"transsexuals are patriarchal intruders into womanhood who reinforce traditional gender roles"

What you need to reject is the commercialisation of everything, not the facts of biological sex. 'Gender' became a huge marketing tool in the 1980s - and lots of peoiple bought into it.

I recall a well known transwoman appearing on a reality tv show (Big Brother?) having an entitled rant about how people accept him as a woman ‘but they don’t really believe he is.’
That is what was and is wanted — not acceptance but total belief. And nothing else will do, we should deny the evidence of our own eyes, our own knowledge, in the service of someone else’s comfort and delusion and really believe they are women.
It was interesting to then see all the women in the house rushing to comfort him and to assure him that yes, he really was a woman, they believed he was.
(Despite the evidence of this entirely male behaviour.)

Trouble one with "non-binary" is that it supposes everyone who doesn't declatre themselves non-binary is, well, binary.

It's not challenging the steroetypes themselves, it's just saying "well if I don;t fit those sterotypes I can't be a woman/man". It is people defining themselves by assuming boxes for everyone else.

Trouble two with non-binary is that in allowing the existence of "female people who are not women" and "male people who are not men", you change the labels men and women from the two halves of humanity based on sex to some type of personality label. And then you don't have the language to observe, understand explain and support people when they deal with the reality of being the sex they are, and you lose the cultural and historic threads that help us understand why sexism and sexist practices are so pervasive but also not a natural and therefore unavoidable state of affairs.

Non binary IS the 'get back in your box'.

Females break gender stereotypes by being female, and doing things. Not by pretending they are a special sort of female that is not like all the other females and identifying as a 'non-female'.

I say this a lot, but I do think that role playing as a member of the opposite sex is not a thing reasonable people do. If someone is saying something along the lines of ‘the clothes I wear and the cosmetic surgery I’ve had should mean I am treated differently under the law’, you’re in unreasonable person territory.

it’s fine for people to be unreasonable, heaven knows that’s not a crime. But goodness, you don’t take them seriously

The guy in this article is no more reasonable than any other person role playing as a member of the opposite sex. In the 80s She [sic] ultimately accepted Janice Raymond’s argument: that transsexuals are patriarchal intruders into womanhood who reinforce traditional gender roles.

and yet in 2006 he forced the Folkestone harbourmaster to install ladies’ loos for HGV drivers.. Which he then doubtless used

respect to Janice Raymond and her contemporaries for refusing to accept his bullshit.

What always amazes me is how it’s posited and something deep and meaningful, but it’s actually shockingly shallow. An awful lot of men who say they’re women, that they feel like women, and adopt ‘feminine gender roles’ have a notable line in the sand when it comes to what living as a woman in the world actually entails. They like the trappings they can purchase such as tits, clothing and makeup, even embracing some of what we would consider serious negatives such as sexual objectification (in a bizarre, utterly deluded way), but they have an obvious line in the sand when it comes to others such as the emotional labour, putting others first, and caring expectations. Add to that the tendency to revert to factory settings when challenged or told no, especially by actual women, and it all looks very flimsy indeed. Note that they’ll jump to attack a woman’s looks at the drop of a hat, too, even ones who look like Andre the Giant in cheap drag.
It’s all very very dysfunctionally male.

In my opinion, it was people trying to start a third box instead of attempting to break down the other two.

You guys are like an intellectual dog-fight. I do love hearing clever, articulate women lay out their arguments hand me back my arse on a plate

Thank you for all the responses to my comments. I will comment again when I've thought of something (clever) to say.

Years of being on here, and reading tedious but tenuous TRAs say stuff like "5 year olds know their gender ID" led <finally> to one of them on a thread I started say something tangible, and give me something I can envisage to push back against, as opposed to ephemera and circular definitions.
So, the TRA take on my thread pretty much said "female" is a pure natal sex/biology category, "woman" is a social construct that includes "females", "males" that ID as "women", male DSDs brought up to become "women".
And that the natal "males" (including DSDs) that ID into the "women" social construct category are very much "women" because they socially interact as they see their inner self as being "women" based on the stereotypes woven into society and "man/woman" interactions.
Basically, natal "females" are a subset of social construct "women", the latter open to "males" who have their whole inner essence and outer expression as aligned to the stereotype of "women".
The extension of this being that "women" is an open ended category including the plain garden variety of "females" and a range of "males" who can opt in.
Finally I'm seeing what TRAs mean by TWAW, they're literally saying "women" is a spectrum.
Trans women are women is making the distinction with "females".
And thus natal "females" are just a subset of the larger "women" set that includes "males" observing any number of stereotypes.
And thus biology matters less than pure internal mind's eye, and external social interaction, with the environment of society at large and individually.

More and more I'm seeing this as a mix of early Christian era Gnosticism, those who thought they could control the environment and world around them by controlling how they appeared to others, and thus change themselves, and blank slate theory, where there are no set patterns, our whole personalities and outcomes depend on how we interact with the world and people.
This Gnostic blank slate philosophy predicated on pure stereotypes of men and women.
What a car crash.

Interesting that in addition to my thread being as you say, hijacked, the TRA wouldn't engage with me, either claiming I was spouting word salad (activists no stranger to that from their side), and later, just a bit of snark from her.
I genuinely learnt a lot from her responses, realising more than ever what a blight on society the ideology is.

This is a particularly high calibre thread and I found myself thinking of any number of activists I wish would engage with this level of debate.

And I’ll be borrowing this brilliant analogy @FlirtsWithRhinos ‘It's like sticking up for the sofa when you come home every day and sit on it.’ Spot on