Growing up

I was emailing a friend and I thought that I should share what I wrote:

"You are right that I didn't grow up as a girl, instead I was forced to grow up as a boy. I was forced to have my hair cut short, I was forced to be physical and to fight, I was forced to play sports when all I wanted to do was talk with the girls... and if I tried to resist I was punished, sometimes socially, sometimes physically. So I wish I had grown up as a girl, it would have been so much easier than what I did go through then and what I have been through now.

You said that fundamentally I am not a woman and at a biological level you are right, I have a Y chromosome and I can never get rid of it, but please don't think of trans women as a third sex because that really does throw us under a bus. That really would cause a lot of suicides. Instead please think of us as people who through a cruel twist of fate have had a tortuous journey to try and exist in this world, and the best way we can do it is by being true to ourselves and hope others will let us."