I went into this book expecting to disagree with everything, but trying to at least understand the beliefs and concerns of "gender-critical feminists" or "TERFs" (depending on your POV). I give it 2 stars (somewhat begrudgingly) because it did surface some of these concerns and helped me understand a different POV that I hadn't considered before. It made me at least more open to thinking about the complexities of multiple different perceived and real impacts of discussions and laws on the gender identity and inclusion, both on transgender people and cisgender women.

But I nearly gave this a one-star review anyway; Joyce undermines her own credibility in every single chapter. Several times there was a passage that made me have an "I Never Though of It That Way" moment (hat tip to Monica Guzman's book by the same name) where I wanted to dive deeper to understand the thought more thoroughly. But she would almost always immediately follow it with a demonstrably false statement, an unsubstantiated "slippery slope" argument that felt like fear-mongering, or citing a source that at first seemed to support her POV but (after even a quick Google search) proved to be clearly misrepresented. She claims in multiple passages to support trans people, and "truly" gender-dysmorphic minors. She even makes some possibly believable claims (if I had more information that I trusted) where certain extreme gender ideologies may distract and/or harm transgender people. But then she uses trans people's dead names (sometimes, not always). For those unfamiliar, using the person's current name that they identify by, rather than that they were given at birth, is considered one of the most basic ways of showing respect to a trans person.

I wanted a more clear statement of various POV with the best supporting arguments behind them. Instead, I got a book that intermixed pieces of those with a whole heap of inconsistent language, fear-mongering tactics, and poor quotation and data citing. I can't respect this author as a legitimate journalist after reading this. However, I leave the second star, because the text helped me get an overview of the level of discourse, and the book did navigate me to some of the feminists she did quote correctly for much better-written analyses of both gender-critical and gender-inclusive feminist beliefs.