Flora the thing that changed my mind was encountering the bizarre idea that people born and socialised as male were oppressed by people born and socialised as female, and thus females (whatever they identified as) were the oppressors. This is quite a recent idea, I think, and it's turned everything I considered upside-down.
I came out as a teen in the early 1980s. I remember being in a woman-only event which has getting a particularly heavy amount of abuse thrown at it, and someone who presented as male but was dressed as female visited us to offer solidarity. (I describe them like that because I have no idea how they identified, and I don't wish to be deleted. I knew quite a few people in the olden days who used the T-word to describe themselves - this is a slur, now, and denotes a specific identity, but then this would not have necessarily denoted the same thing.)
The reason I remember this particular instances out of so many LGBT events is that the contrast was particularly marked - all the women were in combat trousers, big boots, jeans, jumpers, many with cropped hair, nobody at all with makeup. This other person was in a long slinky dress, tights, full makeup and good shoes. And we were all together in solidarity - all of us would have been (and occasionally were) spat on in the street, had to be careful of getting a thump from a stranger. We had each others' backs. I cannot conceive of this person demanding that they stay, or even lead, our women only thing - it just would never have occurred to anyone present.
Now - from the extremist trans activists and allies there is no solidarity, only demands for subservience, and threats if we don't comply. They aren't my comrades and they aren't in the struggle with me - they've become part of the problem. They gaslight me as an oppressor, and demand with threats the spaces me and my sisters have spent many years carving out.
This is why I have been heartened so much for the solidarity from the growing crowd of gender-critical trans activists, who stand alongside me and mine, and we have each others' backs (without demanding we enroach on each others' space), in something like the way it was before. They are getting attacked, and we are getting attacked, and we support each other without all of us insisting our lives and needs are identical.