“You’re just obsessed with people’s genitals!”

This hardly qualifies as an actual objection, but it’s still worth clarifying a few points for those who find it convincing. First off, there are essentially no critics of transgender theory who are actually concerned about genitals in particular. Rather, they’re concerned with biological sex in general – and, as genitals are the most immediately obvious and socially recognized primary sex characteristic, critics of transgender ideology will sometimes reference them as a way of referring to the whole cluster of biological features that make up male and female bodies. Anti-racist activists do much the same thing when they use skin color as a catch-all for the various physical features associated with non-white people. This is sometimes referred to as a synecdoche, and it’s a common feature of human speech.

But more importantly, dismissing women as being “obsessed with genitals” is a surreal act of gaslighting. Men have been “obsessed with genitals” for thousands of years, going so far as to construct a global system of power in which half the human population is consigned to subjugation, abuse, and exploitation precisely because of their female bodies. Turning around and casting those who have suffered under that regime as inappropriate, obsessive, or otherwise creepy for noticing and naming the structure of their oppression is not only absurd, but strikingly cruel. It mirrors the rhetoric of white racists who complain that Black people “make everything about race,” or homophobes who accuse gays and lesbians of “shoving their sexuality in our faces.” In reality, the oppressors are the ones obsessed with skin color, genital shape, and sexual behavior; those who suffer the results shouldn’t be expected to keep quiet about it for fear of offending their abusers.