1. I want to suggest to focus on Dembroff alone, that is, to dispense with the part about Barnes. The reason is that Barnes challenges Alignment with a very special sense (which involves a special understanding of metaphysics of gender).

2. In the part about Dembroff, I suggest to dispense with the discussion about context-sensitivity (which involve MarFarlane's idea). Because the discussion is not directly related to Alignment. Maybe the discussion on the traveling of truth can be dispensed with for the same reason.

3. To my understanding, the main criticism of Dembroff's view is as follows. After rejecting RG, Dembroff does not give us a picture of the relationship between classification practices and gender kinds. Moreover, a plausible picture, i.e., RGG, seems compatible with Alignment. Given my understanding, I want to suggest to further emphasize the point that Dembroff leaves an important question unanswered: What is the exact relationship between classification practices and gender kinds.

4. I think that the final section can begin with the second clause of RGG. The second clause is clearly a normative claim. The normative claim can therefore be used to point out the plurality of normative considerations. The idea is that what counts as a good gender kind membership facts depends on a plurality of normative considerations. Then the section can close by pointing out some to-be-investigated questions.

"disentangling"?

My feeling is that the relationship between Barnes's rejection of Alignment and the above problems is not clear. Does those problems inevitably follow from for Barnes's rejection of Alignment? For example, it seems to me that the problem for Barnes's metaphysics of gender are simply problems for Barnes's metaphysics itself. She can easily revise the metaphysics without affecting the rejection of Alignment.

Of course, Barnes's view cannot empower every woman who is marginalized. But to the extent that the view enable trans women's self-ascriptions to be true, the view indeed can empower some marginalized women (maybe only in some contexts). Is that not enough?

But does Barnes intend to offer such a strategy? I am sympathetic to the idea that Barnes's metaphysics of gender does not give us clear directions to change social reality. But I also think that metaphysics of gender need not give us such directions. If a metaphysics of gender can give us such directions, that is good. But if it does not, that is not really a problem for that metaphysics.

I think that Barnes will not agree this characterization. Barnes's idea is simply that there is no single group corresponding to the term "woman". Instead, there are multiple groups that may be the semantic value of "woman". Some of them are much more gerrymandered. I think the idea does not imply that no one is really a woman. Instead, the upshot is simply that when we consider whether one is really a woman, we must attend to the meaning of "woman".

I worry the label may invite some confusions. Consider the error theories in other fields. A view is an error theory about race only if it implies that all claims involve racial terms such as "White" and "Black" are false. A view is an error theory about morality only if it implies that all moral claims are false. In this way, a view counts as some version of error theories only if it implies that some discourse are all false. But Barnes's view does not have such a feature.

I cannot follow here. I can understand that "Only cis women are women" would communicate the problematic idea. But I am not sure why "Cis women are women" communicates this idea too. Also, consider "Black women are women". It seems that the assertation does not communicate any idea about what determines gender. If so, why does "Cis women are women" communicate some relevant ideas?

I think Barnes's metaphysics of gender (like Haslanger's one) at least has one implication about what gender ought to be: Gender ought to be abolished.

This is tricky for me. Barnes explicitly rejects the idea that semantic projects of gender terms can lead us to metaphysics of gender. In this sense, Barnes challenge Alignment. However, Barnes has a special understanding of metaphysics of gender. For Barnes, metaphysics of gender is not about gender kinds man and woman themselves. (It is even unclear whether Barnes thinks that there are gender kinds man and woman.) Because of Barnes's special understanding of metaphysics gender, Barnes in fact challenges Alignment with a very different sense. Thus, I am not sure whether it is appropriate to place Barnes in the debate concerning whether Alignment is true.

I think that Dembroff has a similar idea which is supported by modest ontological pluralism.

I think that Dembroff and Barnes also differ in their conceptions of the metaphysics of gender. For Barnes, the metaphysics of gender is about what ultimately explain gender. Nonetheless, it seems to me that for Dembroff, there is nothing ultimate about gender. All there is to the metaphysics of gender is simply which gender kind is operative in which context.

Given that Dembroff's project is based on modest ontological pluralism about gender kinds, Dembroff does not completely reject the correlation between metaphysics and classification practices. For Dembroff, classification practices still have to track some existing gender kinds (even if the kinds may not be operative in the contexts in question), and in this way, there is a connection between metaphysics and classification practices.

I really appreciate this point.

It seems that if we want "Alex is a woman" to be true in dominant contexts, we cannot avoid the notion of cross-contextual veridicality. The idea is as follows. The extant classification practices in dominant contexts imply that "Alex is a woman" is false. Of course, better classification practices imply instead that "Alex is a woman" is true. But before we ameliorate the extant classification practices, the better classification practices are not extant and then "Alex is a woman" is still false. So if we want "Alex is a woman" to be true in dominant contexts before we have ameliorative extant classification practices, we need cross-contextual veridicality.

"misguided" or "misleading?" To the extent that adopting RGG is incompatible with RG, articulating and rejecting RG is not really problematic.

I think that Dembroff's idea can be understood as follows. A context of use C completes the proposition by making the gender term track the operative gender kind in C. Then a context of evaluation C determines the circumstance in which we consider whether a sentence is true.

At the beginning, we evaluate "Alex is a woman" by taking a single context as both the context of use and context of evaluation, (which is also what RG requires). Hence we have

(1) "Alex is a woman" is false, relative to C1 (U) and C1 (A).

(2) "Alex is a woman" is true, relative to C2 (U) and C2 (A).

Then the idea of the travel of truth is that when evaluate a sentence, we can assign different contexts to the context of use and the context of evaluations. That is, we can have the following:

(3) "Alex is a woman" is true, relative to C2 (U) and C1 (A).

The idea is that we can use C2 to determine what the gender term tracks even if we are evaluating the sentence in C1. Then, given (3), "Alex is a woman" is veridical in C1.

I think that the purpose of pluralism is to enable trans and nonbinary to negotiate gender classification practices in dominant contexts. It is when trans and nonbinary are able to negotiate gender classification practices that they can combat ontological oppression. To my view, Dembroff's discussions support this interpretation.

In their article, Dembroff discusses pluralism in the section "Worries and Upshots". There Dembroff wants to address the worry that when trans and nonbinary claim their identity, their claims might be nonveridical. The worry arises when RG is rejected and trans and nonbinary can use gender terms in a way that does not align with the operative gender kinds in dominant contexts. The idea is that even if trans and nonbinary can use gender terms in a trans-friendly way, their claims of identity can still be easily dismissed if their claims are not veridical. Here pluralism helps. Because pluralism can assure that their claims are still veridical and therefore, cannot be easily dismissed. Then it can be seen that pluralism is to enable trans and nonbinary to negotiate gender classification practices in dominant contexts.

I contend that it is just a seemingly contradiction. The reason is that (1) is true in C1 when "woman" track G2 and (1) is false in C1 when "woman" track G1. That is, it is simply that (1) has different truth values when having different meanings. The crucial point, I think, is that Dembroff allows "woman" to track, in a given context, different gender kinds. There are many woman kinds. For Dembroff, when an individual S belongs to some woman kind, the sentence "S is a woman" can be true in any context. Because in any context, "woman" can track the woman kind whose members include S.

1. I think that for imitation to work, it need not be the case that in, e.g., trans-friendly contexts, gender classification practices should correspond to the ontological facts. It is enough if the gender classification practices in trans-friendly contexts do not correspond to an oppressive gender kind. For example, it may be that in trans-friendly contexts, gender classification practices actually correspond to the ontological facts, and therefore, gender classification practices in dominant contexts should imitate the ones in trans-friendly contexts.

2. Even if in trans-friendly contexts, gender classification practices have to correspond to the ontological facts, I am not sure whether that must be guaranteed by Weak Negation. For example, Dembroff can be free to add a principle according to which, gender classification practices should track the most salient non-oppressive gender kind. The principle demands the classification practices to consider those gender kinds that do not lead to ontological oppression and then pick the most salient one among them.

(A very small point) I find this characterization less easy to apply the McKitrick's account. Because her account does not involve how an individual "considers" herself.

Dembroff has given a rough characterization of gender identity: "Gender identity, on these accounts, is internal, but it is based on internal ways of relating to societies’ gender norms, structures, and interpretive guides." (2020, 8) Given this characterization, I may suggest to write "how an individual is internally related to the social roles and norms associated with this particular gender."

The case makes me think about a difference between legal terms and properties, on the one hand, and gender (and race) terms and properties, on the other hand. In both cases, the way we use the term affects the corresponding property. Nonetheless, when it comes to legal ones, the way we use the term always constitutively affects the property. By contrast, the way we use gender terms may causally affects the property. (Cf. Podosky)

Can a legal definition be correct? It seems to me that a legal definition is not to describe but simply to "produce" reality. But indeed what a legal definition is supposed to create depends on existing social facts and the values we want to promote.