Don't be so obsessed with definitions. What is important here is to allow people to be themselves and to let them explore their identities on their own terms. You do not need a water tight definition of who I am, because I should not need your consent to be myself.

If *your* sense of self cannot be categorized, all the better, because this means that no other person can force you to be who *they* want you to be, by way of legislation, social mores and/or religious dogma.

No one has ever said that there are 8 million genders. No trans people I know of believe this to be so. The majority of trans people identify as male or female, with some thinking of themselves as non-binary. That leaves us with, at most, three genders (although most trans people think of them as two, with a rainbow in between)

What many trans, queer and non-binary people are likely to say is that gender is a spectrum, in the sense that each individual, cis or trans, is a unique combination of various gender relevant traits, interests, abilities. But that does lead to 8 million genders.

It simply means that the world of sex and gender is complex, as you yourself have argued in the introduction to your article. Indeed, your introduction can serve as excellent defence of the gender is a continuum narrative!

I know of very few trans people who think the term gender is obsolete. They are transgender because they feel that their gender is very real. Believe me, no one would choose to be transgender, if they could help it. There is far too much transphobia in the world for that to make any sense.

Note also that gender dysphoria is a real, observable phenomenon, accepted by science. It is an expression of a misalignment between ones assigned gender and ones experienced gender. If that experienced gender did not exist, that person would not have been trans.

Using man made categories of language to dismiss the reality of that identity does not make much sense to me.