@Emily Lake, I am going to give you what I hope is a helpful parallel, here, but I don't want to be misunderstood. I would not be very happy if you pretended to fully understand what it's like to be transgender, since you really can't. Likewise, I will not pretend to understand fully the issues of cis-women. I am not endeavoring to make you believe I understand something that it's impossible for me to really understand, but I think that I can understand it just enough for the sake of creating an extremely rough juxtaposition.
Imagine a woman who got knocked-up by her boyfriend, but instead of staying around to help raise his child, the motherfucker just applied for a job out-of-state and moved a thousand miles away in order to avoid the issue. Imagine if, instead of feeling sorry for herself, she were to just embrace the idea of being a single mother, and she realized it was, while not always easy, not a terrible thing. Imagine that she raised her child on television shows where a child was being raised by single parents, such as
Hilda, and she encouraged that child to believe that single-parent families were a valid type of family. She might never really forgive that child's father for being a deadbeat, but she can give her child a fair chance at living a fulfilling life and at developing a positive self-concept.
However, imagine that a fundamentalist Christian were to try to teach that child that their mother is sinful for her adultery, and that fundamentalist Christian were to lament how their mother had done them a grave injustice by depriving them of a father. Imagine that that child were to believe the fundamentalist Christian, and that child became unhappy and depressed.
Now, imagine you had another friend that was trying to raise a child that might or might not be transgender, and your other friend were trying to maintain the trust of their child by giving them a sense of affirmation and support, rather than trying to correct them when they did not really have to. That parent reinforces their case by seeking out the opinion of a licensed pediatrician, and that child's pediatrician has confirmed that this were the best way to make sure that that child grows up with secure attachment.
However, imagine that an alt-right asshole were start telling that child that there is really no such thing as gender non-binary or transgender people, and that child were to be told they are somehow broken for being what they are. And imagine that alt-right asshole were to tell them their parents are liars for saying they accept them for what they are. Imagine that child growing unhappy after that conversation.
Sure, those situations might not be exactly the same, but they are not fundamentally different. They are both situations where a child has been born with something noticeably different about them, and their parents are trying their best to make them feel happy with themselves. It is not really helpful when other people attempt to shame them for being different, and really, it's unnecessarily destructive.
I am a transgender adult. Yeah, you might be able to offend me in regard to my gender, but as much as I wish that people wouldn't, I am not really at risk of hurting myself because of this matter. A child, on the other hand, actually is. Therefore, my stance on transgender issues is really focused mostly on how people choose to behave toward children and young adults. As an adult, I might feel that it is respectful for you to affirm my gender, but I also mature enough to recognize that your respect has to be earned. The way I understand the world, you stop getting free stuff, besides a little bit of help with your higher education, the day that you have a right to vote, except if you have a very serious disability that effectively makes you as helpless as a child. To me, this discussion is really about the health of kids. It is a child's unique prerogative to be fragile, and if you are not going to help protect them, then you should consider giving them the right to vote.
I really disapprove of transgender adults that are thin-skinned and paranoid in how they deal with the issue of gender-affirmation. I don't think that works. I think that they can come across as bullies, and I think that it's partly because of their behavior that some people have grown to be resentful toward attempts to protect transgender people's health. We ought to learn how to see the respect we want as something we should try to earn. It is really hard to respect an adult that is thin-skinned.
If you shared a place of work with me and I wanted to use the women's restroom, assuming the restrooms were divided based on gender, I feel that I would be obligated to take special pains to make you feel comfortable with me, at an individual level. It would be up to me to earn your individual trust and to make you feel comfortable. I feel it would be up to me to make sure that I did not look out-of-place in that space. This is a matter of earned mutual respect and trust.
We do have to make special concessions to make sure that gender expansive kids feel as comfortable as we can make them. They are an especially vulnerable risk group. It is not unreasonable to make an extra effort to make their lives as manageable as possible. However, the right agencies to make those kinds of decisions need to be pediatric and teachers' associations. A layperson does not have the intimate knowledge of these conditions to make authoritative decisions. It is not the layperson's business to know how it's done. It's the layperson's business to know that authority has been invested in appropriate professional organizations that they trust.
I see my views on this as moderate, realistic, and fair.