Also? Pay attention to how often trans allies make their final response to be about "kindness", "welcoming" and "acceptance", instead of. I don't know, actual evidence, science or statistics. Because that actually reveals to you what this whole ideology is all about. It's men, and occasionally other women, taking advantage of women's kindness. Trans people know they can't prove their own claims beyond reasonable doubt so they always end up appealing to emotion, while perfectly understanding that that's what women are prone to listening to (more than men). That's why the conversation revolves around women's spaces, women's sports teams, women's prisons, women's medical facilities, women's scholarships and quotas for women at large. What can women provide for sad, disenfranchised men?
Women can be negotiated with, women can be forced to step away to give space even when it makes them uncomfortable or hurt, women can be gaslit into thinking that their stress, fear or anxiety is just bigotry in disguise. Women understand and extend their empathy to you if you give them a sob story about violence and discrimination, because they have personal experience about such things. Women don't have too much confidence about their own rights and own boundaries because they have been socialized to think they don't matter much anyway, so just push them a little and they will crumble.
And if there IS a woman who frowns at you, throws a question back, doesn't immediately move out of the way? Well isn't she the terf bitch that needs to be burned at stake, you say, and other women around her will quickly move aside just so they won't be targeted too.
It is not a coincidence that this is what the conversation will always boil down to. It's never really about trans men and how their claims affect men. It's never really about what's going on here biologically, or evolutionarily, or anything of the sort. It always, always, ends up here, where women are being told to shut up so that they are not inconveniencing trans people, so that they're not hurting trans people's feelings.
Like noticed what OP said one of the women ended up saying as a final thought? "I am personally comfortable welcoming all types of people into my bubble of womanhood". Emphasis on welcoming. As in: "womanhood is a community where I can invite people if I feel bad for them". She didn't say "I think there's plenty of scientific evidence that makes transitioned males count as actual females, so it just makes sense for me to count them in after." She didn't say "I also have a gender identity and know exactly how it feels and that's why I resonate with trans women because we really do have that identity in common." She just says "well I don't mind."
She's placing herself on a higher moral ground even if it means she will have to give up on basic feminist principles. She's quick to tell everyone that at least SHE is very kind and friendly, exactly like she's expected to be, even though there's no trans person in the room to judge her.
Our socialization as women and girls drives us into supporters of the movement even when it backfires on us, even when the whole movement was built on our backs and tries to consume all of us. Even if it means we will have to give away all our rights we fought so hard for.
Next time you should ask her why she is stopping with trans women. Why doesn't she open the "bubble" to ALL disenfranchised men? Why not open the doors to gay men, men of color, disabled men, male children? If this is genuinely about empathy and nothing else, why have women's spaces at all, why don't we just have a space for all the bullied people and then another space for all the bullies? Would that work? Would that fix all the problems? Why not?
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