Here's an attempt to explain it better. I'm talking about personal identity. Many people choose to or are taught to focus on certain physical traits and base their identity around that. (The what you are.)

It's a value statement. Identity should be based on who you are not what you are means:

• Your humanity matters more than your sex.
• Your humanity matters more than your weight.
• Your humanity matters more than your skin color and so on.

Couldn't think of a clearer way to get the idea across to the QT crowd. I'm open to suggestions.

Queer theorists have conflated the cultural sex stereotypes with the physical reality of being a man or a woman. There's no social need to transition whatsoever if people separate the sexist stereotypes from what it means to be a man or a woman and stick strictly to the facts. Woman/man by itself isn't a full fledged identity nor should it be. It's just a fact about people. Same for skin color and other physical characteristics. I can simultaneously understand that being a man or a woman in our sexist culture has a huge impact on people's lives while also believing that their sex should not be a core part of their personal identity. Culturally and historically it's a huge deal, ethically it shouldn't be. The same idea also applies to skin color and other physical characteristics.

• Skin tone doesn't = character or personality
• Man/woman doesn't = character or personality

There's a bit of political black and white thinking divide that's going on with the word identity right now too, so it's real hard to talk about the concept casually without people getting up in arms about it and talking past each other.

Edit: Fixing formatting