short version: All we really need to do to ‘prove’ an identity is ‘real’ is to trust that those who identify with it are telling the truth about the experiences attached to it. If hundreds, thousands, millions of people are reporting the same type of experience, we shouldn’t need science to believe them. Science is a bonus only some identities have behind them
If there was never any science backing up the validity of the trans experience, would you still support trans people? If science never proved that trans people statistically have improved mental health after transitioning, or after having at least one person who accepts them If science never recognised gender dysphoria, and it was just as a community term for an unproven experience many trans people claimed to have If it was never concluded by any professional or popular sources that gender is a social construct, and it was an just an opinion widely talked about in the trans community If you once believed that trans people don’t exist, did you need a scientific study to ‘prove’ that they did? Would you have changed your opinion if all you did was hear them out? If it was proven tomorrow that all previous scientific data on trans people was falsified by the researchers, would you stop supporting them?
You likely support plenty of identities of which science has nothing to report on or that you’ve never heard a scientific opinion on. It’s interesting and useful to know about the possible psychological, biological, sociological factors that cause someone to have a specific experience or identity, but you shouldn’t require this information to see those experiences and identities as real. People can lie, people can mislabel their experiences, people can get things wrong about themselves, but you can’t double check that their experiences and identities line up, nor prove that their experiences aren’t real.
Sociology and anthropology are important key factors in exploring social identifiers and experiences related to one’s place in society and one’s relationship with social constructs and consensuses. Taking a purely medical, biological, or otherwise non-social ‘scientific’ approach to researching topics that are very much socially influenced is not productive, and the way in which we make sense of our place in society and who we are as individuals is inherently socially influenced as well as influenced by other factors.
The idea of demedicalising the validity of queer identities and the experiences pertaining to them does not mean they cannot have medically relevant components (eg. gender dysphoria). It just means that we’re not viewing them “as requiring medical intervention,” and are instead recognising them as “part of the spectrum of normal human conditions” - simply just ‘ways in which humans can be.’
Identities
If our only explanation for why queer identities are real is science proving that certain queer experiences are real and trans healthcare produces positive effects, we hit a point in which the only reason you’re a real person (as identities are just ‘what a person is’) with real experiences is because science has observed what was already socially observable by someone just personally asking you about your identity.
It feels like this kind of over-reliance on scientific proof is almost exclusive to marginalised and minority groups - the people who need their ‘abnormalities’ to be proven by science to be allowed to exist, the people who are so out of place that they need to be ‘unable to help it’ to be acceped. If science doesn’t prove that you can’t help but be how you are, then you’re either told that you’re lying, or that you chose to stand out. It is then made out to be your fault when you get ridiculed for your identity, because you ‘chose’ this path, or even just because science hasn’t proven that ridiculing you for it might be bad.
Science should be a bonus piece of information, not an explanation required of all identities that don’t conform until we figure out which ones are ‘real’ and which ones are some far-reaching conspiracies made up for the sake of pushing a ‘harmful agenda.’
Experiences
The experience of being genderfluid isn’t backed up by science and you can’t look at someone and prove that their gender is changing or that the experience of being ‘fluid between social constructs (genders)’ is even possible. Yet, we can conclude it has to be possible for people to at least feel like they have a fluid gender identity because it’s far more likely for it to be possible than for the thousands of genderfluid people to all be lying about the same experience, and there’s nothing to gain from lying about said experience.
Coming to this conclusion doesn’t mean that you also have to conclude anything about human biology, how the brain works, how gender feels, so on. You’re essentially viewing people’s identities as expressions of their internal feelings and, like all feelings, you shouldn’t (and already don’t) rely on scientific backing to recognise them as real.
Dysphoria/Euphoria
Equally, I also don’t need to read a study to believe that people who wish they had red hair are happier when they dye their hair red, or people who wish they had a flat chest are happier when they get a flat chest, or (to be problematic) people who wish they had one less limb are happier when they lose that limb. All I need to do is ask someone how they feel and they can tell me, either personally or through reporting their experience to the public; I don’t have to believe them, but after enough people saying the same thing, you’d think I’d at least pay attention.