Thanks for this, Alix. As a binary white transman, I needed to hear this. I’ve been in heavy discussions with radical feminist women about gender and one of the concepts that gets bandied back and forth is whether or not we should ‘trust’ transfolks to self identify. They have tried to ‘compromise’ by requiring medically authorized dysphoria and surgery (to allow that some transwomen could be called women). Their claim is that self identity leaves the door wide open for crazy shit to happen (read scared of men pretending to be women so that they can attack women). That always seemed like it was based in transphobic hysteria to me, but the argument for some kind of bullshit detector (gatekeeping) did seem like a reasonable request. I just couldn’t figure out what that would be given the diversity of trans expression. Seems like self identity is still the best bet.