I really appreciate your calm and factual answer as it was a deeply personal question and I struggled to find a way to word it that didn't sound somehow accusatory. I really hope yo so manage to have a child.
It sort of illustrates the point really in both directions I guess. I always had a female body but being "a woman" wasn't super significant to me until after I had kids. For some women it has been a big deal to them, either positively or negatively, since early girlhood. For some it's tied to stereotypically "female" virtues and characteristics, for others those things are 100% irrelevant.
So "woman" as a gender identity is not a coherent concept. The gotcha from the other direction is that neither are the various physical features ("what about infertility? What about intersex?"). Gender identity, being an internal perception that cannot be externally verified, is inherently at a disadvantage. But the very dimorphism of the biological argument seems to require it to bear out in every case, so is seem as just as unstable by those who would prefer to focus on the (rare, but nevertheless real) exceptions. I think it is indicative of the complexity of the wrangling that the terrible case of David Reimer is held up as an example of the rightness of their view by both sides.
Which is why I kind of think it is less about telling trans people or women what they do or don't feel about their gender or their sex, but about the balance of risks.
So for example, while the gender dysphoria experienced by trans women prisoners housed in the male estate may be real, does it rise to the level of the risk to female prisoners of including male-bodied criminals in their cells and personal spaces, in an environment (prison) that is already extremely high risk, and is there any other way the dysphoria could be managed that does not expose women to that risk?
The use of the word "woman" in medical guidance to describe those who experience medical conditions exclusive to women (pregnancy, birth, cervical cancer, ovarian cysts) may risk trans men feeling dysphoria, but is that risk as high as the risk of alienating the cis majority (e.g. those with literacy or learning difficulties, or whose native language doesn't accommodate neologisms like "people with a cervix", making comprehension difficult) and impeding their access to appropriate health care?
And the ubiquitous toilet/changing room question - is there a way of protecting both trans people and women from the fear of male violence in enclosed/private spaces? (Spoiler there is - single unisex cubicles, which are appearing in more and more places and while it means dealing with a lot more piss on the seats is not contested by the vast majority of women, and would also help with the problem of parents, male and female, out alone with opposite sex children).
Pronouns? No brainer, call people what they want to be called, but compelling pronoun declaration is completely invasive.
I wish these conversations could be productively had, rather than "TWAW, no debate" being the hard line at the very beginning of the discussion. I also wish some attention could be given to the astonishing explosion of trans-identifying natal girls in adolescence, especially those with autism, as this is a very odd development in terms of the sheer numbers (if any other condition had ballooned in the same way it would be major news and tons of research money would be going into understanding the cause). But all the oxygen in the room seems to be taken up by trans women, toilets, and whether a man with a beard and a penis who calls himself Tiffany should be able to insist on an intimate wax from an immigrant woman working alone in her home, and be able to sue her if she won't provide it.