The article by Miranda Yardley was great as always (think I vaguely remember reading it at the time). I am a big fan of hers.
The article by Daniel Harris on the other hand I did not like (I know you said you disagreed with it on a lot of points, Nooka). Now while I agree with part of its thesis, namely, why do TA latch onto the superficial trappings of what celebrity culture defines as femininity, and why is plastic surgery seen as mutilation when in pursuit of a "trout pout", but not when it's GRS, I found the overall tone vilely misogynistic.
It did make me stop and think about one part of the push back against the trans-activist narrative which I'm increasingly coming to think is a misunderstanding, though. "The implications of this covert homophobia are particularly distressing
for children. More and more, parents are encouraging their sons and daughters to transition when they spot even the slightest hint of effeminacy or boyishness on the grounds that such behaviors indicate desires to be the opposite sex when in fact their desire to play with dolls and throw footballs may reflect the desire to be something less exotic, even banal, namely, gay. "
It seems to me that this is swapping one sort of gender essentialism for another - why should wanting to play with dolls or footballs mean anything other than that this particular child wants to play with dolls or footballs? It doesn't tell us about their "gender identity", it doesn't tell us about their future adult sexuality, it just tells us they like dolls and/or footballs.
I've seen so many accounts on here from women (myself included) who say we went through a tomboy phase as a 7,8,9... year-old, some commenting that they grew up to be gay, but many commenting that they grew up to be heterosexual women, who although still being pissed off at the social restrictions placed on them due to their sex, still found some aspects of having a female body - usually the ability to have children - pretty cool, and other aspects - e.g. painful periods, pretty annoying. (I dressed as a boy, passed as a boy, because I wanted to play cricket instead of rounders and do woodwork instead of needlework in primary school - girls not being alllowed to do cricket and woodwork in my primary). Child reasoning goes something like "I want to do X, I'm not allowed to do X because only boys are allowed to do X, therefore I will fix the problem by fooling the grownups into thinking I am a boy..." Child reasoning (certainly, my child reasoning) did not stretch as far as "It's the grownups saying only boys are allowed to do X, and they're wrong about that, therefore I need to change their minds".
It just seems to me that underlying the "and they turned out to be gay as adults" narrative is yet another piece of gender stereotyping - a girl playing football (or cricket, my childhood passion) is an oddity that stands in need of an explanation, and isn't something that "normal, heterosexual women" should be doing. It's yet another example of how deeply entrenched beliefs about what constitutes proper womanly behaviour are.