it would mean that transwomen were asserting a disjunction of a falsehood and a weird recursive clause.

There are social-role based alternatives, along the lines of

• X has P if and only if ( X wishes to be treated in the typical manner of people with property P )

but this doesn't work for Tomboys, who wish to be treated broadly like boys but are nonetheless definitely girls. Nor does it work for extreme feminists, who do not wish women (including themselves) to be treated in the typical way women are treated.

Now, whether believing something is sufficient to make it true is of course a separate issue from what is politically prudent of you to say. My guess is that your students would ask you this question have a few motivations:

• If you say that the map is not the territory, they can safely reject you as an outdated and uncaring reactionary, and will reject what you say on other subjects.
• If you say that believing things makes them true, they can say "even our ultra-conservative republican lecturer agrees".

My advice to you is to say 'mu'. Ask your students what they mean by female, or why they are asking. Then you can respond in the correct manner according to their definition, pointing out that if they don't like the answer, maybe they didn't really mean that definition.

I think of it as outsourcing my RSS feed.

Obviously YMMV; I work in investment.