Loudmouth in answer to your "does this make me essentialist?" question, that's a counter-accusation trans-rights activists quite often throw back at women who say "look, biology is what makes me a woman." The answer, from my point of view, is this. Most of the discrimination I suffer - lower pay, certain aspects of the health system, street harassment, threat of sexual violence - are down to my biology. My biology doesn't make it inevitable that I suffer these things (and if society were civilised they would not happen), but it does explain how I am identified by the people doing these things to me as a member of the class they (not I) deem less worth - less worth of equal pay, less worthy of respect, less worthy of safe spaces to go about my life. That is their problem, not an essential part of my biology, but it is how they make the distinction between women (the group of people they think it's okay to harass, molest and pay less) and men (the group of people they see as properly people).
Essentialism would be deciding your biology determines your personality. (Weirdly in this sense, genderism is a form of essentialism - some sort of nebulous inner "lady soul" is taken to determine your personality - pink and fluffy and submissive). What I and most of the women here is that biology explains how it is that one group of people can pick out and identify another group of people and treat them as lesser. (It also, historically, explains the means by which they were able to do so; women are - pesky biology again - are physically less strong and uniquely vulnerable when pregnant and caring for small infants, and uniquely vulnerable to being made pregnant by force i.e. rape).
So biology is the "means, motive and opportunity", to borrow a phrase from police procedurals, for most of the crimes committed against us. It doesn't make those crimes "right" or "natural" (which is what essentialism would commit you to).