Here are some things that are real: money, laws, relationships. They don’t have any physical presence, they can’t be picked up or smelt, they apparently only exist by virtue of a communal agreement to act as though they exist – but all the same, they’re real things. I think that this is what philosopher John Searle refers to as “social reality”, and it contains pretty much everything that’s important about your conscious life and your identity, including gender.
