"For the most part I agree with a lot of what you said. However apparently you drank the Kool-Aid in your comments about young children. No one does surgery or gives them HRT."

Examples abound, and there are no shortage of detrans on Twitter and in other forums attesting to HRT and surgery at younger ages. I would suggest to you that you trust your "in" crowd that keeps denying this doth protest too much. There are activists on all sides of all issues willing to lie for their cause. If you believe your side are always truthtellers while the other side are liars, then I would have to say you're a bit naive.

That said, I wasn't thinking about either surgery or HRT when I made that comment. There a lots of individuals who think cildren should explore their identities at ages which make parents uncomfortable, and these ideas are osmoting into school curricula, leading to what many parents feel are safeguarding issues.

"While do you do not state it, I suspect that you also believe that trans women should be segregated from cis women in private spaces."

I think there are legitimate safety issues in some cases, yes. Criminals are sociopathic by nature, and if you authorize self-ID across the board they will take advantage of the situation. It's also a religious matter to me -- I am not permitted, as practicing Muslim woman, to be in a private space with a man who is not a relative or my husband. It's been about five years, I think, since Target declared their potties "gender neutral", and from that moment on, I've used the "Family Bathroom" when necessary in that store.

"I am a passable postop trans woman, and I have a right to be there should you think to the contrary.""

If nobody notices you, then there's no issue, obviously. Nobody is suggesting strip searches.

" I am not a special class of woman."

'

Indeed? You still have a prostate, and I highly advise you to continue to have it checked for cancer as you age; identifying as a woman does not insulate you from prostate cancer. If anyone digs up your bones in 500 years, they'll eyeball the angles of your femur and pelvis and say "that's a male." And if they run a DNA test....same result. These are just facts.

THAT SAID, there is no reason why society should treat you any differently from a women for the duration of your life. Most people are libertarians in such matters.

"Since you are a cis woman who has no experience as part of the trans community, I think you do not appreciate the extreme prejudice that exists in many quarters towards us."

Why would that matter? I can easily say "Well, you've never been a hijab-wearing Muslim, so you can't identify with how I'm treated", either, eh? What would be the point?

Because -- and you're right about this part -- people don't walk in the shoes of another, we simply say "don't discriminate" outside of the obvious reasons where sex (or religion) matters. Legitimacy is not gained through science; according to science, I am exactly no different than any other woman under my hijab and abaya -- so when discrimination happens, it happens for reasons unrelated to science.

I sincerely believe you're going to end up being disappointed in all this. Not only will science, IMO, never isolate a single biological marker or physiological characteristic shared by transgendered people, even if they do -- and i've said this before -- nobody will care. Acceptance comes from people getting used to you (personal experience talking, here) not because some law gets passed or some scientific journal says "AHA"!.

But, good luck with it.