Ok, @MichaelGLFlood , I finally have a chance to address some of the things in this Yardley article. I’ll try to take the numbered points in the article one at a time. Buckle up - this is a long thread. 
1st point - Yardley makes the unsubstantiated claim that discussions about transwomen are dominating feminism. Are these conversations happening? Yes. Are they dominating the discussion? Hardly. Transwomen are almost entirely absent from the mainstream gender justice agenda.
Take a look at UN Women for instance – I haven’t seen them conduct, or support, any campaigns that center transwomen. Indeed, I’ve been hard pressed to find any large feminist organizations that actively center transwomen as part of their agendas.
Also in 1st point, Yardley argues that advocacy for inclusion is causing ideological rifts within feminism – as if that is somehow a bad thing. Inclusion of women of color into feminist advocacy agendas caused rifts too and the feminist movement is better as a result.
2nd pt Yardley makes is absurd and offensive. The book Yardley references as evidence here challenges idea that there are sex differences in our brains. book makes claims about origins of behaviors/preferences - Does not make claims about transfolks or where identities come from.
The most offensive and harmful part of this 2nd pt is the reference to transwomen as cross-dressing wolves. Framing of transwomen as villainous and predatory has no basis in evidence but also fuels growing rates of violence against transwomen (which are already alarmingly high).
3rd pt - Yardley argues that we need to accept that sex and gender are not the same thing – not wrong there. Trans/queer scholars/activists have pioneered work establishing this so implication that “transgender ideology” needs to accept this feels backwards.
3rd point also claims that sex is a biological reality and that ALL transwomen are biological male – both of which are demonstrably false.
Hormones, chromosomes, secondary characteristics, genitalia, and reproductive organs are all things that we have socially constructed to serve as indicators of sex categorization. At birth we are assigned a sex category usually based on just one of these indicators (genitalia).
This is important because even though we treat them as such, none of these indicators are binary or immutable in reality. So what makes a female? A vagina? Ovaries? Uterus? Breasts? Countless women who aren’t trans currently don’t have or never have had one or more of these.
And who gets to decide? Are we prepared to say that only those people who have the privilege of most closely conforming with the social construction of the category female get to decide who else is included/excluded?
The 4th point again sets up the strawperson argument that transfolks are insisting that feminism center transwomen. Insisting on inclusion is not the same thing as insisting on being centered. Yes, feminism is about women and girls, but transwomen are women too.
5th point is repeat of 2nd – Yardley argues that trans folks need to drop the idea of “brain sex” but the only people I have seen fixating on “brain sex” in this debate are folks trying to exclude transwomen.
This article by @JuliaSerano provides some interesting discussion of the topic of brain biology - medium.com/@juliaserano/t…
6th point – Who is insisting that language be erased? For folks who believe that transwomen ARE women the term cis is necessary to facilitate clarity of discussion.
It is ridiculous to frame the use of the qualifier “cis” as some form of aggression. Indeed I would argue that defensiveness about the term cis is akin to folks of European ancestry being opposed to being called white.
6th point also revisits the whole penis=male and vagina=female thing which again buys into the debunked notion that sex is binary, biological, immutable, and only based on this one indicator.
7th – Yes, transwomen’s lives are different from ciswomen’s lives, but no two ciswomen have the same life either. “Their lives are different” is some of the same rhetoric used to exclude women of color from feminism.
7th pt also says it’s not ok for transfolks to attack women’s institutions and links to an instance of transfolks calling out an organization for excluding them. Would we tell women of color they can’t call out an organization for excluding them?
When we understand transwomen as marginalized women it is perfectly reasonable to call out organizations that claim to serve women but exclude them.
8th point is another straw argument. Transfolks have been more than willing to have honest discussions about autogynephilia. Yardley undermines own pt by giving link to a discussion where a person provides academic citations (which Yardley doesn’t) contesting autogynephilia
9th point - Cotton ceiling as a term calls out that cis lesbians often support trans causes but don’t consider transwomen to be viable sexual partners. Same conversation is happening about race in gay communities. Calling attention to this dynamic is not coercive or shaming.
10th pt - Yardley calls out that some women are threatened for trans-exclusive beliefs. Fair but, Yardley fails to acknowledge that there are cases of trans-exclusive feminists threatening transwomen too AND that trans-exclusive ideology fuels epidemic violence against transwomen
11th for transwomen, being excluded from women’s spaces often IS a matter of life or death. For example, research has shown that men’s restrooms are VERY unsafe for transwomen – exclusion from women’s restrooms can result in experiences of physical violence.
12th pt is absurd. Did it erase lived lives of white women when women of color challenged white feminism? No. Where is evidence that ciswomen’s experiences will be erased if we acknowledge transwomen as women? Inclusion expands the category of women - doesn't undermine it.
I want to be unequivocally clear about this. I am NOT saying that lesbian women need to sleep with anyone that don't want to. I am saying the naming that this dynamic is real is not the same thing as coercion or shaming.
