How you were raised does not determine the reality of your gender identity..

One line of argument that tries to further segregate transgender people is that they are not “real” women or men because they do not have the exact same experiences as most cisgender people. This is dangerous in the sense that it invalidates the lived experiences of a threatened minority group, while othering them and opening the door for “separate but equal” legal marginalization. It’s also wrong on a number of levels.

Transgender people are held to a double (read impossible) standard for asserting the validity of their gender identities. David Reimer was raised as a girl, but no one questioned whether he was a “real” boy when he asserted gender identity. The same is true for the guevodoces. In this, we can see that when someone asserts a gender other than the one they were raised in, it is only treated as valid if the individual’s eventual identity is cisgender.

Similarly, many transgender children are now socially transitioning at an early enough age that they will likely have almost no memory of having lived in a different gender role. Even in my case, as a “late” transitioner (mid-30’s), when I die I will likely have spent more than half my life being treated as a woman. On top of that, there’s the issue that male privilege is not monolithic.

Finally, the argument that you’re only a “real” woman if you have menstruated, are fertile, or have had children is reductionist and vaguely creepy, in a Handmaiden’s Tale kind of way. There are cisgender women who never have a period, are infertile, or choose not to have children and don’t have to defend the validity of their gender identity and expression.