"People don't pick their gender, sexuality or race. I think it's rather short sighted and hateful to say that once you're born a man or woman, that is it."
Who says you can't pick your sexuality? Some lesbian feminists have done just that! The 'born this way, I can't help it (so please be nice to me)' gay rights line is far from universal amongst the gay and lesbian community. Although of course totally understandable why so many people take this line, and why the TRAs try to take a similar approach. Except in order to do that, they have to first get us to accept that male and female brains are different.............(the science says not, cue Cordelia Fine yet again...........).
As regards gender the problems are two fold in that first you have to believe in gender and gender identity. And then believe that you can have a female gender identity in a normal male body, or that somehow a female brain with the assumed accompanying female gender identity can turn up in an otherwise normal human male......
As regards all this stuff, the gay community actually knows this the hard way. For years, actually being 'a man' or like a man was the supposed explanation for lesbians. Because of course being non-heterosexual obviously could not be normal! Similarly with gay men, who were either at times thought of as ultra-male, at other times more female. Except the gay community resisted, and now gay is normal, no weird developmental accidents or squiffy genes needed as an explanation. Because once you get your head round the idea that being attracted to the same sex is just another part of the rich human tapestry. Similarly, if not fitting conventional male (or female) stereotypes was accepted, then perhaps we wouldn't have so many people feeling they were trans. If we didn't have the idea of gender at all..........
Yes, we are born (99.9% of us) as either males or females. Apart from the reproductive possibilities that always go along with that, if everything else was just within the widest ranges of human possibilities, then what would there be to complain about? Call yourself what you like, wear what you like, adorn yourself how you like, it isn't feminists or gay people laying down those restrictions. But the conventional TRA narrative depends on having those restrictions in place.
So stop trying to co-opt lesbian and gay folks, or even intersex to try and further the trans narrative, which isn't actually a friend to any of us!
"I think it's rather short sighted and hateful to say that once you're born a man or woman, that is it." Born male or female, blame biology! Unlike many species of fish, humans cannot change their sex (although there are several developmental disorders, but being gay or lesbian or trans aren't such!).