Absolutely true—actually, by wiping out language, the ideological thug’s aim, as Orwell points out (and others after him, e.g., J. Peterson), IS PRECISELY to wipe out ideas…

Unfortunately, the ideological thugs are using Orwell as a textbook.

“Assigned at birth” is just one of many words and phrases designed to obfuscate definition of ideas and real physical phenomena. I would never put it that way to a class — I consider it my (truly) sacred duty to take complicated matters and make them easier to understand and appreciate – but WITHOUT sacrificing accuracy or depth.

Here’s my partial list so far:

“sex” = “sexual intercourse,” confusing “sexual contact” and “intercourse”
“gender” = “sex” *too many confusions to quote!* among them, “biological sex” and “what I like to wear”
“assigned at birth” confuses unbelievably rare cases with the common everyday event of birth of a male or female. This phrase can only (I suppose) have been popularized by people who have never had, nor spent time with, children.
“trans” or “transgender” = confuses “transsexual” and “transvestite,” to devastating effect. for one example, true transsexuals, who are a rare and tormented subset deserving compassion and treatment, are now being classified as equal to people who like to crossdress or behave like they think the opposite sex does.
“non-binary” obfuscates the binary categorization of sex in mammals in general and humans in particular. I can show you the graphs: sex is a binary characteristic, with a very rare few exceptions. But rare exceptions – which would be fatal to a chemistry or physics model – are never so in softer sciences, e.g. biology.

The takeaway: that so many of my colleagues propagate sloppy thinking, or fall prey to it – even in the Math departments these days – offends me to the core. We are *not* supposed to wipeout language and ideas; we are supposed to be refining and broadening the scope of ideas that can be thought.

It doesn’t. That is poisoning and mutilation.

The mind is a curious, flexible, and malleable thing. Chromosomes and physical attributes tend to map closer to reality than mental perceptions of the world. And from JTW’s prior comments he/she is XXY, an outlier. Do transgender persons have to prove physical reality by a chromosome teat?

Just maybe Jordon Peterson has more experience treating the afflicted and insite about psychology than you?

Your observation about knee-jerk reactions on both sides is probably representative of a lot of people; certainly of the ones who are most often seen on the media.

However, “the right” covers a lot of territory.

Not all of us blame ALL transgender people (which includes one of my own kinfolk) for the actions of the activists and their allies, many (most?) of whom are NOT transgender but who are abetting the dangerous and detrimental positions that you and Sarah (among others) have commented about.
But some people do.

It’s the same with other contentious cultural issues today.

Not all Black people are in sync with the imposition of “anti-racist” and CRT indoctrination, and at least some of us on the right are ideologically aligned with them, and so we do not blame ALL Black people for the depredations of the activists and their White allies who are fomenting much of the problem. But some people do.

And we don’t blame ALL gay/lesbian people for the drag queen brigades and other inappropriate interactions with children, also abetted and encouraged by people who don’t publicly identify as LGB (– there seems to be a pattern here –). But some people do.

And I also don’t think ALL Democrats, or even all progressives among the Independents, are on board with the extremism currently being set forth by the national and many state parties.

But, the people on the right who don’t make those distinctions between activists and the communities they claim to be supporting are the ones promoted in the media; and it most surely is a promotion, in the same way the Democrats recently tried to swing some GOP primaries toward the candidates they would most like to run against. (Republicans are not innocent of that behavior either).

And as a result, “they (the activists) do the entire community and the acceptance it has been gaining over the decades a great disservice”

This is part of the general propaganda system of all factions – because it’s necessary to be “surrounded by the enemy” to justify the hype of their fund-raising hysteria, and it’s not a coincidence that “the love of money (and power) is the root of all (or at least a great deal) of evil.”

Regarding your objection to Dr. Peterson –
“A doctor’s duty is to heal the patient, and in case of transgender people that can and often does include adjusting the physical characteristics of the body to the mind’s interpretation of what they body should be.”

You explain that very clearly, but the debate as I understand it is not really about the doctors carefully doing those adjustments when warranted, but over whether they can be justified in doing the same things to minor children (never IMO), or to older people who have been falsely convinced that their body and mind are out of sync (when that confusion can be dealt with using other therapies), and doing them very thoughtlessly and carelessly in far too many instances.

“The notion that sex is “assigned” is conceptually necessary for the notion that a different, more accurate assessment can be discovered by the trans person.”

The word “assigned” is wrong, and one I violently disagree with. Rather the body is out of line with the mind due to whatever causes (and they can be varied).
I’m born with a male body, but that doesn’t mean that the mind hasn’t developed into a distinctly feminine way, to the point where there’s serious mental anguish as a result.
That’s in large part due to chronic and severe disruptions in the hormone balance within the body. Add environmental (social usually) factors that prevent the brain from developing into a brain that fits its body and yes, there is a small fraction of the population where gender reassignment surgery is something that those persons benefit from.

Whether you like that based on your religious or political ideology is irrelevant, doesn’t change reality.

Of course the left has subverted the entire issue (as it subverts everything) and infused it with things that have nothing to do with it. Things like ‘drag queen shows’ grooming children for pedophiles, things like men with full beards and moustaches claiming to be women just so they can get into women’s locker rooms and rape the women there, or get onto women’s sports teams and win in competitions they could never win were it against other men.
Those perverts are NOT actual transgender people, and I am massively upset with those in the transgender community who defend them, as they do the entire community and the acceptance it has been gaining over the decades a great disservice.
It’s no different from blaming law abiding gun owners from the small minority of gun owners who break the law and shoot someone. There the left immediately, in a knee jerk reaction, blames ALL gun owners.
In transgender issues the right immediately, in a predictable knee jerk reaction, blames ALL transgender people.