I agree, it's exactly as you say with the usage of terms.

I'm someone who, in principle, doesn't see the need for a person to change their appearance to solve their problems.

Yesterday, when I was at my painting class, there was a woman there who was in her late fifties and she was talking about her plastic surgery on her eyes. Our instructor then made a joke: ‘Why, do you want to remarry?’ he asked her. Another woman asked, ‘Will the health insurance pay for it?’

I once had this debate with my friends many years ago because they both thought that there was nothing wrong with having surgery ‘if it makes you feel better’. I asked why the feeling was there in the first place and what appearance has to do with how you feel. They were annoyed by me, but from then on they knew that I wasn't interested in the topic and that I had questioned their beliefs and couldn't be expected to agree with them.

Today, you can not only surgically change your appearance, but you can also officially change your sex to any fantasy name you want. It becomes a problem when it becomes a big trend. And all official places where people come together (universities, schools, large employers, state administrations) want to enforce the law. You are right that most laws are simply on the books, nobody knows them and they serve as a point of reference in case they are needed. It's passive, not active.

The phenomenon of this law, however, is that, strangely enough, people should or must want to know it and wherever hierarchical work structures exist (which is basically always the case), it becomes an integral part of company policy.

If you compare this with the gay liberation, there are clear differences. Gays have never insisted that they should be called "gay" and those who did not call a gay man a gay man were accused of discrimination and should suffer the consequences. You didn't choose to be ‘gay’, you either were or you weren't. A gay man in his right mind would certainly not have wanted people to constantly pay attention to him and make his sexuality the main topic of every meeting. On the contrary, it didn't need to be that way. Just like heterosexual people don't make a fuss about their sexuality all the time, why should they?

To actively enforce a law makes law making become absurd. Law does not need to be enforced, it is there for the worst case and when nothing else can be done about a case of conflict. It waits, so to speak, until it's needed. But it does not make itself to be needed by push.