Actually it is very much central.

Gender is a LARP construct forced onto us by social norms derived from religion. It does exist in our brains, and is every bit as real as the next thing; but unlike physically verifiable facts (like our sex, that we need to modify with a knife), it only exists because we think of it (like money, that we can gain simply by persuading others). We should really be at the very least conscious that our fight for tolerance wrt individual gender expression has nothing to do with our sexual parts, everything to do with the artificial restrictions, limitations, gatekeeping, and denial that society as a whole, and many of its members, are literally forcing onto us.

The fight isn’t about boobs, asses, and genitalia. The fight is about using unrelated, and unrelatable, physical attributes (sex, skin color, or anything else), to coerce, dominate, emprison, and kill.

If we miss that central point, and let the ill intended offenders frame the narrative, we have already lost.