Either: Trans women are inherently dangerous predators with transparent psychological attributes of maleness, or: there are no psychological attributes of maleness because gender isn't real, and all behaviours are constructed. Which is it? These can't both be true.
We haven't claimed either of those things. We use a structural analysis of male violence here coupled with a class-based analysis.
The former says that there are structural reasons for why female people are victimised in this way by male people in our society, based on the inequality of the sexes.
The latter posits that the male sex class as a whole is a risk to the female sex class as a whole. We cannot tell which individual male will be a predator, but what we can tell is that a member of the male sex class is 100 times more likely to be a sexual threat to a member of the female sex class than another female. We have safeguarding measures in place to account for this. And precisely because we cannot tell which individual male will be a predator, we apply these safeguarding measures indiscriminately to all males above a certain age (typically before puberty sets in).
This does not equate to saying that every male human is inherently a predator. We're not making that fallacy of division in any way. We never have. What we are pointing out is that because there is no way for us to know which males are predators, there is no way to let any males in without also letting some predators in.
Safeguarding principles in this situation must therefore be applied to the whole group that represents a threat, even if not all parts of the whole are a threat.
We do this with all adults working with children or vulnerable people. I had to get a criminal records check when I joined a community interpretation service, because I would be privy to a) confidential information and b) work with vulnerable people or people in vulnerable situations. I did it gladly and at no point did I take that request as a slight on my character. And I will do the same every single time I'm asked.
The reason why male transgender people are affected by those safeguarding measures is not because they are "inherently dangerous predators" and it is not because they identify as trans. It's because they are members of the male sex class and we apply these safeguarding measures to all members of the group.
If we are talking about learned socialisation, then I profoundly agree; toxic behaviours imprinted on people by the patriarchy are indeed astonishingly shitty. However, if I express the experience of having been victim to them, I'm appropriating womanhood and they can't possibly be real - despite them demonstrably being realities that occur. Are experiences only real if the brain that is experiencing them is pink, or has the magical genetic gender essence? Do I even have the magical genetic gender essence? It was repeatedly implied by clinicians that they suspected I had PAIS due to the low intensity of pubertal changes I'd presented with. I never got myself tested, as it didn't seem relevant, but there's a not insignificant chance that my magical Genetic Gender Essence field is compromised.
I don't believe in pink brains or gendered souls or a "magical genetic gender essence". I surmise though that you have been a vixtim of "toxic behaviours imprinted on people by the patriarchy" in three distinct ways: in how others related to you as a gender-non-conforming male child and teenager, in how you related to yourself in your obvious non-compliance to the norms and expectations our society imposes on males, and in how people related to you after your transition because they perceived you to be a woman.
I believe these experiences are real. I believe they are damaging. I don't believe you are "appropriating womanhood" if you say you experience sexism or misogyny because people perceive you to be a woman. However, if you equated your inability to have children to infertility in women, that is an appropriation. (I understand that some remarks can have a much bigger impact than one might expect and that you did not intend the hurt it caused. I'm simply using this example to illustrate what I see as appropriation.)
It is appropriation when you equate your experiences to those only female people can experience because of their female biology. It is appropriation when you equate your socialisation, undoubtedly harmful to a child like you, to our socialisation. And the reason for that is best explained in response to the below:
Stereotyped gender conformance behaviours are problematic reinforcements of patriarchal oppression imposed on women to silence and control them, apart from when trans women defy gatekeeping and don't exhibit them, at which point they're exhibiting inherent markers of maleness that show they aren't 'really' trans. What IS a real trans person? What's the diagnostic criteria? Does it involve stereotyped behaviours?
Do you understand the different effect of gender on male and female people? Do you understand the difference in purpose? If you are here to educate yourself, then please think about the following statement:
In a patriarchal society, sex is the reason why female people are oppressed and gender is a tool of that oppression.
Let me explain why we say this: most if not all of the sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes associated with the female sex come in a binary, that is a hierarchical pair, of which the stereotypes coded masculine and associated with the male sex are denoted as superior and those stereotypes coded feminine and associated with the female sex are denoted inferior. What this means for our lives is that we lose either way - we lose when we conform to those feminine stereotypes and we lose when we don't conform to them. We lose different things, it's true, but we lose nonetheless. What we gain if we conform is often of limited benefit and the punishment for not conforming can outweigh the benefits of doing so too.
Most of us here know this because we have tried both, which is why we have such a profoundly negative reaction to any attempts to enshrine the doctrine of gender identity in law.
The international treaty devoted solely to women's sex-based rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women or CEDAW, recognises the damage that sex stereotypes and sex role stereotypes do to the female sex and therefore calls on all member states to work to eradicate them. That would not be the case if stereotypes were beneficial to us.
They don't help with male violence either. Violent males attack gender-conforming women as much as gender-non-conforming ones. That's because of our sex. (And while the rates of male-on-male violence have reduced in recent years, the rates of male-on-female violence continue to rise.)
They don't even help with the reality of our female biology, and all of the challenges it brings. We are dealing with a whole range of issues - many of which are again made harder to deal with because of the stereotypes associated with them.
Back to apart from when trans women defy gatekeeping and don't exhibit them, at which point they're exhibiting inherent markers of maleness that show they aren't 'really' trans. What IS a real trans person? What's the diagnostic criteria? Does it involve stereotyped behaviours?
I'm not interested in what makes a "real trans person". It makes no difference to me if I lose female-only provisions because a male person is a "real trans person" or not. All that matters is that a provision I need to be female-only is now mixed-sex.
There is only one reason why we bring up the fact that increasingly the males who seek access to female-only provisions are not even trying to pass: because we are told that we don't even know if a male who passes as a woman is using that provision, that they have always used them and that we should therefore stop objecting to the presence of all male transgender people. Which, of course, includes the obvious males, indistinguishable from any other males, who proclaim they are women by their very presence in a female-only space.
As for passing males, yes, some undoubtedly do for many. But like other survivors of male violence, I am hypervigilant and while I would never say that I can always tell, I will say that I often read males as male even when other women do not. And those of us who have involuntary trauma responses in the presence of males try to avoid being triggered, which is not only frightening and unpleasant but harmful to our wellbeing. We therefore need female-only provisions free from all males, even those who think they pass.
And no, I would never say anything at all to males in female-only spaces, unless their presence is distressing another woman or girl in that space. If it's just me I simply leave, asap.
Either: you can always tell, I have unmistakeable physical male attributes that make women inherently uncomfortable and which people were always secretly cowering in fear from, and everyone I've ever met and interacted with including people who have by default included me in explicitly trans-hostile private spaces while sharing their horrendous jokes and memes in good confidence has just been playing along; or you can't always tell, I'm passing invisibly and thus a duplicitous infiltrator who is harming women by making them feel unsafe ?retroactively? if I later out myself. Which reality is it? These can't exist simultaneously.
Why not? Women are not a monolith. We have diverse experiences. You may pass for some, even most, and not for others. I feel wholly comfortable in the presence of some male transgender people and not others. I may feel very uncomfortable and never show it, I may feel a little uncomfortable and bring it up. That depends entirely on the situation.
There are a limited number of circumstances where I would indeed feel betrayed finding out that someone was not who they professed to be. I don't think that is unusual. Afterwards, I'll avoid, either the place or the person, but I would be unlikely to say anything at all.