I think most normies and sometimes even gender dysphorics who use the word "trans" as sort of a nod to just being decent to the different, they just mean it as a shorthand for "those with gender distress". I don't think most people take it to mean that there is literally an empirical fact about someone of having a gendered soul or whatever. Like when a Christian says "I have a personal relationship with Jesus" I don't think many of them, if you push them, literally think the amorphous feelings they get when they think about Jesus are a literal spirit talking to them or something like channeling. Catholics I don't think really believe a piece of bread is literally Christ's actual body when they think of transubstantiation - like if I throw up later and tested the remains it would have DNA or something. A handful of fundamentalists maybe think these things, but the pew potatoes, both in religion and trans religion, don't mean anything as empirical and propositional as all that. The pushback to gender identity theory is important, but I think the key is not to argue with the weird ideologues but instead to convince normie liberals that trans isn't the new gay and you can be nice to people without surgeries (and the opportunity cost of bad therapy when good therapy is needed), wrecking women's spaces, etc.
I'd go even further and say a woman doesn't know "what it feels like" to be a woman either. Or a man "what it feels like" to be a man. They can know what they feel like, and can make some superficial assumptions that some of their feelings are common to all other women. But even that seems to present a standpoint problem.
I think most normies and sometimes even gender dysphorics who use the word "trans" as sort of a nod to just being decent to the different, they just mean it as a shorthand for "those with gender distress". I don't think most people take it to mean that there is literally an empirical fact about someone of having a gendered soul or whatever. Like when a Christian says "I have a personal relationship with Jesus" I don't think many of them, if you push them, literally think the amorphous feelings they get when they think about Jesus are a literal spirit talking to them or something like channeling. Catholics I don't think really believe a piece of bread is literally Christ's actual body when they think of transubstantiation - like if I throw up later and tested the remains it would have DNA or something. A handful of fundamentalists maybe think these things, but the pew potatoes, both in religion and trans religion, don't mean anything as empirical and propositional as all that. The pushback to gender identity theory is important, but I think the key is not to argue with the weird ideologues but instead to convince normie liberals that trans isn't the new gay and you can be nice to people without surgeries (and the opportunity cost of bad therapy when good therapy is needed), wrecking women's spaces, etc.
I'd go even further and say a woman doesn't know "what it feels like" to be a woman either. Or a man "what it feels like" to be a man. They can know what they feel like, and can make some superficial assumptions that some of their feelings are common to all other women. But even that seems to present a standpoint problem.