Re: "men in dresses", a quick word. I don't use this because of its potential to offend, but I fully understand those who do. It feels relevant to point out, in a thread about women's loss of the ability to describe themselves, that there has been a corresponding loss in our ability to describe the opposite sex, and specifically trans-identifying males.
Using the words "woman" and "female" for them, as seems to be preferred makes it impossible to explain our concerns: just like that, we're silenced. We literally can't express our needs or defend our rights as a distinct group of humans. Frightening.
"Trans women" can be similarly problematic for us, in its grammatical equivalency to "disabled women" or "Black women". It feels inappropriate at best (and ableist / racist at worst) to support the view inherent in this phrasing - that a male is just as much a woman as a female in a wheelchair or female person of colour.
"Transwomen" works for me overall, but is still a huge concession on the part of women that's entirely unacknowledged by society. Imagine "transblack" or "transautistic" or "transjewish" or anything, really. These have a sheer, insulting wrongness to them that reflects society's respect for the integrity of the identity being hypothetically "trans-ed". I think it's significant, in contrast, that "women" didn't benefit from the same defence: social conditioning to "be kind"? aeons of perceiving woman as secondary? I think both of these are relevant. In particular, the conception of woman as "other": if male/man is the default, then it stands to reason that anyone who so emphatically rejects their maleness would be shifted into the more accommodating class of "woman". (This ties in, of course, to why "trans woman" highlights the historical othering of "Black woman"). So, in short, "transwoman" can be problematic for some, too.
Where does that leave us? Because of this corruption of our language, any attempt to argue our case is made, quite literally, impossible ("woman"/"female"), or is forced into implying in the very words used a readiness to compromise that's contrary to what we're saying ("trans woman / "transwoman"). These words have obscured the reality of what "trans inclusion" means for women: "trans women are women", after all - it's literally there in the name! The trans campaign has been an act of astonishing cruelty in this sense, to be honest. Transsexual didn't have the same temerity - and did show far greater honesty, with a specificity that permitted wider public understanding.
And the public are entitled to understand this debate, and to draw their own conclusions about it - particular where the dissolution of previous data, rights and, above all of single-sex spaces is concerned. This is where the BBC has behaved so appallingly - they saw it (see see it) as their moral duty to impose "trans inclusion" on the nation through language, in a way that removes choice. It's anti-democratic, frankly - also in the corresponding, dangerous erosion of trust in the media.
(For more on this, people could google "trans inclusion Dentons document" - which explains how undemocratic political strategies were deliberately used to embed the loss of single-sex spaces in law without clear public understanding and agreement - and "Pronouns are Rohypnol"; I find the title of the latter problematic and it's fairly strongly worded for anyone entirely new to this issue, but it makes these arguments about language very powerfully).
Continuing to focus on public understanding, the above has led to a remarkable naivety about what "trans" actually means. Until very recently indeed, cross-dressing was included in Stonewall's "trans umbrella". Many people haven't heard of AGP fetishism or will say it's been disproven, when a brave google (not recommended!) will reveal an infinity of personal accounts, by males, of exactly this. This, too, is included in "trans" now. It's genuinely upsetting to see the damage that this expansion of the concept of "transsexual" has done to the vanishingly small minority of dysphoric males who would previously have fit this description.
When all this is taken into account, there's actually something to be said for using "men in dresses" as one of the few clear descriptors left to women to make their point. It resolves the issues with giving up the word "women" to a greater or lesser degree, and highlights the often-superficial character of male transition from the female's perspective. Because, the fact is, our perception of reality is just as valid as a male's perception, meaning that his internal perception of himself simply doesn't factor when we meet him in a station loo at 11pm at night. It's Talibanesque to say that the woman's instinctual and rational wariness at seeing a male in this context should be subsumed entirely into said male's unspoken conviction that he's female. To her, as long as she retains the right to her own perception of the world, he is, at that moment, "a male who has adopted an outward appearance more commonly associated with women" - "a man in a dress", as shorthand. Despite this, the Overton window has expanded to normalise "transwomen" into something women would be "crazy" to find offensive, and shrunk to squeeze out "men in dresses" as clear evidence of mere prejudice.
I repeat, I don't use "men in dresses" myself for many reasons, including wanting to avoid hurt to anyone who may be distressed by it. I actually dislike it intensely. And I agree that it sometimes indicates genuine prejudice - transphobia exists, of course it does. But is it always a sign of this? Society has taught us that it is, but I think things are actually rather more complex.