Conservatives have recently made an absolutely horrifying discovery. They’ve learned that trans people actually exist. So of course, they’ve responded by trying to exclude trans people from as much as they can. Recently, North Carolina passed a bill forcing trans people to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender they were assigned at birth. Other states have tried to do the same.

The justification of all of these bills is that we can’t allow “men” into the women’s restroom. Conservative propaganda sites feature headlines like "Keep Your Man Parts Out of My Bathroom," "Target Stores Open Women's Bathroom, Changing Rooms To Men," and "Donald Trump Comes Out in Favor of Men in Women's Bathroom."

All of this transphobic nonsense makes me furious. As a trans woman myself, I think I need to make something very clear.

Trans women are not men.

Womanhood is not defined by having a vagina or a uterus. It is not defined by the lack of a Y chromosome. And it is not defined by having estrogen as your primary sex hormone. Someone is a woman if they identify as a woman.

Yet, trans women are constantly bombarded with messages that trans womanhood isn't real. People have told me to my face that I’m just “pretending” to be a woman. I’ve been told that I am a man and nothing could change that. When I first came out, someone told me that they hoped I got raped so that I would experience what “a real woman goes through.” Even well-meaning cis people sometimes inadvertently dismiss my womanhood.

What makes all of this so infuriating is that there are some very serious issues facing trans people that need to be discussed. One such issue is violence. Trans women of color face absolutely staggering rates of violence. Trans people are also seven times more likely to experience physical violence from the police, with trans people of color especially likely to experience police violence. In fact, the average life expectancy for a trans woman of color in the Western Hemisphere is 35.

But it seems like we never get to discuss issues like this. We spend so much time fighting just to prove that we exist, we hardly ever get to discuss the important issues facing the trans community. The biggest national discussion about trans people revolves around whether or not we should have the right to use the bathroom. That is utterly pathetic.

I have no desire to prove that my womanhood is real. But it seems like that's necessary for trans women to get even the most basic amount of respect. So let me make this very clear.

I am not a man. It doesn’t matter what it says on my birth certificate. It doesn’t matter what my genitals are. And it doesn’t matter what bigoted cis people say. My womanhood is just as real as any cis women.