I do know a genuine trans person. Someone who was trans when I met them 30 years ago, before it was trendy. We were close friends. We now don’t communicate, because she insists that any objection to transwomen being in women’s spaces is simply down to bigotry. She makes sure everyone knows all about HER trauma, but it seems biological women aren’t affected by trauma, they just want to be mean, exclusionary TERFs. Nothing to do with genuine fear. It appears empathy is a one-way street.
On to your second point, I am not trans, but as a child refused to wear dresses and had screaming tantrums if required to wear one for an occasion (but was made to wear one anyway, being that it was in the days before small children were given free reign to dictate to their parents). I grew up living in trousers, hating dolls, playing ball games with local boys and climbing trees, which really wasn’t that uncommon. When puberty arrived, I hated my breasts. I really didn’t much like being a girl. I can only imagine what I might have believed about myself if I’d been born this century, but fortunately when I was a child we were just called ‘tomboys’ and it was assumed we would ‘grow out of it’. I never ‘grew out’ of wearing trousers, but I did grow to like my breasts and to be happy as a woman.
One of the strangest things about the recent diversification of gender identities is that many of those pushing the idea are very vocal about not conforming to historical gender stereotypes. Yet examples given for why they identify as they do are often directly related to those stereotypes. You are female but hate wearing dresses, therefore you can’t simply be a girl/woman. You are male, but love wearing makeup, so you can’t be a boy/man. If people really wanted to be gender non-conforming, they would just wear what they liked and partake of activities they liked without feeling the need to label it. I appreciate that there are genuine trans people, but the wider move towards multiple gender labels really just seems to be more and more precise personality pigeonholing, and smacks of attention-seeking. A lot of teenagers are doing it because it is trendy. Medicalising something that is very normal at that age – wanting to be different – is dangerous. Genuine trans people will not ‘grow out’ of it. But most teenagers are not trans, they just have a wide range of different interests and preferences, not all of which align with so-called ‘traditional gender roles’. And that’s ok. We ought to be putting more emphasis on that fact.
ETA: I am all for making sure provision is made for trans people. I just want it to be separate from provision for biological females. I don’t think any women have suggested transpeople shouldn’t be taken into account. It’s the TRA mob that have refused to countenance the idea.