Oh my god, dude, yes, that is precisely what they believe - that gender is a social construct. They would absolutely agree that the genders of transgender people are social constructs. That's the whole point - it's social and not biological, so despite their biological sex, they may change social genders as easily as you change clothing.
I think where you're getting tripped up is thinking "X is a social construct" is an insult or pejorative. It's not - social constructs are not inherently bad, nor are they inherently less real. In a community-focused organism like humans, social health is extremely important to the other factors of health, so social constructs have a great deal of impact on people. For example - race. Race in America is empirically a social construct, because who counts as "White" has changed over the 250 years. The biology of people with Irish heritage and German heritage and Russian heritage and Scottish and et cetera and so forth didn't change, the definition expanded to include them.
To be clear, not that various non-English peoples were seen as Black or Brown or "people of color" or whatever the fuck, just that Irishmen were seen as racially distinct from White people. Just check out early Irish slavery in the Americas.
So, race is a social construct, but that doesn't mean it isn't heavily influenced by a physical aspect, in this case biology, and that doesn't mean race isn't a powerful social force, or that the distinctions provided by the social construct of race are fake or without use.
The same is true of gender. After all, if it weren't, our society would have a built-in gender for intersex people (like some societies had), instead of historically being given transition treatment without their consent (or even knowledge) from birth. If your system of gender has less possibilities than possibilities for biological sex, that's a tacit admission by your society that gender is a social construct.
Which is okay! Gender being a social construct is just a statement of sociological fact. It doesn't imply anything moral. Gender can be a social construct, and you can still be against things that break social cohesion and norms, in the same way that you are against murder and theft. Just because there are human societies with multiple genders or that allow for changing of genders doesn't mean you have to want that for your society. Just means that what's true of your society is not inherently universal for the whole species, that's all.
Oh my god, dude, yes, that is precisely what they believe - that gender is a social construct. They would absolutely agree that the genders of transgender people are social constructs. That's the whole point - it's social and not biological, so despite their biological sex, they may change social genders as easily as you change clothing.
I think where you're getting tripped up is thinking "X is a social construct" is an insult or pejorative. It's not - social constructs are not inherently bad, nor are they inherently less real. In a community-focused organism like humans, social health is extremely important to the other factors of health, so social constructs have a great deal of impact on people. For example - race. Race in America is empirically a social construct, because who counts as "White" has changed over the 250 years. The biology of people with Irish heritage and German heritage and Russian heritage and Scottish and et cetera and so forth didn't change, the definition expanded to include them.
To be clear, not that various non-English peoples were seen as Black or Brown or "people of color" or whatever the fuck, just that Irishmen were seen as racially distinct from White people. Just check out early Irish slavery in the Americas.
So, race is a social construct, but that doesn't mean it isn't heavily influenced by a physical aspect, in this case biology, and that doesn't mean race isn't a powerful social force, or that the distinctions provided by the social construct of race are fake or without use.
The same is true of gender. After all, if it weren't, our society would have a built-in gender for intersex people (like some societies had), instead of historically being given transition treatment without their consent (or even knowledge) from birth. If your system of gender has less possibilities than possibilities for biological sex, that's a tacit admission by your society that gender is a social construct.
Which is okay! Gender being a social construct is just a statement of sociological fact. It doesn't imply anything moral. Gender can be a social construct, and you can still be against things that break social cohesion and norms, in the same way that you are against murder and theft. Just because there are human societies with multiple genders or that allow for changing of genders doesn't mean you have to want that for your society. Just means that what's true of your society is not inherently universal for the whole species, that's all.