No. of Recommendations: 3
Why are adults forbidden from attending elementary school? Is that age discrimination? No.
Exactly - but we also do not discriminate between children based upon what their bodies are like. If a child is suffering from a progeria syndrome (where their bodies age super-fast), we don't prohibit them from going to elementary school because their body has mostly the attributes of an adult. If a child were in a coma for several years, we don't keep them out of elementary school because their body is "too old." If a girl (it's usually a girl) undergoes and completes puberty preternaturally early, and has the body of a 17-year-old while still in fourth grade, we don't kick her out of elementary school. Because we limit attendance to people with child brains - not their bodies.
The majority psychological conception of transgenderism is that the person has a mental model of their gender that is different than what their physical body has. Basically, a "man's brain in a woman's body" or vice-versa. If that's difficult to conceptualize, imagine a far-fetched scenario where someone kidnaps you and forces you to undergo involuntary sex reassignment surgery and all the hormones that go with it. I assume from your nick that you're a male. In this ludicrous hypothetical, though, your body would have been changed to be that of a woman. You would still think of yourself as male. You wouldn't start thinking of yourself as female, and being forced to always use female-gendered spaces (like bathrooms) might be very uncomfortable for you.
That the difference between transgender and drag. A male drag queen will put on women's clothing for performance - they still internally regard themselves as male. A transgender woman wears women's clothing because their internal sense of their identity is as a woman. They are entirely different. Transgender people actually and completely have a conception of themselves as being a different gender as their body; drag queens do not, and are wearing clothes of the "wrong" gender for the purposes of performance, not because they identify as that "wrong" gender. Monty Python vs. Laverne Cox.
Note that this conception of transgender people is inconsistent with some groups' theory of gender. Conservative folks, who are very concerned about gendered bodies from a perspective of sexual purity and cleanliness, reject the idea that an actual discrepancy between "brain" and "body" has any bearing on gender. From their perspective, one of the most important purposes of societal attitudes towards gender is to avoid having people's sexual parts being used in ways that are immoral, sinful, impure, or otherwise violative of their conception of the good - "gender" is inextricably defined by the body.
Unlikely allies in opposing this conception of gender are certain progressive feminists, who entirely reject the idea that a brain can intrinsically have a gender. To them, gender is entirely a social construct, based entirely on social and cultural attitudes/biases grounded in the different bodies that gender-neutral brains are in. If brains actually did have gender orientation independent of their physical bodies and culture, that would be an enormous empirical contradiction to their theory of gender - so they vigorously reject that idea. I'm vastly oversimplifying this, of course. Many of PhoolishPhilip's points have been grounded in these arguments, so they can probably explain more thoroughly, if you're interested.
Tying it all back in, advocates for an expansive view of trans rights believe that (like elementary school) gender separation should be based on the brains of the people involved, not their bodies. People with a "male brain" should be allowed to use the male restroom, just like a child that happens to have the body of an adult (due to disease or unnaturally-early puberty) is still allowed to go to elementary school.
