The absurdity of gender reassignment

See this article for background:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/13/happy-for-my-daughters-change-gender-fluidity

Did you note how utterly absurd the idea of "gender re-assignment
surgery" is, if you follow this unwitting writer through as he tries to
work out the logic?

In case not, I can spell it out for you. First, here's what he writer
says, which is the new orthodoxy that we're being pressured to accept
and believe (and not critique, at risk of appearing to be a bigot or
dinosaur):

* Gender, he says, is assigned by society. It is a set of social
conventions about expected behaviour.

* This is traditionally assigned to someone based on their bodily sex.
So, we expect girls to wear/do X; but we expect girls to wear/do Y.

* Some people feel that their sex and gender are out of alignment.

* And so.... they have "gender re-assignment surgery".

Let's respond to that. Firstly, note that, according to this theory,
gender is not your body. So, mutilating (for that is what it is) your
body, can only change your sex. Not your gender. Your gender (allegedly)
is *a set of social conventions imposed by other people*. No matter what
you do to your body, you won't change that.

OK, says somebody; it should be called "sex re-assignment surgery",
what's the big deal. Actually it is a big deal that this sort of
fundamental contradiction runs through the whole area. It's one of the
"tells" giving away the fact that you're not being sold a miracle cure,
but being sold snake-oil.

But, let's come to the bigger points. If someone feels that what society
expects of them is out of line with who they really are, then is bodily
surgery really the answer? If society says that I should be a foot
shorter, should I get a saw and remove from the shins down, perhaps? Or
if society says I'm too short, shall we send our young people onto the
rack, to correct this? What happened to "tolerance"? The same crowd
preaching the above nonsense are also always telling us about the
importance of "changing attitudes". How does this comport with
encouraging sexually confused people to have radical bodily surgery?
They must have surgery, so that they are now comfortable with the
traditional social conventions expected of them? Why have surgery? So
that now society is happy with the look of your body, because you now
behave in a manner that is in line with its reality?

Are you beginning to see the multiple levels of internal
self-contradiction in all of this?

The whole theory of surgery for "gender reassignment" assumes that
objective gender norms exist. It assumes that males are like
such-and-such; whereas females are not, because they are such-and-such
instead. It assumes that it is not simply a matter of societal
expectations. What kind of madness says that we need to chop and change
our bodies because they are out of alignment with changing social
preferences? Note too, how radically all this theory contradicts our
society also saying that you can follow any sexual preference you like,
regardless of your body - so, two men who have made a legal agreement to
commit sodomy can be said to be "married", even though there's nothing
of actual sexual complementarity involved in their relationship. i.e.
Society says that bodies and sexuality are independent. And yet,
supposedly, people are meant to have bodily surgery in order to bring
their bodies and their sexuality into line? Are there norms, or not? It
apparently depends on what particular sexual deviance is being discussed
at this minute. Next minute, the conversation might have moved on, and
we'll say the opposite.

Confused? They certainly are. The only way to hold this consistently
together is to drop all pretence that it's based on any consistent,
coherent or logical theory about human sexuality. Instead, the only
thing that can - and in reality, does - undergird it is the theory of
total personal autonomy. That everyone can do anything they like, and
reality is whatever they want it to be. That the only possible sin in
the whole area is to say "you should not do that, it is wrong".