At the heart of this remains the problem that pro-women is conflated with anti-trans.
JKR is smeared as anti-trans. Never framed as pro-woman.
Why?
Because being pro-woman is still in, with the human rights cheerleaders. If you frame JKR as pro-woman and you are opposed to her, you become anti-woman by definition.
and in some cases, saying that the mere concept of being transgender is a capitalistic 'white male' misogynistic scam that manipulates mentally ill people, and that even adults shouldn't be allowed to transition. You can deny it if you want, but I can safely say I have seen all of these things said in 'gender critical' Twitter and forums.
We then need to unpick this.
What does transitioning mean? What does the public understand as transitioning?
First of all we have a bunch of euphemisms, 'Sex change' or 'change sex' being the most contentious. Coupled with how the word sex is being used interchangeably with gender in problematic contexts which have real world implications.
With the best will in the world, no one can change sex. By definition someone who is trans, is 'trans' precisely because their identity doesn't match their sex. Their sex has stayed the same, how they define themselves has changed. You can only change legal paperwork not sex.
And that's where everything falls down. Definitions without agreement. Trust and communication failures.
Being pro-woman is about preserving this biological definition because the conflation of sex and gender is causing a conflict and many will argue is rolling back on rights and the safety of women.
Gender itself is contentious precisely because it doesn't have a fixed definition - it's based on gender stereotypes which aren't always in women's interests.
The public perception of transition has largely understood it to involve surgery and efforts to 'pass' and it only to be a tiny number of adults. With self ID and a much larger cohort including people who don't even attempt to pass, you have an issue and a mismatch with older now outdated public perceptions.
As we've had a massive push on lobbying we've also seen a massive wave of children identifing as trans which is massively problematic for many reasons. Given the correlations with age, sex, mental health issues, homosexuality, abuse, eating disorders, autism in this group which are backed with sources from lobbying groups themselves which match the findings of the Class Review it becomes hard to argue that these groups a) aren't vulnerable in terms of this lobbying / politically biased education which is age inappropriate b) there's a massive problem with distinguishing 'true trans' from 'fashion trend' c) you have real evidence of harms to various vulnerable groups.
At which point you do need to roll back to medical ethics, research and safeguarding. All three of which are failing to match even the most basic standards expected elsewhere.
In normal circumstances the reaction to this would be to stop all medicalisations pending an investigation, review etc to prevent further harm. So I actually don't see why this is a controversial position to have. It's actually more controversial to continue to push for medicalisation in the absence of decent studies / follow ups and to persist with views which don't seem to have substance beyond matching gender stereotypes of what a man or woman is.
The fact we can't get politicians to define a woman and we don't even have discussions over the definition of man is incredibly one sided and steeped in social bias - that screams problem.
The basic problem comes down to biological issues being ignored, in favour of a concept that doesn't have social consensus, adequate legal or even political definition and medical standards which are sub basic levels and significant evidence of actual harm.
The question from a pro woman point of view should be 'why on earth have we got to a position where this was ever allowed to happen without thought, oversight or consensus which has damaged women's rights and removed protections we thought were agreed in law and by social, moral, ethical and political consensus.'
Or to put into an example which is easy for people to see visually: What is the point/purpose of women's sport? Why was it established in the first place? What is 'fairness' based upon?
If you start from this position rather than the one that's framed as a roll back on trans rights and therefore 'anti-trans', the whole debate looks a lot different.
It looks anti-woman. It looks fundamentally racist, never taking cultural issues into account, it's looking top down driven by lobbying and marketing campaigns rather than from grassroots level, there's huge amounts of money at stake for branding and pharmaceutical companies, there's many who have reputational damage to consider if there is a potential scandal, there a huge political investment in this so if there is a house of cards there's a massive problem.
And that's really the issue. If we start to unpick things we have a huge number of powerful and influential people who have a lot to lose if a scandal of neglect and safeguarding, lack of transparency, destruction of women's rights and protections is there. The sunk costs problem that's hard to step back from, which is leading to ever greater - and absurd doubling down - which alienates and becomes harder and harder to justify in a logical sane way.
Worse still, any evidence of problems is therefore subject to a desire to suppress and this looks dodgy as fuck in the context of much of the movement endorsing a 'no debate' position over one that favours accountability.
In essence the issue has become a lack of trust in people and institutions who have supported a push on trans rights without consideration to women and other groups and the implications for safeguarding.
People saying there should be a complete ban are coming from a place where they think there has been a failure of accountability and proper basic responsibilities neglected. That's not necessarily unreasonable nor discriminatory.
The worst bit is that a lot of this tra drive has ended up undermining trans rights - certainly in terms of health care. It's almost become the situation that if you are trans, you can't have certain mental health support because that could be considered anti-trans. And de-transitioners aren't being helped and supported. They are neglected, ostracised and actively demonised' by their former community as 'traitors'. Again that's problematic for a movement built on the idea that its members are the most vulnerable. Shunning people who it accepted as vulnerable and then trying to block alternative support for them, by definition creates an even more vulnerable group being bullied and suppressed by another.
The trans movements confrontational tactics rather than consensus building, it's authoritarian 'education' programmes rather than using reliable and robust evidence based arguments and it's use of high profile, powerful groups to put down grass roots questioning are its downfall.
Again I stress: It comes down to loss of trust.
To regain credibility it has to go back to consensus building, evidence building and grass roots level engagement. It's unwillingness to do this will be it's undoing. Why?
Because it comes back to that starting point about the framing of pro-woman v anti-trans.
In neglecting women's stake, the movement has a problem as issues and evidence becomes problematic to the public and questions are raised about the duty of care aspects from public servants.
Are calls to stop things anti-trans? Or are they pro-transparency, pro-accountability and pro-evidence / ethical practice? Are they about wanting to rebuild trust and restore consensus building and proper democratic consultation and involvement of all stake holders?
'It shouldn't be allowed' can not be framed as anti-trans in the context of what has happened for this reason.
The TRAs downfall is it's desire to bulldoze through society without involving and engaging with it at a level which considers all aspect of citizenship and stakeholding. It's failing to live up to societial expectations of protections which are well ingrained as basic rights.
It is an inability to communicate with those who aren't the same. It's about a lack of trust.
If you want to change this, the idea that womens groups or any other stakeholder, is by default 'anti-trans' needs to stop. It's not. It's over simplistic brain dead thinking which will only lead to further resistance. THATs what really needs to stop.