I think it's an act of "oppression Olympics." You can't be a real woman if you haven't suffered as much as me, your period needs to make you throw up from pain, you need to be sexually harassed by your boss, you need to have been fired for being pregnant or passed over for a promotion because you have kids. A trans woman "was" a "man" at some point in her life, ergo, she could have never faced the same amount of problems as a cis woman. But that totally discounts the extra stuff that trans women have to go through that cis women do not, and the feeling of "something's wrong with me" you have for years until you figure out that it's from being trans.
You're probably right about that, at least for some of them. It's silly, because ciswomen have different obstacles and experiences too. I had very painful periods as a teen, but I certainly never threw up from the pain. And I never experienced the kind of sexual harassment some women did either. But some trans women experience a great deal of harassment, not to mention the fear over doing something as mundane as using a rest room or being attacked by random strangers just because they are trans.
I see trans women who want to wear make up or dresses because it makes them happy, but then they get yelled at for "being a caricature of a woman" or "regressing feminism." It's not okay for them to want to be a mom or do feminine things. But if they wear no make up and masculine clothing then they're not trying hard enough to be a woman. I still struggle with liking/wanting "feminine" things, as well as liking/wanting "masculine" things, especially if they're "bad" things. I had to go through so much mental gymnastics to allow myself to buy a combination shampoo-conditioner because hurr durr men don't know how to wash themselves, so does buying that mean that I agree with that sentiment? Am I allowing myself to be a dumb stupid man? That's the kind of shit that cis people never have to deal with.
I can see how all this adds to the stress for people who are trans. It's a loaded enough issue for those of us who have never had our gender seriously questioned.
I do remember being mistaken for a boy a couple of time when I was about 13 and had just gotten a pixie cut. I was working at a stable and wasn't wearing any makeup (girls in my school mostly didn't at that age) or jewelry, and was dressed in jeans and a work shirt and was still pretty thin with no curves at all. I always wore earrings after that and didn't get a short haircut again for a long time (and my mom always pestered me about that--
but you're so pretty with short hair and long hair looks so sloppy. Women of her generation did not equate femininity with long hair the ways later generations seem to).
What's also weird is that there were times when I wished I were a guy. Guys seemed so confident and sure of themselves and were always the center of attention without trying and were the ones people always asked do do fun and important technical things. No one expected them to be handsome the way we had to be pretty, and they even got to tell mock us for how we looked when they weren't good looking either (because it doesn't matter if guys have pimples or large noses or whatever--I know this isn't true now, but it seemed so at the time).
And also because most of the books I enjoyed had boys and men doing important, fun things and there seemed to be a tacit agreement that women and girls just couldn't because of their periods, or the risk of rape, or their weaker physiques or something, and surely there must be a biological reason we'd never had a girl president and all the inventors and scientists were men (of course they all weren't men, but we never learned about the female scientists and inventors in school). But I mostly just wanted to live in a world where women and girls could go on quests and adventures, or at least be included in more stories about quests and adventures and do sciencey and adventurous things in real life. I also wanted to live in a world (though I couldn't articulate this yet) where women were thought of as real and typical humans whose value wasn't largely defined by how they looked and which men they were associated with.
Compared to all the sexism and trying to figure out what it even means to be female in a "man's world" crap, having menstrual cramps was a minor frustration and definitely not integral to my feminine identity.
Not equating these experiences with the pain and frustration of being transgender in a world that still so often denies the reality of the experience, though. But being female is confusing and challenging, even for cisgender women. I don't see how it would be in any way easier for transgender women. Surely widening the circle of acceptance, and expanding our definition of femininity, as well as allowing all women the latitude to embrace whatever expressions of gender they think are important, should make life better for all women, imo.
Fuck TERFs.