Look, I think I used to be a "Katy" in a lot of ways - and I still may be in many others! As a matter of fact, I think I may have been the most insufferable token women imaginable for the longest amount of time (and, again, in some ways I still may be)! I'm sorry for what I did, but it's true! And maybe, just maybe, it helps in a little way:
When I was in my 20s and early 30s and, literally, one of the only women at my firm within my male dominated area in an already male dominated field, I believed in "pure meritocracy". How else, I would argue, would someone like me easily be climbing the ranks of the corporate ladder ahead of men?
I genuinely didn't think that, as a white woman, I was at any disadvantage. At all.
When my then boss was accused of disadvantaging women, I thought the accusers were bonkers! Here I was, after all, a woman, too, younger and more junior than the ones who were complaining, and I was doing splendidly. Oh, how little did I even contemplate how much "younger, more junior" mattered! Of course I did well! I was nowhere near the level of impact or seniority required to even figure on the "potential threat" radar. And, oh, how that changed once I did get there!
When the trans thing came up, I jumped straight onto that train. Of course I did! After all, there were people more in need and more vulnerable than me, and they needed me to show up for them! Besides, it wasn't as though I knew anyone who was trans in any capacity that mattered. There was mum's retired former work colleague/my own former history teacher (as a man) - over for dinner at hers maybe once a year when I was, too! Genuinely pleasant. There was my friend's partner - born female, and the reason my formerly "lesbian" friend now called themselves "bi". But, again, whatever!
It took me being confronted in a professional capacity (I suppose this may have helped; my role was to "be the boss" and try to stay emotionally uninvolved) with a female employee being deeply uncomfortable with sharing a hotel room with a female-identifying, biologically male colleague for me to realise that, yes, actually, this scenario makes me feel relieved I'm on a "gets a single room every time" paygrade, and I wouldn't want to, either, if I weren't. I just genuinely didn't get it until someone said "hey, boss, I find this invasive on a level I can't quite nail down" - and then, I got it immediately without her having to!
Now, for the record, I guess I'm still "Wokerati Central" in myriad respects. And I won't apologise - I don't subscribe to the idea of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
But "Katy" being a woman in an almost exclusively woman environment struck a chord with me: personally, I just never genuinely "got" any of it until some pivotal moment made it hit where it hurt. "Katy" may be the same!