> I do think she is pretty blatantly transphobic. I mean she wrote a whole novel which just rehashed the old trope from Dressed to Kill to drive home the point about how dangerous she thought it was for males to be in women's spaces. That's some commitment.

I haven't read this novel, but if it's about males then why do you see it as transphobic rather than male-phobic? After all, Rowling almost certainly doesn't cis males in women's spaces either. To me it's not obvious why it would be considered acceptable to discriminate on the basis of identity differences, but not on the basis of physiological differences. Especially as to me it would seem that of the two, physiological differences (specifically testosterone levels) would be more likely than identity to affect aggression (incl. sexual aggression) and therefore the danger someone represents. (AFAIK (I read her "open letter") Rowling is quite happy for medically transitioned trans women to be in "women's spaces" - it is self-id without some kind of check that she opposes).

There is nuance to this debate in that a trans woman who is perceived as a woman is probably more likely to be targeted in an attack than someone who as perceived as a man (although we should note that this really is about the perception of others and not self-identity - and people may not be perceived as they self-identify). So I'm not necessarily saying I agree with Rowling's position, but I don't really see it as transphobic.

> I had some uncles and stuff who would bring up physiological stuff but only as a sort of gotcha or subtle dig at me or later my husband (to make it clear to him that despite being a masculine cis man they think of him as a homo). I think it's pretty common for trans people to be gaslit with like "yeah but your chromosomes are male so you're a male" in bad faith to the point where it always looks like a dog whistle when someone brings it up.

I'm sorry about your experiences with your uncles, that's really unnecessary. In particular, while ones chromosomes may have influence on phenotype I suspect it's rather a small one in the case of trans people.

Having said that, I think it's worth noting that for many people the physical aspects of gender are really much more important/interesting than the social aspects. For example for me personally, my gender has only ever really meant:

1. That I have a penis, and a certain hormone balance that subconsciously affect my perception and decision making in subtle ways.

2. That society treats me in a certain way and has certain expectations of me.

With regard to "how I see myself", to be honest I see myself as more similar to the average woman that the average man in most ways. But I still use the label "man", because my personal understanding of gender is that if I have the physiology that I do then I'm a man. That's just what "man" means to me.

I don't think gender needs to mean that for everyone, but I do think my understanding of gender and identity as a man is just as legitimate as a trans man's. And I also think (without assigning blame to any one party) that the fact that we're both using the same terms - "gender", "man", "woman", etc - to describe utterly different phenomena is problematic in aggregate.

More broadly, it seems to me that a lot of the conflict in the gender debate is that there are really two or three things going on:

- Physiological features

- Societal treatment

- Internal mindset and how one views oneself

In western societies we have traditionally labelled all 3 of these things as "gender" and assumed that they coincide. And now that we've realised that they don't always, we're fighting over which one(s) are "gender", and which one(s) are of legitimate social interest. Whereas in reality all 3 are of legitimate social interest, and all 3 have a justifying claim on the term gender.

I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary hurt and conflict caused by people trying to say for example "You have male physiological features" and other people hearing "You have male internal mindset". And I feel like if we came up with some way to disambiguate about which of the above we mean when we are talking about gender in a given context then it would help a lot. It wouldn't solve all our societal disagreements and prejudices, but I think it would help lead us away from slanging matches and towards productive debate.