Shouldn't TERFs be the most supportive of gender-affirming care for trans women?

I always referred to extreme and misguided feminists as feminazis. TERFs are feminazis with a particular fixation

TERF stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist", and originally it designated anti-trans feminists, like Janice Raymond (The Transsexual Empire), Sheila Jeffreys, Mary Daly, Robin Morgan, and others. A lot of these feminists are part of second-wave of feminism. Contemporary TERFs however are arguably poor feminists, and many of them even refuse to identify as feminists as they make alliances with right-wing movements. Basically, TERFs today seem to be more anti-trans than they are feminist. (More here about TERFs if you are interested.)

Since by definition TERFs are anti-trans, they would not agree with "trans women are women" or anything like that, they believe trans women are delusional men and invaders of women's spaces. You could not be a TERF and believe trans women are women.

I consider myself to be a woman because i have 2 x chromosomes.

Did you have a karyotype test, how do you know you have XX chromosomes in particular? Even so, why do you think having XX chromosomes guarantees being a woman - there are certainly men who have XX chromosomes (for example trans men - I assume if you think trans women are women, you agree that trans men are men).

It seems to me that not only do chromosomes not guarantee a gender, but most people don't actually know their chromosomes.

If we were being pragmatic, we might say you're a woman because society perceives and treats you as a woman, but this can be a problematic definition for trans-inclusiveness. Simone de Beauvoir, the famous existentialist philosopher and foundational feminist thinker, in Second Sex, writes that what makes a woman cannot be reduced to just physiology, i.e. she rejects biological essentialism and the idea that something like a uterus or XX chromosomes makes a woman a woman, instead she points to the larger context of the way women are fashioned as subordinate to men and as an "other" in society, some important quotes from Second Sex:

If her functioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through “the eternal feminine,” and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman? . . . The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say, ”I am a woman”; on this truth must be based all further discussion.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

In the end I understand Beauvoir to be arguing that there is no inherent thing as being a woman, and that we should instead see view people as primarily human, the very same way that men are often perceived as human first (as the default / universal) and not particularly gendered or othered in their gender.

But this creates a problem for trans identity, and it does not accord well with certain facts about biology - for example, the common belief that gender is just a social construct, which came from feminist thinking and finds its roots in Beauvoir, resulted in the sexologist John Money deciding to have a baby boy whose penis was damaged by circumcision be raised as a little girl - after all, gender is just "socially constructed nonsense" and what does it matter. Money thought it would be better to raise the kid as a girl because it was easier to construct a vagina and give the child a normal life as a girl rather than raise them as a boy without a penis. The baby would never know they were born a boy, and they performed corrective surgery to give the baby boy a vagina and raised him as a little girl without his knowledge. This boy's name is David Reimer, and he contrary to Money's theory, he struggled to live as a girl and by the age of 15 rejected being a girl and lived to be a boy.

Now, this is an example of a cis boy who was raised as a girl and who experienced gender dysphoria trying to live as a girl and who eventually realized something was wrong and was able to transition back to being a boy.

What was going on with David Reimer, if gender is just a social construct, why did he struggle so much to live as a girl? He was pressured and expected to be a girl, and he conformed in many ways, but he was particularly rowdy for a girl, and he was, well, boyish.

Well, it turns out there is a growing body of evidence that indicates gender identity is actually a part of our biology, and there have actually been dissections of trans women's brains that show particular structures in their brains that are more like cis women's brains in terms of volume and density than cis male's brains (even when the trans women did not take hormones or transition medically). We now know it's a lot more complicated than brains just being "male" or "female" and there is a new model called the brain mosaic, so it's complicated.

But the main take-away is that gender identity is biological not something we can mold with social influence - this is why conversion therapy is not successful, and why the only evidence-based and effective treatment for gender dysphoria that has ever been found is gender affirming care. We also now know that gender dysphoria is genetic, though likely caused by a complex set of traits rather than a single gene.

So why do people change their bodies? They got unlucky and inherited a genetic condition that causes their brain to feel like a different gender from the sex they are assigned upon birth, and that results in discomfort similar to if you took a cis person and tried to raise them as the opposite sex. This is all oversimplification and leaves out a lot of the complexity and diversity of trans experience, but hopefully this helps give you an initial idea.

I've thrown a lot at you, but in terms of "what you are" - I can't answer that, nor can anyone else. Unfortunately nobody can inspect your gender identity, even if they can try to infer your gender from your body and gender expression. And even the inferred gender that society places upon you is not necessarily who you are in inherent sense. There might just not be any essence of what you are, or that gender essence might be too complex to fit with our current gender concepts. The "brain sex" that plausibly explains gender dysphoria in trans people is so complex that it is not clear we could ever construct something like simple categories or a taxonomy of sexes or genders from it, which is why the researchers describe it as a mosaic. It's not even a spectrum, it's too complicated.

If you are wondering if you could be a trans man, you could see if your experiences are like other trans men, here are some videos that may help explore that.

You might also find the Gender Dysphoria Bible worth reading, even just to learn more about trans people out of curiosity.

Firstly, you're breaking the first rule of this space and your comment will be removed. I would encourage you to ask questions in an appriopriate space, this one exists for trans feminine people and will be kept safe for them. Secondly, do you know that you have XX chromosomes? Have you ever had that tested? Or is that just the assumption you're making based on your physiology?

You're most likely a woman because society has largely told you that you are. They've told you that your body is what makes you a woman, and that being a woman comes with all these different things attached to it. You have internalized that identity as you were being raised and it has meaning to you, you have always seen yourself as the gender you were assigned. Cisgender is nothing more than just accepting the gender you were assigned.

Trans people experience dysphoria about our bodies for a lot of reasons. The way that our bodies are shaped and appear is itself gendered. So many trans people feel a gender based dysphoria about their bodies. The way that secondary sex characteristics are typified has an impact on us as well. Many cisgender women experience the same things about their bodies. We have an internalized view of our own gender and if we feel a dissonance between the way we are and the gender we have internalized, it causes distress to us. This necessarily includes our bodies.

As well, feminists don't abandon all modes of gendered expression. We have our own tastes and preferences with clothing, expression, and presentation. Many of us still undergo gendered rituals about our bodies, like removing body hair and wearing clothing that emphasizes a feminine presentation. Trans people are just doing the same things. I experience all of the same pressures that cis women do to have a conforming presentation. I enjoy wearing gendered feminine clothing because those things correlate with my own identity, with how I see myself. This is a normal thing that everyone, cisgender included, does.

To your last comment, what are you? Presumably, you are a cisgender woman as you have identified yourself that way. What womanhood means to you is up to you. I understand this is something you've been told your entire life that you are inherently, and you have to find your own way to exist within the conventions of womanhood, but you don't. As women, we can be masculine and/or feminine, we can be apathetic about our gender, we can choose to take part in gendered presentations like makeup or wearing clothing associated with femininity, we can work in any field we want and we can be whatever we want to be. Those things are all true even considering Trans women. Masculine Trans women exist. Gender liberation is discarding the concept of assigned gender roles entirely and allowing gender self-determination. It's letting you decide what gender means to you.

So, as I often do to people questioning, I'll say this. No one can tell you for sure one way or another whether you're trans or not, nor whether you should transition or not. That choice is entirely yours. You have to explore your own feelings about gender and come to that conclusion yourself. So what are you? That's entirely not a question I can answer. You have to answer it for yourself.

Questions not allowed