[umanwizard]

It seems pretty simple to me. If you ask me to describe my best friend, I might say he's smart, studied this or that in school, speaks such-and-such languages, likes such-and-such music, and so on. His height and weight would be pretty far down the list of things I find important.

Similarly, we think of our mind as being our "self" in a much more fundamental way than our toes.

If a person is female in their mind but has a male body, it seems very clear that we should consider the former to be their "real" gender. Why should the body matter more or be more fundamental?

[hrjet]

I would say the the catch phrase in your argument is "best friend". If the person you were describing wasn't your best friend, you might automatically focus more on the physical aspects, since you wouldn't know the intimate details of their mind.

That said, I am not advocating deliberate misuse of pronouns; I am just saying the topic may not be as simple as it seems.