Slate: The Trans Women Who Say That Trans Women Aren't Women

And, of course, are right.
It's silly that either of these things has to be said, but:
(A) Everybody should be able to live their lives as they like, so long as they're not hurting anyone else.
However:
(B) There are no values of x (none I know of, anyway) such that you become x in virtue of thinking that you are x.
(Note: thinking thing is, notoriously, the best candidate for an exception here... But I currently don't think that the Cogito is valid, so I currently don't think that's an exception either.)
Certainly man and woman are not categories that one falls under simply because one thinks one falls under them.
Will information like that in Goldberg's article pull the American left back from the precipice of insanity to which it has driven itself over these issue? Who knows? If it does it will be good...but also bad. Anyone who's waiting to hear from transgendered people about what they should believe about this are still making the fundamental mistake that drove them here: they think that certain groups have the power to make things so by fiat. And that is utterly insane. The left has gone so far in the direction of valorizing victims that it even wants to give them the magical power to control reality by decree... Speaking in theoretical terms, and not in terms of actual harm done: that is probably the most insane belief on either side of the political spectrum right now...
But of course most of what this is really all about is petty verbal kowtowing...  Which is better than the magical thesis...but still damn stupid.