I think the Contaus article gets across the distinction between gender as an oppressive set of social norms (sex roles) and gender as an innate identity well. Clarifying that distinction is important, because different groups are using gender to mean different things.
I don’t understand gender as an innate identity because I see it as a set of (oppressive) social norms. One can and should be able to opt out of those social norms, fit with some and not others, challenge, resist or conform to those social norms as one wishes, without facing discrimination. But the ability to do that is separate from the material reality of whether you are male or female, surely? I think that is the crux of the argument.
And the provisions to allow women to participate in social, public and political life are based on material reality of sexed bodies (same sex bathroom space, maternity rights, sanitary provision in same sex bathroom space, rape crisis centres, refuges, equal rights in the workplace and so on,which give us freedoms not to be dependent on men for protection). The TRA argument is that sexed bodies can be changed (or don’t need to be changed as gender is in your head) and a man can become a woman and vice versa; the feminist argument is that sexed bodies cannot be changed, even with surgery and hormones, because biological sex is innate, structural oppression (gender norms) is built on that, and that gender is externally imposed.
The problem is that in theory, it looks possible to change sex with hormones and surgery and a society willing to engage with that possibility; in practice, there are massive risks and it appropriates the experiences and lived reality of those born in the desired sex.
So there is a debate to be had. The debate is being silenced. The conservative press are picking it up (thank you *Kiss) finally, for reasons already upthread.
I don’t think it is an accident that this is happening when women (on paper) have a range of social and financial freedoms denied to them 150 years ago, and had moved beyond needing male protection. Even in fighting this, we are saying we need (conservative or liberal in the old sense) men on board to protect daughters, wives, mothers.
Sorry, just musing out loud, because I am trying to get my head around this. I feel sorry for trans people who just want to live their lives and find themselves caught up in this maelstrom. There are people who genuinely have gender dysphoria, who understand this does not make them the other sex and they cannot be the other sex and they do what they can to alleviate their own distress. It’s not them who are suspending and threatening women. Provision of a third space beyond male/female would help here, but that does not seem to be the aim.