I accept that there are differences between trans women, but I believe my description covers a strong majority. I don't speak "for" anyone, of course.
>> It ends up with us being excluded _everywhere_ because of some dubious concept of "socialisation", as if every trans woman has the same experiences such that you can discriminate based on it.
I agree that the concept of "socialisation" is vague and hard to define. The problem is that there are differences in the way men and women behave in a social context and because these differences end up harming women (usually) they need to be addressed. It's easy to see that boys and girls are brought up differently (different toys, different advise, being told off for different things etc) so that's a likely explanation. The alternative is usually a biological explanation about male and female brains generating male and female behaviours. We don't really understand how brains generate any behaviours so I find the biological explanation to be very suspicious. The "socialisation" explanation sounds a lot more straightforward.
Of course there are differences between trans women, in behaviour as well as upbringing. There are differences between men, and between women. Yet, here we are with a tech indudstry that is, in aggregate, unfair or hostile to women, but not to men. You can't predict the behaviour of individuals, but you can make fairly accurate predictions for the kind of behaviours that arise in groups. That's why a community like Leap is needed in the first place.
My concern is that in the case of women-only spaces where trans women are welcome, many trans women will join, responding to their need to belong, which you express and which I feel myself. And that given enough trans women joining, a few of them will eventually display those behavioural traits you can expect from people who grew up like men and that are the traits the community seems to want to keep out.
I agree that feeling excluded from everywhere is harsh and feels extremely unfair. But we can't fix unfair by making more unfair. We can't make the world fair for ourselves by making it more unfair for others. At the end of the day, the way forward is true equality. If trans women are accepted as women, and women are accepted as equal to men (in technology, or anywhere), trans women will not need to feel excluded from anywhere.
But this is not yet the case and I really think that trans women need to give some space to cis women until it is and in order to help make it so.
>> Often!
And thanks for letting me have one, too. My experience is that it happens, but rarely.