Decided to make an account for this thread, because the amount it makes me want to bash my head into a wall was honestly applaudable.
If gender is simply the socially constructed expectations of how people should behave and dress,
This... isn't gender.
Gender is entirely internal. The expectations we have towards gender are gender stereotypes - that women wear dresses and are nurturing, men like sports and are emotionless, etcetera.
I can't speak for all trans people, obviously, but I've yet to have this very discussion with anyone -
a woman who's a butch lesbian (who I'll for the hypothetical refer to with she/her pronouns) who
- uses testosterone to grow out facial hair (or who naturally has extra facial hair)
- wears clothes from the 'men's
- likes beer, football and fart jokes
- has a deep masculine voice
- has a flat chest through natural or surgical means
- prefers to be referred to with he/him pronouns, or called 'king', or even called 'boyfriend'
- whatever else is associated with men
is not a man by extent that her gender is a woman, which is entirely something that solely she, herself, can acknowledge or disacknowledge.
She can have identical characteristics/interests/etc to trans men, she can be outwardly indistinguishable from any men, but she still is, and should be protected entirely as, a woman.
I don't know a single trans person who's out here arguing that wearing a dress and slapping on lipstick makes someone a woman, or who'd vehemently argue that the formerly described butch lesbian must be a man, and I've spoken to hundreds over the years, and listened to thousands more.
A common complaint of gender non-conforming trans men is that we'll continuously get invalidated and have our gender questioned when we do anything from wearing a floral top, doing our hair, going out in a full dress and make-up when none of that dictates what someone's gender is, when no one (beyond people who insist trans people are doing this, or who keep confusing non-trans drag queens for trans people) is out there arguing that actually, non-transgender men who wear dresses are really women -- something that does happen to transgender men, that shouldn't be done.
This isn't something that's hiding in the shadows, buried as a deep secret. This is a common thing and one of the reasons why Gottmik, The trans drag queen who managed to get on RuPaul's Drag Race despite the hosts' insisting that we (trans people) have an 'unfair advantage', was enormously popular among trans men who are Drag Race fans.
Slight divergion aside,
Some of us adhere to gender stereotypes, some of us don't. Just the same as everyone who isn't trans. We're not following some magazine checklist of 'what a woman should be' or 'what a man should be', we are who we are.
I see a lot of arguing from gender critical people against 'gender' (which, going by the OP, is not even what I describe gender as), and what they assume about transgender people, but never actual criticism about gender.
I don't care about gender stereotypes, but I would never call myself gender critical.