I have written nothing on trans issues for seven years. A now-familiar row had broken out in the feminist movement back then, and I assumed that feminism would soon re-orient itself away from which body parts define a woman and whether or not the word “womxn” signified an assault on our sense of selves, and towards what I thought was obviously the more fundamental question of the movement: who has it worse? Feminism, in my life’s experience of it, takes the side of the oppressed. That is our raison d’etre.

So, anyway, I had seen this wonderful talk by Helen Belcher, who described the three ways in which trans people are portrayed and undermined, in the media and beyond. “The first is that they’re fraudulent. They’re not really who they say they are. We’d better humour them in their delusion. The second is trans as undeserving deviant. The third is trans as comedy.” Since then, this has intensified, with other, even more hostile, elements added: trans people as predators, the trans movement as deliberately poisoning the young. The savage mischief has seeped out of it. There is not much of the “We’d better humour them” any more.

Even in 2013, though, it was clear that trans people were in the eye of a familiar set of prejudices, which any of us – gay, female, disabled, BAME – might recognise. The difference was that people had become much less likely than they once were to laugh openly at those with disabilities, or to raise an eyebrow when two men kissed or an upstart woman demanded a fundamental human right. As a cause matures, it gets to the point where everyone recognises that their individual view no longer matters. But all that prejudice did not just evaporate, and the very idea of a trans person became its great release. All this pent up feeling exploded on to this one group, who – to put it mildly – could have done without it. It was, and remains, obvious which side feminism would be expected to take in this fight: the side of compassion and fellowship. We would recognise the importance of being an ally in a battle that we had been through.

Seven years ago, I thought this was quite an emollient argument, having gone nowhere near definitions, biology or absolutes – a call to rejoice in everything that made the women’s movement meaningful and victorious: strength in numbers, solidarity and, ultimately, love.

‘As a cause matures, it gets to the point where everyone recognises that their individual view no longer matters’ ... a women’s march in London on 8 March 2020. Photograph: Guy Bell/Rex/Shutterstock

That is not how it played out. Women on the other side of this row were apoplectic, because if you celebrate compassion without explicitly agreeing with them, they would argue that you are calling them uncompassionate. I thought: I am never going anywhere near this again, which was cowardly; I regret it.

But I recall that not as a humble-brag-style apology, but because there is a bizarre idea ossifying that “real” feminists are being hounded out of the discursive space by trans activists. Rather, what has occurred is the systematic enclosure of the debate, so that unless you want to go to the mats about toilets, your point of view is not relevant.

All kinds of voices have been excluded. The experience of trans men, for instance, has been more or less erased, because the core issues have been whittled down to such a sharp, conflicted point – do cis women need protected status? – that the very existence of trans men has become too inconvenient to accommodate. The mainstream feminist view, which is trans-inclusive, has been sidelined to maintain the fiction that this is a generational battle between old and young feminists. Again, it is tactical and convenient to portray trans inclusion as a Trojan horse that all the young idiots allow in, being unaware of the history of women’s rights. But it simply is not so. Just because you are middle aged does not mean you agree with Germaine Greer. On the flipside, it is convenient to find that your voice is not relevant to this debate, because the conflict runs so high. But that is not a sufficient response when the generosity of the movement is at stake.

It is astonishing that the idea of the “women-only space” is being touted as a fundamental pillar of the movement, yet is completely stripped of the historical context of that. Women-only space was a realm protected from our Harvey Weinsteins, where we could talk about our Harvey Weinsteins; it was not a hallowed place where we communicated through our ovaries. It was where we came together in unity against people who hated us. I can’t imagine the mindset that would exclude a trans sister from that.

We decided that binary debates are interesting to have, but boring to live

The fact is, in every backlash against every civil rights movement, there have been people saying: your emancipation is not possible for operational reasons. You can’t have the vote because your hands are too small. You can’t use the swimming pool because your hygiene is not the same . I find this egregious. What are we doing, trying to consecrate the public lavatory as a place so precious to the experience of womanhood that we have to be exclusive, rather than inclusive; that we have to characterise ourselves as a set of vulnerabilities, rather than strengths?

So much of the live combat happens on Twitter. This is not to call it irrelevant (I love Twitter), but might be cause to reflect. It really suits the “alt-right” to see feminist discourse mired in this. There is so much else we could be doing. The two major transnational grassroots movements of the recent past are the climate strikes and the women’s marches. Their combined energy – bearing in mind how much crossover there is in those communities – would be awesome.

We are witnessing an explosion of misogyny at the highest levels of public life. We have seen explicitly misogynistic terrorist acts – indeed, hatred of women is the through line that connects Isis to incels, that unites acts of violence globally – all while state-sponsored oppression of women has ascended to new levels of impunity. We have never needed unity more, yet, by wild coincidence, at exactly this moment, suddenly there is this obstacle that we can’t get past.

It feels distinctly modern and unprecedented that we find ourselves in this obliterative debate, where one side can’t prevail until the other is destroyed, where all the values of the movement are parked so we can fight over issues that are so technical that there is no room for compromise, yet also so abstract that there is no space for human beings.

In fact, there is precedent: we have weathered absolutes before. Are all men rapists? (But what about my son?) Is all sex servitude? (What if it was my idea?) Is lesbianism a political act? (What if I hate politics and would prefer to have a sexual destiny like anyone else?) None of this was settled in science. There was no definitive treaty that we all signed. We just decided slowly that binary debates are interesting to have, but boring to live. Solidarity is boring to talk about, but fascinating and empowering to live. Solidarity is not exclusive or pedantic; it is compassionate and fights oppression where it finds it. That is its lifeblood. That is why trans women are women, or womxn.

• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist